DON JONES INDEX…

 

GAINS POSTED in GREEN

LOSSES POSTED in RED

 

 

10/14/20…   13,508.68                   9/30/20…   13,464.31                  6/27/13…   15,000.00

 

 

(THE DOW JONES INDEX:  10/7/20…27, 776.26; 9/30/20…27,452.66; 6/27/13…15,000.00)

 

LESSON for October 7, 2020 – “SICK ELEPHANTS on PARADE!”

 

 

 

Just when Republicans thought things couldn’t get any worse… well…

It’s not fair to beat up on the sick, the elderly or the sick elderly… it’s like, well, pulling healthcare from persons with pre-existing conditions unfair.  Still and all, there is something about the past week that speaks to the ancient Greek theatrical tradition of hybris (in English, “hubris”) which. Roughly translated and updated, consists of: “Pride goeth before the fall.”

Aristotle mentions hubris in his book Rhetoric:

“Hubris consists in doing and saying things that cause shame to the victim … simply for the pleasure of it. Retaliation is not hubris, but revenge. … Young men and the rich are hubristic because they think they are better than other people.”

Aristotle believed that people indulge in crimes like sexual misconduct and maltreating others only to fulfill their basic desire to make themselves feel superior to others.

In the Greek mythology, hybris was punished by Nemesis, the goddess of retribution.  Her handmaidens include @, noi

And now that fall has fallen… at least in most of the Eastern two-thirds of America… Republicans of the religious persuasion might well be wondering if God is just testing them, or has truly abandoned them.  Or, perhaps, the Gods, as in the forgotten, disrespected Classical deities (as used to hold both human affairs and theatrical convention under their almighty thumbs by imposing rules of drama that were… well… classical).  A person of substance (not a common Jack or Job but a King… or, at least, wily merchant or, you know, some person of wealth, esteem and importance), becomes so enamoured of his own powers and qualities that those around him know he’s just itching for that fall and scramble to get out of the way.  And then…

Our American President marched confidently onstage on the 29th, outwardly ready to take on the world – let alone an ancient piece of dried up gristle in the person of former VP Biden.  Inwardly, however, he seethed.  He’d already come under hostile fire from the liberal loonies who’d somehow filched his own, private, personal tax records as were kept by his own, private, personal Internal Revenue Service and broadcast to the world that he’d paid less in taxes than a WalMart cashier or hospital janitor in the years of his election and inauguration, and nothing at all most of the rest of the time.  (See last week’s Index for more.)  And that damnable Biden kept spitting out the most outrageous sputum… facts, and things… that a real man couldn’t help but drown out with his own ripostes.

The debate drew worse reviews than the movie version of “Cats”.

 

Some short takes on the debates between the calamity and Trump’s catching the plague… these from a Tuesday night and Wednesday morning survey of important media and political people…

George Stephanopolis   “That was the worst Presidential debate I have ever seen.”

               George Karl      “The debate was a total mess.  It looked like both men lost… which means that Trump lost.”

               Mary Bruce       “There were times when they were talking over each other…”

            Chris Christie –      “Joe (Biden) looked shaky; he would wander off in mid-sentence and use lots of insults.  Trump was too hot.  Biden was not consistently coherent.”

         Rahm Emanuel      “Biden did a rope-a-dope…”

                David Muir       “The backdrop is that people at home are exhausted.”

              Sarah Fagan      This was a total food fight.  Trump did not command the stage.”

          Yvette Simpson     “The fact (is) that we’ve survived this administration… but I wish that Biden had taken a deep breath.”

          Matthew Dowd      “If you were in a foreign country, it would be an embarrassment.  Joe Biden won because Trump would put us through four more years of this.”

           Mary Raddatz     “It (would have taken) a lion tamer to (moderate) all this mud wrestling in the middle of a pandemic.  Voters knew Trump was like that but were disappointed with Biden.”

      Sen. Cory Booker     “It was just ugly…”

 

The media, too, were unimpressed.  Of course, the President could and did blow off their criticisms as simply further extensions of liberal bias… still, undecided voters who had actually seen and heard the debates were apt to give the scribes more credibility.

To wit:

Jonathan Martin of The New York Times wrote: “The president’s bulldozer-style tactics represented an extraordinary risk for an incumbent who’s trailing Mr. Biden in large part because voters, including some who supported him in 2016, are so fatigued by his near-daily attacks and outbursts.”

Anne Applebaum of The Atlantic wrote: “The point of Trump’s performance in that debate was to undermine confidence in the election and in democracy itself.”

iden conveyed his ideas clearly. “Biden made the debate about the country and the American people, not about Trump,” the historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote in her newsletter. “While Trump listed his own grievances, Biden spoke to the camera, asking Americans what they needed, what they think.”

the Proud Boys, a far-right group, and Trump replied: “Proud Boys? Stand back and stand by … Somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left.” The group celebrated his response online and began using the phrase, “Stand back and stand by.”

Doug Rivers of the polling firm YouGov wrote: “Trump did badly with his base. 15% of his supporters thought it was a tie, compared to only 4% of Biden supporters. Only 49% of Trump supporters thought it made them think better of Trump.”

Rich Lowry of the conservative National Review lamented: “The key takeaway is that Trump set out to make Biden crack, and it didn’t happen.”

The New York Times polled sixteen of its editorial writers… (See Attachment Two)… fifteen thought Biden won the debate (although several denounced the performance of both candidates).  Only Michael Buskirk… who in his day job is the editor and publisher of “American Greatness (not to infer that he is on The Donald’s payroll)… felt that the President prevailed, and that was primarily on the energy issue.  Trump was somewhat hopped up, but his subsequent collapse only heightened the contradictions.

Vox (See Attachments 3 A & B) surveyed a basket of opinionaters, reaping a harvest of epithets (A) like “debacle”. “disaster” and “dark thing”.  Even the President’s ostensible supporters muzzled their usual adoration with one notable exception, the Proud Boys (B), those jaunty opponents of onanism who quickly converted their notoriety into merchandise now on sale at their website.

The Huffington Post unearthed a (Republican!) pollster (Attachment Four) who asked random men and women on the street (or in other places) to give a one word review of the debate, eliciting remarks which ranged from “bully” to “crackhead” to “unhinged”.

Time found defects in the post-debate polling  (Attachment Five) while the BBC excoriated what they called a “car-crash debate” (Attachment Six)  “Six Takeaways” (Attachment Seven) from the debates were offered up by CNN; the glaring omission being whether or not to take them away entirely.

Time Magazine recommended this course… just before Trump’s illness… in perhaps the ultimate dis-tribute to the debators… appealing: “Just Cancel the Last Two Debates. America Has Suffered Enough” (Attachment Eight).

“I never dreamed that it would go off the tracks the way it did, moderator Chris Wallace apologized.

 

And then the breaking news broke again.  Fittingly it came at 12:54 AM, October 2nd… the President’s prime twittitching hour…

 

Tonight, @FLOTUS and I tested positive for COVID-19.  We will begin our quarantine and recovery process immediately.  We will get through this TOGETHER!

 

Friday morning, America was treated to the spectacle of seeing the President medivaced from the White House to Walter Reed Hospital on the Marine One chopper, and immediately tricked by the doctors and retainers who insisted… as gentlemen of the same persuasion had done immediately after Ronald Reagan was shot back in 1981… that everything was rosy and perky and that Trump was being examined solely out of the boilerplate “abundance of caution”.  Ever skeptical, ever cynical, the skeptics and the cynics pounced.  They spun scenarios of doom and gloom (for some, Democrats wouldn’t say so but they were actually feeling good about the possibility of any of the following happening)…

       1.      That Donald Trump would die in office, in which case the Presidency would pass to Mike Pence, a religious zealot, but somewhat more sane than Trump (good), but also somewhat more competent (sometimes good, sometimes not)…

       2.      That the plague would also strike Pence, his being in the presence of his Lord and Master on numerous occasions over the past week – particularly during a celebration of Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s nomination in the Rose Garden, thereafter migrating indoors (said occasion already being referred to as a “super spreader”)…

       3.      That, according to the rules of succession and, to a more litigiously challengeable 25th Amendment, Pence might die or be disabled – in which circumstance the highest office in the land would pass to… Nancy Pelosi and her writing right hand which would immediately begin writing Executive Orders…

       4.      That, despite the pronouncements and the parties, Judge Barrett’s elevation would be delayed or destroyed by either a Pelosi executive order or… as seems to be underway now, despite the reported recovery of the President and continued good health of Pence… an outbreak of plague among the Republican members of the Senate, particularly those on the Judiciary Committee assigned the task of fast-tracking the approval by Election Day or, at worst, before the inauguration of President Biden.  See below.  And, perhaps worse than death…

       5.      That the President, like the fallen heroes of the Greek tragedy, would be undone by his own hybris in mocking the masking of his enemy, Biden, and Americans in general and be driven out of power by voters hurling their shards of ostraka.  Assorted polls found that between two thirds and three fourths of the electorate considered Trump stupid for tempting fate as he did.  Even a healthy Djonald Unhorsed would have no recourse but to slink back to Bedminster or Mar-a-Lago without his power, his legal protection from civil and criminal wolves and, perhaps, without even the fifty year far-right Supreme Court as his legacy.

One might well wonder whether, at the darkest moment of his breathlessness (as his oxygen levels teetered on the brink of sustainability) that he pondered whether dying what he believed would be a hero’s death might not be preferable to an afterlife of humiliation in the dark, cold Hades of the dispossessed,

 

Of course, there were the consolations, if he wanted them.  As Friday rolled on, all manner of creepy-crawlies crawled out from between cracks in the floor and the walls of the world to offer up their support and prayers… many of whom would spit at the mention of his name and envisioned, for the dumb, cruel American, a toasty afterlife in the company of companions like Hitler and Stalin and Idi Amin.  And politicos pronounced the October debates in Jeopardy.

There was once a ”Wheel of Fortune” episode in which an excited contestant, certain that she had decoded the cryptic inscription on the magic board as: “A Group of Pill Pushers”.  (She was wrong, the correct answer was: “A Group of Well Wishers”.)  And now, whether pushing narcotic assurances of solidarity or genuine appeals for the restoration of the President’s health, the well-wishers wished and tweeted and tributes poured in from all corners of the cubed Earth some of Trump’s most fanatical supporters believed in.

Boris Johnson, himself a plague survivor, checked in.  So did China’s Xi and NoKo’s Kim.  Angela Merkel sent her condolences.  Trump foes turned temporary BFFs Pelosi, Obama and Hillary sent their well wishes.  The Peanut Gallery offered their prayers.  So did, presumably (if in private) Vladimir Putin.

 

A new week rolls round, and…

Chris Christie gets it, muses on maskless meetings with Trumpstaff, talking Trumpstuff.  Republicans recoil at prospect of Pence getting it, devolving the Presidency to… Nancy Pelosi!  Two key confirmation Senators (Mike Lee, R-Ut, Thom Tillis, R-NC) get it.  So does RNC queen Ronna McDaniel, Trump advisor Hope Hicks, Press Secretary Kellyanne Coway and Trump campaign manager Bill  Stepian.  Also the President of Notre Dame and seven more Rose Garden Party guests.  TV Doctor Jen Ashton predicts: “…there will be a lot of testing in the next couple of days.”

Plague having destroyed the entertainment biz – dead until at least April is “No Time to Die”, the umpteenth James Bond movie without Sean Connery – America is introduced to Sean Conley, Trump’s doctor at Walter Reed, who, caught lying about the President’s oxygen, claims it was to “prevent panic”.  Really?  While the pandemic decimates the top ranks of the military, Major Garrett (CBS) says that this is a time for more transparency.  TV Doctor Ashish Jah calls the Barrett party a Super Spreader, then speculates that Trump’s hybris is leading him to ignore doctors, treat himself.

George Stephanopolous, citing a cascade of chaotic crises complicated by Covid cover-ups and contradictions., cites polls saying that  three of four Americans say Trump was wrong on Covid.  “I learned it by really going to school,” the President responds.  “I get it.  It’s the real school, not the read-the-book school.”  Replies Uncle Joe: “Masks are not about freedom, they’re about patriotism.”

On Monday, a bored and restless President orders up the armored, airtight Secret Service SUV to drive past the well-ishers and wave (which action earns him a chorus of abuse by the compassionate community showing off their concern for the trapped Secret Servicemen.  Dr. James Phillips of Walter Reed called it “risking lives (of the Secret Service) for political theater.”

And yesterday, POTUS returned to the White House, ripped off his mask and declared: “Maybe I’m immune.”  Humility – whazzat?  While the guy holding the “football” (the briefcase containing codes to launch a nuclear strike against China, or Rissia… Iran, whomever?... gets the plague and underlings fumble the football, America prepares for Round Two – not only Stage Two of the pandemic (or, possibly coupled with this year’s flu, “twindemic”) but tonight’s scrap between Kamala Harris and Mike Pence.... perhaps of more than the usual interest being that both would be poised to replace two sick old men.

 

More, now, on the week’s developments… and how can this already surprising month (forty-some months, to be accurate) be introduced.  Not by DeFoe… 17th century Englishmen didn’t have elections, they had kings (who might depose and even kill one another from time to time, but didn’t have to churn out political commercials).  Not Camus… there was plenty of dissension in France and its colonies after the war, but he largely passed them by.  Not Lasch… narcissism is still in fashion, although muted for the time being.  So maybe a little of old Edgar Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death”… as was brought to life by President Trump’s plague party to celebrate his nomination of poor, doomed Amy Coney Barrett (with so many sick Republicans, confirmation is going to be pushed back past the election and quite possibly past the seating of a new Senate).  And, to ground the present passions in the swamp of dead white male posturing, a few more examples of Greek tragedy as particularly referenced the concept of hybris – that instance of them as mocked and defied the Old Gods (particularly the Nosoi – Lords of Distempers) being undone by their own arrogance and insolence.  A few Romans too… they plagiarized more than Joe Biden.  And the Shelleys Mary (Victor Frankenstein) and Percy (Ozymandias).

This – from theoi.com:

THE NOSOI (Nosos, singular, Morbus/Morbi in Latin) were the personified spirits (daimones) of plague, sickness and disease. They were numbered amongst the evil spirits which escaped from Pandora's jar.

“The Keres were also sometimes portrayed as personifications of deadly disease. In most Homeric literature, however, the arrows of Apollon and Artemis were the bringers of plague and sickness rather than bands of daimones.

The Roman counterparts of the Nosoi were Morbus, Lues, Pestis, Tabes and Macies.  Classical theocracy being as heavily familiar as the Trumps… think Don Junior as Morbus, Ivanka as Macies, Erik as Pestis… their parents were probably NYX or ERIS, like the other malevolent daimones, although nowhere stated.

(See an anthology of hubrisistic quotes, ancient to modern, as Attachment Nine)

 

 

 

 

SEPTEMBER 30 – OCTOBER 6

Wednesday, September 30, 2020

 

       Infected:  7,219,635

               Dead:  206,693

                  Dow:  27.787.70

Chaos in Cleveland – Trump and Biden rassle in their first debate, roundly excoriated as disastrous.  (See above)    One word comes to mind, says George Stephanopolos, “disgrace”, and Google reports spike in searches: “Move to Canada.”  Chris Christie dissents, saying Biden “drifted off” and Reince Priebus predicts the ugly debates will discourage a third of the voters from voting – good news for Trump.  But its not all bad for Uncle Joe – fundraising during the last hour reaches record heights.

   Moderna pulls ahead of rivals in vaccine race.  CDC says 18-22 yr. olds spiking and blames college reopening. 

   Jon Karl warns America about the “Lost Boys”.  The Proud Boys revel in publicity – a spokesboy declares: “We are Western chauvinists who refuse to  condemn the modern world.”  Party boys continue dancing, imbibing drugs and alcohol, debauching party girls and coughing, coughing, coughing.

 

“The Red Death had long devastated the country… but the Prince Prospero was happy, dauntless and sagacious.  When his dominions were half depopulated, he summoned to his presence a thousand hale and light-hearted friends from among the knights and dames of his court… and while the pestilence ranged most furiously abroad, (the) Prince Prospero entertained his thousand friends at a masked ball of the most unusual magnificence…

   “There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions… much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of that which might have excited disgust…”

 

E. A. Poe, “Masque of the Red Death”

Thursday, October 1, 2020

 

       Infected:  7,242,033

               Dead:  207,605

                  Dow:  27.816.90

The nonpartisan debate commission ponders rule changes, including cutting off microphones of bloviators.  Cooler temperatures spike plague in New England and Wisconsin – Green Bay hospitals overrun and Trump has to keep moving his rally sites around.  Fred Perry says it will no longer sell its black and yellow shirts to the Proud Boys, whose membership and merchandise soaring.

   CDC extends ban on cruise ships through Halloween.  And they suspend their plague website, citing accuracy… others cry intimidation.  Safety of Astra Zenica vax questioned. 20,000 Amazon workers get it.

 

“And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
― Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

 

Friday, October 2, 2020

 

       Infected:  7,274,065

                  Dow:  27,682.81

 

Trump getting it called the “ultimate game changer” as well as 2020’s October (barely) surprise.  Going to Walter Reed, ingesting a cocktail of experimental drugs and receiving oxygen (or not) he says” I have learned that life is very fragile.”  Matthew Dowd plague ‘puts a really big dent’ in what the President wanted to do.  Mail-in ballot wars rage in Wisconsin and Philadelphia – millions (say ‘Pubs, dozens say Dems) float away in a river.  Biden suspends his negative ads (but not his campaigning) while Trump spots toute his “boundless optimism and certainty.” 

   Hospitalizations spike after two months of decline.  CDC recommends colleges test all incoming students.  “It’s mysterious,” says TV Dr. Jen about the plague, “it’s insidious and it comes in waves.” 

 

"Truly blooming health (hygeia) does not rest content within its due bounds; for disease (nosos) ever presses close against it, its neighbor with a common wall.  So human fortune, when holding onward in straight course strikes upon a hidden reef."

   - Aeschylus, Agamemnon 1001 ff (trans. Weir Smyth) (Greek tragedy C5th B.C.

 

  Saturday, October 3, 2020

 

       Infected: 7.334,054

               Dead: 209,162

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sunday, October 4, 2020

 

     Infected: 7,383,244

          Dead:    209,709

Hope Hicks gets it.  Doctors put President Trump on Remdesivir, say he’ll be tired for weeks, and it will be bad for his campaign.  Senators protest McConnell’s fast-tracking... “Covid is swirling through the Senate, yet they expect Senators to sit next to each other in committees.”

   Politicians and celebrities not fighting plague are writing books… John Dickerson’s “The Hardest Job in the World”, Lynne Cheney’s “Virginia Dynasty”, Corey Lewandowski’s “Trump – America First!”.

 

“In the epic poem Paradise Lost (by John Milton), the character of Satan displays hubris when he attempts to rebel against God’s rule in heaven, and when he eventually declares that it’s “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.”

   ”In the novel Frankenstein (by Mary Shelley), scientist Victor Frankenstein displays hubris when creating life in the form of his monster.”

 

   - Effectiviology

 

Trump’s doctors… led by Sean Conley (not Connery)… say he’s improving but not yet “out of the woods”.  (Most journalists, politicos and many Amercans no longer trust the doctors.)  Plague causes busy hospitals to defer other necessities like cancer screening.  TV’s Dr. Ashton among those calling Barrett’s nomination party a “super spreader”.   Other docs confident there will be a vaccine… but not until 2021, around the same time that Trump’s experimental antibody cocktail will be made available to the masses.  NYC to shut down schools as the plague attacks party-boy and girl students.

  The polls are not rosy for the President.  72% of Americans say the bungled the plague response.  

 

"[Aeneas is guided by the Sibyl through the Underworld :] On they went dimly, beneath the lonely night amid the gloom, through the empty halls of Dis [Haides] and his phantom realm . . . Just before the entrance, even within the very jaws of Orcus [Haides], Luctus (Grief) [Penthos] and avenging Curae (Cares) have set their bed; there pale Morbi (Diseases) [Nosoi] dwell, sad Senectus (Old Age) [Geras], and Metus (Fear) [Deimos], and Fames (Hunger) [Limos], temptress to sin, and loathly Egestas (Want) [Aporia], shapes terrible to view; and Letum (Death) [Thanatos] and Labor (Toil) [Ponos]; next, Letum's (Death's) own brother Sopor (Sleep) [Hypnos], and Gaudia (the Soul's Guilty Joys), and, on the threshold opposite, the death-dealing Bellum (War) [Polemos], and the Eumenides' [the Furies'] iron cells, and maddening Discordia (Strife) [Eris], her snaky locks entwined with bloody ribbons. In the midst an elm, shadowy and vast, spreads her boughs and aged arms, the whome which, men say, false Somnia (Dreams) [Oneiroi] hold, clinging under every leaf."

  - From Virgil, Aeneid 6. 268 ff (trans. Fairclough) (Roman epic C1st B.C.) :

 

Monday, October 5, 2020

 

        Infected: 7,423,328

             Dead:    210,955

                Dow:    27,584.06

        

   

Caught in his spiderweb of lies, Dr. Conley admits that the President received oxygen on two occasions when his blood oxygen level dipped to 93 (94 is the measure of concern) and maybe into the 80s..  This as Trump toured the premises in a contagious drive-by rally; by the end of the day, Djonald Unmasked fled Reed for his own medical bubble in the White House and, striking a heroic profile, ripped the mask from his face, saying: “Don’t be afraid of COVID.”  Plenty of critics – degreed and not – castigated the Presidential hybris… ABC’s Dr. Ashish Jah said that Trump was self-medicating while Mr. Jonathan Karl opined that he wanted to project an image of strength “and being in the hospital is not strength.”  The WashPost speculated that steroid injections amidst aitchen sink of drugs” had made the President manic.

   Trump had his defenders, too.  Adviser Jason Miller denied that his love of mass, unmasked rallies was “cavalier”… Rudy G. said the President’s job was to keep America’s spirits up”.  Mitchy decrees that the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett will go forth, and damn any costs.  But another ally, Press Secretary Kayley McEneny gets it, as does, the Trump aide tasked with carrying the “nuclear football”, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wi) joins the ensickened two Barrett friendly inquisitors, and nine out of ten of the Joint Chiefs of Staff go into quarantine  The men in Hazmat suits start spraying the White House.

 

“Here is dilemma.  Whether I let them stay or drive them off, it is a hard course and will hurt.  Then, since the burden of the case is here and rests on me, I shall select judges (of Barrett), and swear them in, establish a court into all time to come.  (Or, Zeus willing, for half a century – DJI)

   “Litigants, call your witnesses!”

 

Athena in Aeschylus’ “The Eumenides

 

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

 

         Infected: 7,482,442

                 Dead: 210,667

                   Dow:  27,776.21

 

   

 

President Trump channels Paul McCartney when asked if the debates are back on, saying “Maybe I’m immune.”  Michelle O. releases a video denouncing Trump’s “negligence” on the Plague… (it’s not negligence, it’s perversity.)  When the CDC admits that droplets can remain airborne long after the plague leaves a room, critics ask: “For how long?”  The answer: hours.  A peanut in the Trump gallery says “I think we have to trust the President.   He doesn’t want Americans to die.”  (Just some of them.)

   And where’s that football?

 

"For ere this [the opening of Pandora's jar] the tribes of men lived on earth remote and free from ills (kakoi) and hard toil (ponoi) and heavy sickness (nosoi) which bring the Keres (Fates) upon men; for in misery men grow old quickly. But the woman took off the great lid of the jar (pithos) with her hands and scattered all these and her thought caused sorrow and mischief to men. Only Elpis (Hope) remained there in an unbreakable home within under the rim of the great jar, and did not fly out at the door; for ere that, the lid of the jar stopped her, by the will of Aigis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. But the rest, countless plagues (lugra), wander amongst men; for earth is full of evils and the sea is full. Of themselves diseases (nosoi) come upon men continually by day and by night, bringing mischief to mortals silently; for wise Zeus took away speech from them. So is there no way to escape the will of Zeus."

Hesiod, “Works and Days” 90 ff (trans. Evelyn-White) (Greek epic C8th or C7th B.C.)

 

And now?

Even before President Trump returned from Walter Reed, tore off his mask and denounced the Coronavirus cowards of America, telling them that their fear was unfounded, critics were already tut-tutting at the Presidential hybris when so many were dead, or suffering, and so many survivors and family members were grieving.  (See Attachment Ten, A and B)  The President, scolded the lying New York Times, was an “immoralist”… a villain of such villainy that the debates should even be cancelled.  (Attachment Ten, C and D)

Actually, a new round of unemployment stats are out and, while those who lost their jobs to the plague and can’t find others might disagree, the Don took a healthy jump while the Dow bounced here and there, depending on the Presidents health (could there be contrarians hoping for a relapse?)…

But not, it would seem, suffice to carry the day for Djonald Unhoused.  Most polls had him trailing by ten points, more or less, including deficits in the key swing states.   (See Attachment Eleven) 

On to Utah then, and… tonight… it’s Pence-Harris.

 

THE DON JONES INDEX

 

CHART of CATEGORIES w/VALUE ADDED to EQUAL BASELINE of 15,000

(REFLECTING… approximately… DOW JONES INDEX of June 27, 2013)

See a further explanation of categories here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                            ECONOMIC INDICES (60%)

 

DON JONES’ PERSONAL ECONOMIC INDEX (45% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS)

 

 

CATEGORY

VALUE

BASE

 

RESULTS

 

SCORE

SCORE

      OUR SOURCE(S) and COMMENT

  INCOME

(24%)

6/27/13

LAST

CHANGE

NEXT

9/30/20

 9/30/20

                             SOURCE

 

 

 

 

Wages (hourly, per capita)

9%

1350 pts.

9/9/20

- 0.02%

10/14/20

1,406.59

1,406.48

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/wages   24.79

 

Median Income (yearly)

4%

600

9/30/20

+0.04%

10/14/20

649.45

649.70

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    34,444

 

Unempl. (BLS – in millions

4%

600

9/9/20

 -6.33%

10/14/20

253.87

253.87

http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000   7.9%

 

Official (DC – in millions)

2%

300

9/30/20

 -5.90%

10/14/20

291.85

309.06

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    12,567

 

Total. (DC – in millions)

2%

300

9/30/20

 -14.37%

10/14/20

252.48

288.76

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    19,781

 

Workforce Participation

Number (in millions)

Percentage (DC)

2%

300

9/30/20

 

+0.069%

+0.020%

10/14/20

314.88

314.82

In 147,591 Out 100,636 Total: 244,227

http://www.usdebtclock.org/  60.43

 

WP Percentage (ycharts)*

1%

150

9/30/20

 -0.49%

10/14/20

151.71

151.71

http://ycharts.com/indicators/labor_force_participation_rate  61.40

 

 

   OUTGO

(15%)

 

 

 

Total Inflation

7%

1050

9/30/20

+0.4%

10/14/20

1027.97

1027.97

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.4  

 

Food

2%

300

9/30/20

+0.1%

10/14/20

284.41

284.41

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.1

 

Gasoline

2%

300

9/30/20

+2.0%

10/14/20

371.84

371.84

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +2.0

 

Medical Costs

2%

300

9/30/20

+0.1%

10/14/20

289.08

289.08

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.1

 

Shelter

2%

300

9/30/20

+0.1%

10/14/20

295.81

295.81

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.nr0.htm     +0.1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   WEALTH

(6%)

 

 

Dow Jones Index

2%

300

9/30/20

+ 1.17%

10/14/20

295.59

299.03

https://quotes.wsj.com/index/DJIA  27,776.26

 

Sales (homes)

Valuation (homes)

1%

1%

150

150

9/9/20

+ 2.39%

+ 2.14%

10/14/20

   168.21                

168.60                

   168.21                

168.60                 

http://www.realtor.org/research-and-statistics

     Sales (M):  6.00 Valuations (K):  310.6

 

Debt (Personal)

2%

300

9/30/20

  -0.08%

10/14/20

286.18

285.95

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    62,895

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

             AMERICAN ECONOMIC INDEX (15% of TOTAL INDEX POINTS)

 

 

 

   NATIONAL

(10%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Revenues (in trillions)

2%

300

9/30/20

- 0.23%

10/14/20

261.69

261.09

debtclock.org/       3,061

 

Expenditures (in tr.)

2%

300

9/30/20

+0.10%

10/14/20

238.07

237.84

debtclock.org/       6,217

 

National Debt (tr.)

3%

450

9/30/20

+0.71%

10/14/20

346.01

343.54

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    27,022

 

Aggregate Debt (tr.)

3%

450

9/30/20

+0.15%

10/14/20

404.73

404.13

http://www.usdebtclock.org/    82,312

 

 

  GLOBAL

(5%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Foreign Debt (tr.)

2%

300

9/30/20

+0.42%

10/14/20

 289.61               

 290.83               

 http://www.usdebtclock.org/   7,145 115

 

Exports (in billions – bl.)

1%

150

9/9/20

+2.26%

10/14/20

141.53              

144.73             

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/  168.1  171.9

 

Imports (bl.)

1%

150

9/9/20

  - 3.05%

10/14/20

147.19               

142.70               

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/  231.7 239.0

 

Trade Deficit (bl.)

1%

150

9/9/20

  - 5.23%

10/14/20

105.03               

  99.95               

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/Press-Release/  63.6 67.1

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SOCIAL INDICES (40%)

 

ACTS of MAN

(12%)

 

 

 

  World Peace

3%

450

9/30/20

   nc

10/14/20

419.78

419.78

Syria joins Azeris in its war on Armenia.  Kyrgyzstan follows Belarus down the path of crooked elections and public riots.  Egyptian graverobbers in the Sucker necropolis exhume dozens of 2,500 year old coffins (of soldiers?).  Eurosurge brings closures back to France and U.K., killer floods strike French Riviera.

 

Terrorism

2%

300

9/30/20

=0.1%

10/14/20

273.64

273.37

FBI said to be holding secret practices for election day violence as Proud Sorts say they will “monitor” polling places.  SUV runs down protesters on NYC’s 5th Avenue.

 

 

Politics

3%

450

9/30/20

+0.1%

10/14/20

464.88         

465.34         

Red states defy Federal census extension.  House passes doomed 2.2T stimulus; Senate raises offer from .6 to 1.6 but talks still stall until Trump says they’ll not resume “Until I win”.   Joe trots out his Biden Plan – giveaways to every pressure group under the sun.  150K bar and restaurant jobs lost in NYC.  With Senators dropping like flies, Mitchy insists Barrett’s confirmation will go on, but closes Senate until Barrett hearings begin Oct. 12th,  ABC pre-tax, pre-debate poll that put Trump down by 8 points last week has him down 14 now.  Ex-Mayor Pete Buttigieg enters the book club with “Trust”.

 

Economics

3%

450

9/30/20

-0.2%

10/14/20

397.84        

397.05        

Stocks fall sharply on Trump plague news, bounce back as the drugs kick in.  Coors and Coca Cola to team up for a hard seltzer. 50K airline workers furloughed due to failure of stimulus,… Boeing to move to South Carolina.   Shell cuts 9,000 jobs.  Regal to close 500 cinemas.

 

 

Crime

1%

150

9/30/20

-0.2%

10/14/20

270.78

270.24

L.A. cop shooter arrested, but two more in Arkansas gunned down while 7 are shot at Milwaukee funeral home.   Police kill unarmed black man in Wolf Lake, TX while the state’s AG Paxton accused of corruption and bribetaking.  Libertarian killer nerd John McAfee and NRA’s Wayne LaPierre get trumped (busted by the IRS). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ACTS of GOD

(6%)

(with, in some cases, a little… or lots of… help from men, and a few women)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Environment/Weather

3%

450

9/30/20

   -0.5%

10/14/20

441.39

439.17

Triple digit temperatures in LA spur wildfires.  Experts say climate change will kill off 40$ of world plant life.  Gamma soaks Cancun, Delta… close behind, seems to be folling the spoor of Laura into Louisiana.

 

 

Natural/Unnatural Disaster

3%

450

9/30/20

   -0.3%

10/14/20

424.92

422.80

120,000 bottles of wine destroyed in Napa fires as burnt acreage tops 3M.   Two selfie seeking students at Temple U, (Phila) fall off roof.  Murder hornets swarm in Washington state.   Home explodes in Iowa – gas suspected.   Good kid: 5 yr. old uses Alexa to save Mom.  Bad kid: 2 year old shoots relatives in Pa.

 

 

 

LIFESTYLE/JUSTICE INDEX  

(15%)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Science, Tech, Education

4%

600

9/30/20

+0.2%

10/14/20

629.18

630.44

NY Gov. Cuomo threatens that, if schools become unsafe, he’ll close them.  Space Force rolls out 23M titanium toilet.  Astronomers find 24 planets outside our solar system where living conditions are better than on Earth.

 

Equality (econ./social)

4%

600

9/30/20

  -0.2%

10/14/20

579.19

578.03

L.A. deputies shoot black man sixteen times.  KC cops choke pregnant black woman at balloon memorial protest for murdered children.  First black woman becomes Louisville police chief – her AG Daniel Cameron aays that BLM is “cherry picking” facts to fit their agenda.

 

Health

                    

          Plague

4%

600

9/30/20

 -0.1%

 

   nc

10/14/20

503.31

 

 

 - 499.50

502.81

 

 

 - 499.50

WalMart veggies get a plague of their own (listeria). 

 

 

AIRBNB bans Halloween rentals, masked or not.

 

 

Freedom and Justice

3%

450

9/30/20

+0.1%

10/14/20

  442.91

  443.05

Heiress gets 7 years in Nxium sex cult case.  New Harvey Weinstein charges in L.A. mean he faces 140 years to life.

 

 

MISCELLANEOUS and TRANSIENT INDEX        (7%)

 

 

 

 

 

Cultural incidents

3%

450

9/30/20

   nc

10/14/20

477.79

477.79

Lateniter Colbert cites massive spike in Google searches for “schadenfreude” (to go along with “Move to Canada”).  SNL returns with Alec Baldwin playing Trump, Jim Carrey the designated Biden and Maya Rudolph as Harris… there’s also a tribute to RBG.  Mystery man punches actor Rick Moranis in New York, in the face.  RIP St. Louis pitcher Bob Gibson and rocker Eddie Van Halen

 

 

Miscellaneous incidents

4%

450

9/30/20

 +0.1%

10/14/20

463.69             

464.15             

Nordstrom’s stops selling fur and leather under animal righter pressure. CV blamed for appliance shortage.  Jimmy Carter, now our oldest ever President, turns 96.  Japan builds 59 foot 25 ton Gundum robot for theme park.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Don Jones Index for the week of September 30th through October 6th, 2020 was UP 39.37 points.

 

The Don Jones Index is sponsored by the Coalition for a New Consensus: retired Congressman and Independent Presidential candidate Jack “Catfish” Parnell, Chairman; Brian Doohan, Administrator/Editor.  The CNC denies, emphatically, allegations that the organization, as well as any of its officers (including former Congressman Parnell, environmentalist/America-Firster Austin Tillerman and cosmetics CEO Rayna Finch) and references to Parnell’s works, “Entropy and Renaissance” and “The Coming Kill-Off” are fictitious or, at best, mere pawns in the web-serial “Black Helicopters” – and promise swift, effective legal action against parties promulgating this and/or other such slanders.

Comments, complaints, donations (especially SUPERPAC donations) always welcome at feedme@generisis.com or: speak@donjonesindex.com

 

 

 

 

 

BACK

See further indicators at The Economist – HERE!

 

 

ATTACHMENT ONEfrom CBS News

 

(All debates subject to Trump’s plague, Biden’s health and America’s moral and medical panic.)

Vice presidential debate: October 7 

The sole vice presidential debate will take place on Wednesday, October 7, between Democratic Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence.

Location: The University of Utah, Salt Lake City

Moderator: Susan Page of USA Today  

Format: Also 90 minutes in length, Harris and Pence will tackle nine segments of approximately 10 minutes each. "The moderator will ask an opening question, after which each candidate will have two minutes to respond," according to CPD. "The moderator will use the balance of the time in the segment for a deeper discussion of the topic."

Harris' long career as a prosecutor has brought her criticism, but also prepared her well for the debate stage. She made headlines during the Democratic presidential debates for giving as good as she got, even blasting the man who is now at the top of the ticket, Joe Biden.

Vice President Pence said on Fox News' "Hannity" in August that he was excited about debating Harris. "I think she is a skilled debater, but I can't wait to get to Salt Lake City and be on the stage — whether to compare Joe Biden's nearly 50 years in public life, the agenda of the radical left, the agenda that she's embraced throughout her political career — with the results of this president and this administration," Pence told host Sean Hannity.

Second presidential debate: October 15

The second presidential debate will take place a week later on Thursday October 15. 

Location: Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami

Moderator: Steve Scully of C-SPAN 

Format: This debate will be a town-hall style event.

"The second presidential debate will take the form of a town meeting, in which the questions will be posed by citizens from the South Florida area," according to CPD. "The candidates will have two minutes to respond to each question and there will be an additional minute for the moderator to facilitate further discussion. The town meeting participants will be uncommitted voters selected under the supervision of Dr. Frank Newport, Senior Scientist, Gallup."

Third presidential debate: October 22

The third and final debate will take place on October 22, less than two weeks before Election Day

Location: Belmont University, Nashville

Moderator: Kristen Welker, the debate series' only woman journalist, is a White House Correspondent for NBC News, as well as co-anchor of "Weekend TODAY."

Format: The format will be identical to the first presidential debate

"As always, the moderators alone will select the questions to be asked, which are not known to the CPD or to the candidates," according to CPD. "The moderators will have the ability both to extend the segments and to ensure that the candidates have equal speaking time. While the focus will properly be on the candidates, the moderator will regulate the conversation so that thoughtful and substantive exchanges occur."

 

 

 

ATTACHMENT TWO – from the New York Times

 

Biden and Trump’s First Debate: Best and Worst Moments

How Round 1 looked to Times Opinion writers.

·         Sept. 30, 2020

 

 

Biden’s campaign won.

— Jamelle Bouie

That kind of belligerence takes energy.

— Elizabeth Bruenig

Trump’s strategy is “Just win, baby.”

— Chris Buskirk

A debacle of a debate.

— Linda Chavez

Biden handled the yelling-over-everything craziness.

— Gail Collins

It was a freak show.

— Michelle Cottle

Jerkish interruptions won't help Trump.

— Ross Douthat

A shouty disaster.

— Michelle Goldberg

One word: Covid

— Matt Labash

Who won? Nonviewers.

— Liz Mair

Trump overplayed his hand.

— Dan McCarthy

Trump beclowned himself.

— Bret Stephens

Loved Biden's “Keep yapping, man.”

— Hector Tobar

We all lost.

— Charlie Warzel

A bonfire of hate and grievance.

— Peter Wehner

Trump’s indecency projected contempt for voters.

— Will Wilkinson

 

In this special feature, Times Opinion writers pick the winner and then rank the victory on a scale of 1 to 10: 1 means it was a very narrow win; 10 means it was a blowout. Here’s what our columnists and contributors thought of the debate.

Who won and why.

Jamelle Bouie I’m not going to say Joe Biden won, because he was far from as good as he should have been. But his campaign won, because the only thing anyone will talk about from this debate is the unhinged president who refused to condemn white supremacists before endorsing a right-wing street gang and attacking the integrity of the election.

Elizabeth Bruenig Joe Biden. Trump is excellent at dominating a conversation and has a gift for wry insults Biden can’t match. But that kind of belligerence takes energy, and these are two old men; by mid-debate, Trump seemed to wane, his answers weakening, response time lengthening. Biden, on the other hand, steadily cultivated his two points: That he has no patience for the red specter of leftism that Bernie Sanders dared cast over the primaries, and that he believes in American unity.

Christopher Buskirk Donald Trump. In 1984, Reagan looked tired during his first debate with Walter Mondale, and many people thought he was showing his age. Not Donald Trump. He was on the front foot from the outset and though he never landed a knockout, it was also never close. People will say there was a lack of substance and a lack of dignity and they’ll mostly be right. But after five years of watching Donald Trump, Joe Biden and his team don’t understand that Trump’s strategy is “Just win, baby.” So he dominated Biden, pre-empting him, taking his time, rebutting him on the fly and changing the subject. Trump looked vigorous and energetic and that’s enough to win.

Linda Chavez A draw — Trump was indecent, vindictive and threw red meat to his base. While he may have commanded the stage, he had no substantive answers on anything from Covid to climate change.

Gail Collins Joe Biden. He handled Trump’s yelling-over-everything craziness as well as possible, by just looking at the camera and talking directly to the audience. Also, Biden smiling and shaking his head at the president’s ranting was a welcome break. You could envision millions of viewers nodding in response.

Michelle Cottle Joe Biden. The entire event was a freak show. But Biden held his own against Trump, and that was what he needed to do. Also, Biden clearly realizes the only appropriate way to respond to the president’s chronic lying and childish insults: Taking them seriously would only legitimize them, whereas laughing, smiling and shaking his head in dismay makes Trump seem like a naughty toddler.

Ross Douthat Joe Biden won, because Trump’s strategy was to hector and exhaust him in the hopes of generating a moment of egregious senility, and no such moment arrived. There were plenty of moments when Trump was more effective than Biden, some exchanges he won on points, certainly some moments when he seemed more rhetorically with-it — but the flood of jerkish interruptions is all anyone will remember, and that’s unlikely to help an incumbent disliked by the majority of the country and losing by eight points.

Michelle Goldberg Joe Biden. The debate was a shouty disaster. Chris Wallace was utterly disgraceful as a moderator, constantly letting Trump interrupt Biden and allowing him to spout gross and anti-democratic lies about the legitimacy of the election. Biden got tongue tied and let himself be put on the defensive a few times, especially about riots in Portland, Ore., and his son Hunter. He missed several opportunities to bring up the generals who have spoken out against Trump. But I can’t imagine that anyone not already supporting Trump could be won over by his sneering insults, unhinged ranting and conspiratorial non-sequiturs. Ultimately, talking about this in terms of who “won” seems like a category error. Trump used his massive platform to urge his supporters to intimidate people at the polls. Biden was occasionally ineffectual. One was a bullying fascist, the other an avatar, however imperfect, of civic responsibility. There should be no false equivalency here.

Matt Labash Joe Biden. He did a really lousy impression tonight of a senile person. Which, considering Trump’s multi-month campaign to deem him as such, means he passed the dribble test with flying colors. (As in, he didn’t dribble down his shirt.) But beyond that, Biden appeared more presidential, which is a problem for Trump, considering he’s already president. Trump couldn’t even manage to act like the thing that he already is.

Liz Mair Joe Biden. But who really won? Everyone who didn’t watch. Biden will probably be shown to be the winner in post-debate polling, but as awful as Trump was, for my money, he prevented Biden from landing enough punches and looking as tough and capable as Biden should have and could have.

Daniel McCarthy Joe Biden. President Trump has succeeded by demolishing the artificiality of American politics and occupying far more space in his opponents’ minds, as well as his supporters’, than his rivals do. But he overplayed his hand in this debate, with rougher shock tactics than voters might tolerate. Biden was not persuasive on his own, but this was one night when being plain vanilla was probably enough.

Bret Stephens Joe Biden, because when he got to speak, he did so directly to the American people.

Héctor Tobar Joe Biden won mostly because the president was so, so awful. And because Biden managed to express a few moments of genuine humanity and keep his cool during the waterfall of Trumpian insults. But Biden wasn’t very sharp either; Chris Wallace offered as many effective retorts to the president’s excesses as Biden did.

Charlie Warzel Nobody really won tonight. We all lost. If letting men in their 70s talk over each other is the best way to decide presidential politics, then there’s no good reason to do two more. Ultimately though, Donald Trump’s job was to try to claw back voters who don’t fall squarely within his base. His performance offered nothing to voters who don’t already worship him. No minds changed tonight. So Joe Biden wins by default.

Peter Wehner Joe Biden won because he’s leading in the race and acquitted himself pretty well despite debating a man who is unstable, enraged, highly agitated and vicious: a bonfire of hate and grievance. Biden is normal and decent; Trump is deeply abnormal and indecent.

Will Wilkinson Donald Trump delivered a most grotesque, mendacious, disrespectful and outright disgusting debate performance. Trump’s flagrant indecency, intended to project strength, projected only contempt for America’s voters and democratic traditions. Joe Biden’s forbearance, patience, seriousness and coherence (when he was allowed to speak) shone like a lighthouse showing the way to safe harbor through a raging, chaotic storm.

Most pivotal moment

Jamelle Bouie If there was a pivotal moment for Biden, it came whenever he turned his attention to the pandemic. It’s the most important issue in the election, and Biden monopolized it.

Elizabeth Bruenig Biden’s musing in exasperation that Trump talks only about himself and his achievements, never about their impact on the American people. Whether said people are still entertained by the Trump Show will determine the election.

Christopher Buskirk Biden delivered a rehearsed, set-piece attack that was supposed to hit Trump on the accusation that he disrespects the military in private and then use Beau Biden as a means of making the issue personal. But Trump just sidestepped what was supposed to be a knockout blow and pivoted to accusations about money he claimed Hunter Biden had received from Eastern European connections while his father was vice president.

Linda Chavez Biden was at his best when he looked into the camera and implored people to vote.

Gail Collins For Trump, it was sort of amazing to hear him explain that global warming is because of bad forest management. For Biden, his final “vote, vote” speech was clear and made Trump’s blather about mail fraud look truly pathetic.

Michelle Cottle The president calling for the Proud Boys to “stand by” is unlikely to impress all those suburban women already worried that the president is playing footsie with white supremacists.

Ross Douthat The worst moment for Trump was his endless ramble at the end about voter fraud, following one of Biden’s better, simpler answers, his exhortation to go vote. There are times when Trump’s political abnormality plays to his advantage, but his inability to project even a facade of respect-the-process normalcy in a country desperate for a return to normal is worse than a crime; it’s a mistake.

Michelle Goldberg Trump, called on to disavow white supremacy, couldn’t do it. He told the far-right gang the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,” which they’ve now adopted as a rallying cry.

Matt Labash One word: Covid. On that subject, Biden spanked Trump, and sent him to bed without his Quarter-Pounder dinner. He attacked Trump on deaths (over 200,000). He attacked Trump on masks. (Trump, who clearly hates masks, conveniently pulled one from his pocket, turning himself into some bad Carrot Top-style prop comedian.) Then Biden attacked Trump on attacking his own scientists, which Trump took the occasion to do yet again, because he can’t help himself. Trump not being able to help himself is exactly why Biden beat Trump tonight like the family mule.

Liz Mair Trump “condemning” right-wingers inciting violence by asking the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” He’s going to get attacked for that a lot, it will anger a lot of his own staff and advisers and independents view the law and order discussion far more the way Democrats do than Republicans.

Daniel McCarthy Trump chose to fight not only Biden but also the debate process and conventional politics itself. The cost of this, besides turning off wavering voters, is that it blotted out most of the substantial arguments that could be made for the president’s agenda.

Bret Stephens Biden’s deflecting Trump’s despicable dismissal of his late son Beau’s military service by telling Americans that the election was about their families, not Trump’s family or his own.

Héctor Tobar Just a few minutes into the debate, the president resorted to ad hominem attacks, with his “There’s nothing smart about you” being his worst moment. (Second worst: his unwillingness to condemn white supremacy.) Biden’s description of the racially integrated reality of the suburbs was his best moment.

Charlie Warzel There’s a cyberwarfare tactic called distributed denial-of-service attacks, which is when hackers overwhelm a website with more fake traffic than it can process and cause the website to crash. This was Trump’s tactic at the beginning of the debate. At first it looked like it would be effective and ultimately stymie Biden from getting even a few words in. But ultimately it served only to light a fire under Biden, who seemed subdued early on but was subsequently enlivened by Trump’s childish behavior.

Peter Wehner There was no pivotal moment. It was 90 minutes of watching the president of the United States show he is a sociopath. Most people have never fully internalized what it means to have a sociopath as president. They should have.

Will Wilkinson Trump was asked to condemn white supremacy and the Proud Boys, a violent, racist gang, and simply refused. Instead, he said, “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” suggesting, no doubt truthfully, that they await his orders and that he cannot afford to lose their support.

Something small but revealing …

Jamelle Bouie I don’t know if this counts as small, but again, when asked directly, Trump refused to condemn white supremacists. On one hand, it only confirmed what we all knew. On the other, it confirmed what we all knew!

Elizabeth Bruenig “This is not going to end well,” Trump said, near the end of the debate, a prophecy with the threat of fulfillment.

Christopher Buskirk Throughout the debate Biden looked to Chris Wallace for help, almost begging him to enforce the rules as Trump stepped on him. That’s an indication that he doesn’t know how to handle either Trump or an environment where the rules aren’t well known and strictly enforced by a third party. That’s a difference between a senator and a president.

Linda Chavez Tonight we watched Trump try to bully his way back to the Oval Office.

Gail Collins Trump made more faces than any debater I’ve seen since fifth grade.

Michelle Cottle Biden’s repeated pleas for people to vote sent an important signal. Trump, meanwhile, went alllllll the way down the rabbit hole, attacking the integrity of the election, peddling conspiracy theories about fraud and generally ranting and raving. “Bad things happen in Philadelphia!” What? This may resonate with the president’s base, but it made him look more than a little unbalanced.

Ross Douthat Trump’s very first answer, on the Supreme Court, was actually quite reasonable: cool, calm, mild, even vaguely presidential. Biden has a lot of liabilities; a debate in which Trump just maintained a level tone and played against type would have given the incumbent a lot of openings. But — as ever — Trump can only be himself.

Michelle Goldberg Biden had a few good lines. The best was when he said, echoing Trump’s dismissive words about Covid deaths, “It is what it is because you are who you are.”

Matt Labash There were a few dogs that didn’t bark in this debate. But chief among them was Trump failing to try to drug-test Biden on the spot for performance-enhancing drugs, which he’s suggested Biden is taking. This was a bit of a relief, and one of the few moments of dignity the night afforded. Rumor has it that Trump scotched the idea when he found out from his accountants that the urine-specimen cup was not tax deductible.

Liz Mair How bad was this debate? Dana Bash of CNN straight up called it a “shitshow“ live on CNN afterward.

Daniel McCarthy Not a small thing, but the lack of a live audience made the debate much worse. A normal live audience would have reacted to the bickering onstage, which would have drawn President Trump to address attendees, and perhaps do so with humor — which would have helped him.

Bret Stephens There was nothing small about the debate. Watching Trump was like being cornered by some oversize, overbearing drunk at a party who spills his beer on you while insisting that Lee Harvey Oswald is still alive. It was the single most despicable political performance by a sitting president in American history. Trump didn’t debate, because he doesn’t know how to debate: He interrupted, taunted, hectored, bragged and ultimately beclowned himself. The debate will be remembered for the contrast between this grotesque parody of a president and his dignified, well-comported, blessedly coherent challenger. Biden didn’t get to speak as much as he deserved, but when he did — most effectively by looking straight at the camera — he hit home.

Héctor Tobar Has Trump ever been this bullying in a debate? He seemed to insult with the desperation of a man who sees his political future coming to an end. Biden did best when he dealt with Trump’s excesses with humor. I loved his early retort, as Trump interrupted, “Keep yapping, man.”

Charlie Warzel Allowing Trump to undermine the electoral process on live television without adequate pushback on his claims was a dereliction of duty by Chris Wallace. If these debates are to continue, networks will need to find a way to fact check them or else they’re largely vectors for Trump’s disinformation. Also, the president, when asked to disavow white supremacists, told them to “stand by.” Trump suggested, vaguely, that “this is not going to end well.” At least we agree on that point.

Peter Wehner Maybe the lowest point in an unbelievable series of low points was when Biden spoke movingly of his late son Beau, in the context of his war service, and Trump attacked Biden’s son Hunter as a drug addict. Trump once again showed he’s a monstrous human being.

Will Wilkinson Trump more than once attempted to characterize Biden as some sort of socialist radical. In each case, Biden denied it and asserted his actual, moderate view. And then Trump would yell, “You just lost the left!” bizarrely undercutting his initial line of attack and underscoring the futile incoherence of his strategy of flailing bluster.

 

Jamelle Bouie, Gail Collins, Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and Bret Stephens are Times columnists.

Elizabeth Bruenig (@ebruenig) is a Times opinion writer.

Christopher Buskirk (@thechrisbuskirk) is the editor and publisher of the journal American Greatness and a contributing opinion writer.

Linda Chavez (@chavezlinda), a former Reagan White House director of public liaison, is a political commentator.

Michelle Cottle (@mcottle) is a member of the Times editorial board.

Matt Labash, a former national correspondent at The Weekly Standard, is the author of “Fly Fishing With Darth Vader.”

Liz Mair (@LizMair), a strategist for campaigns by Scott Walker, Roy Blunt, Rand Paul, Carly Fiorina and Rick Perry, is the founder and president of Mair Strategies.

Daniel McCarthy (@ToryAnarchist) is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Quarterly.

Héctor Tobar (@TobarWriter), an associate professor at the University of California, Irvine, is the author of “Deep Down Dark: The Untold Stories of 33 Men Buried in a Chilean Mine, and the Miracle That Set Them Free” and a contributing opinion writer.

Charlie Warzel, a New York Times Opinion writer at large, covers technology, media, politics and online extremism.

Peter Wehner (@Peter_Wehner), a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center who served in the previous three Republican administrations, is a contributing opinion writer and the author of “The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump.”

Will Wilkinson (@willwilkinson), the vice president for research at the Niskanen Center, is a contributing opinion writer.

 

 

ATTACHMENTS THREE (A) & (B) – from Vox

 

THE REVIEWS ARE IN: THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE WAS A DISASTER

“What a dark event we have just witnessed.”

By German Lopez Sep 30, 2020, 9:10am EDT

The reviews are in for the first presidential debate of the 2020 general election, and there seems to be a consensus: It was a complete disaster.

From ABC News to CNN to Fox News, TV hosts and other commentators agreed that the first debate devolved into an incoherent mess — largely because President Donald Trump wouldn’t allow former Vice President Joe Biden to speak, repeatedly flouting the rules on time limits by interrupting his Democratic opponent.

Immediately after the debate, ABC News host George Stephanopoulos called out what he described as the worst debate he had seen in his life.

“I have to speak personally here,” he said. “As somebody who’s watched presidential debates for 40 years, as somebody who’s moderated presidential debates, as somebody who’s prepared candidates for presidential debates, as somebody who’s covered presidential debates, that was the worst presidential debate I have ever seen in my life.”

CNN anchor Jake Tapper echoed the sentiment.

“That was a hot mess inside a dumpster fire inside a train wreck,” Tapper said. “That was the worst debate I have ever seen. In fact, it wasn’t even in a debate. It was a disgrace. And it’s primarily because of President Trump. … We’ll talk about who won the debate, who lost the debate, but I can tell you one thing for sure: The American people lost tonight, because that was horrific.”

CNN correspondent Dana Bash agreed with Tapper. “That was a shitshow,” she said. “We’re on cable, we can say that. Apologies for being maybe a little bit crude, but that was really the phrase that I’m getting from people on both sides of the aisle on text, and it’s the only phrase that I can think of to really describe it.”

On NBC News, Savannah Guthrie kicked off the discussion this way: “We need to just pause for a moment, and say, ‘That was crazy.’ What was that?”

“It was a train wreck,” NBC News anchor Chuck Todd responded. “But it was a train wreck of the making of one person. I mean, we know who did it. President Trump did this.”

MSNBC anchor Brian Williams agreed: “What a dark event we have just witnessed.”

CBS News political analyst John Dickerson said, “When the stakes were that high, the debate couldn’t have been lower. It was not an equal opportunity experience. The president of the United States … was by far responsible for a greater share of the jaggedness at a time when America does not need jagged.”

Even Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, a consistent ally of the president, conceded the debate didn’t go how a lot of people would have liked, although he spun his criticism so as not to solely impugn Trump: “I grew up. I played hockey. We dropped the gloves every day. Some people probably think it’s too hot, but it was both sides.”

Later, on Fox & Friends First in the morning, political analyst Ron Meyer echoed the sentiment that emerged elsewhere: “Honestly, there wasn’t much great about this debate. In my opinion, it could be one of the worst debates in televised American history.”

Flipping through news channels last night and this morning, it’s the overwhelming takeaway from the debate: Regardless of which candidate you prefer, it was a debacle.

 

AND…

 

THE PROUD BOYS, EXPLAINED

The far-right street fighting group has embraced violence — and Donald Trump.

  Updated Oct 1, 2020, 10:12am EDT

During Tuesday night’s debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Trump was asked by moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News whether he would be “willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and say they need to stand down and not to add to the violence” taking place in cities like Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Trump asked whom he should condemn; Biden suggested the Proud Boys, a far-right street fighting organization that has gained a following both online and in major cities across the country.

“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said. “But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing [problem].”

On Wednesday, Trump said he meant the group should “stand down” and let law enforcement do their jobs, then denied knowing who they were at all. But, as Vox’s Fabiola Cineas detailed Tuesday night, the Proud Boys took this moment as a sign of Trump’s support for their group, even producing merchandise bearing the phrase “stand back and stand by”:

One Proud Boys leader, Joe Biggs, wrote on the social media platform Parler, “Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy,” according to the Daily Beast. Proud Boys national chair Enrique Tarrio, who organized the recent Portland event, wrote “I will stand down sir!!! Standing by sir. So Proud of my guys right now.”

So who are the Proud Boys? Created by Gavin McInnes, a “provocateur” and one of the original co-founders of Vice Media, who has described himself as “an old punk from Canada and turned right in 2008 (the same year he left Vice over “creative differences”), the Proud Boys are a strange amalgamation of a men’s rights organization, a fight club, and what some may see as a hate group — one that loves Donald Trump, hates Muslims (and Jews and trans people), but permits nonwhite membership. They’ve provided “security” for former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who allegedly joined the group.

The group has a magazine where members who win fights are celebrated with the slogan “They fucked around. They found out.” And in the age of concerns about “civility” and growing worries about political violence, the Proud Boys — and McInnes, who believes violence is “a really effective way to solve problems” — are more interested in fighting antifa.

As Jared Holt at Right Wing Watch told me back in 2018, “The Proud Boys have been the right wing’s enforcers in the streets against those who dissent against them.” And in 2020, not much has changed.

In 1994, McInnes, alongside Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi, launched Voice of Montreal, which later became Vice Media. McInnes was already the voice of a particular strain of right-wingerdom within the company, telling the New York Times, “I love being white and I think it’s something to be very proud of.”

In what would become a standard McInnes move, he later attempted to couch his remarks as ironic humor in a letter to Gawker, telling the website that his words were a joke and adding, “It’s unfortunate that people in the know like Gawker are taking it all so seriously. I thought we were on the same page: baby boomer media like The Times is a laughingstock and we should do whatever we can to ridicule it.”

McInnes left Vice Media in 2008. He then moved to what he calls the “New Right,” which he seemed to define as a combination of “Western chauvinism” and social and political libertarianism or perhaps libertinism (for example, he has written extensively on how women want to be “downright abused” and that he had to stop “playing nice” and begin “totally defiling the women I slept with” to get more women to have sex with him).

His shift to the far right also included espousing anti-Muslim sentiments (“the Muslim world is filled with shoeless, toothless, inbred, hill-dwelling, rifle-toting, sodomy-prone men”) and an embrace of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel sentiments, including a video he made for the far-right Canadian outlet Rebel Media initially called “10 Things I Hate about Jews” (or as he would later tweet, “10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING JEWS!”). He’s also argued that historically, perhaps Jews “were ostracized for a good reason.”

These videos, and some of his others, earned him a host of new fans, including David Duke. And though McInnes has attempted to push aside accusations of racism (which he argues doesn’t exist), he has written for both VDare and American Renaissance, the latter the publication of the “race-realist, white advocacy organization” New Century Foundation.

Much of McInnes’s work, and that of a large swath of what he would call the New Right, is focused on what he views as the “feminization” of culture and politics, from commercials or “cuckmercials” that show “emasculated men” (or too many interracial couples) to politics. In an interview last year with Metro, he said, “There is a real war on masculinity.”

And it’s that search for the renewal of a very specific kind of masculinity — and McInnes’s belief that Western culture is in trouble because of “social justice warriors” and the mainstream media “belittling” white men — that resulted in the Proud Boys.

“Proud of Your Boy”

The Proud Boys were officially launched in September 2016, on the website of Taki’s Magazine, a far-right publication for which white nationalist Richard Spencer once served as executive editor.

It started out as a joke, using the song “Proud of Your Boy” from Disney’s Aladdin musical as the basis for the name of the group and the hashtag #POYB, which appears alongside Proud Boys content on Twitter. Women are not permitted to be Proud Boys, as McInnes explained:

The basic tenet of the group is that they are “Western chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” Like Archie Bunker, they long for the days when “girls were girls and men were men.” This wasn’t controversial even twenty years ago, but being proud of Western culture today is like being a crippled, black, lesbian communist in 1953.

According to the Proud Boys, “We do not discriminate based upon race or sexual orientation/preference. We are not an ‘ism,’ ‘ist,’ or ‘phobic’ that fits the Left’s narrative.”

However, McInnes himself decided he no longer supported marriage equality because he believed it’s part of a secret plan to destroy Christianity, and Facebook pages for Proud Boy chapters in Florida feature Holocaust denial (like a meme implying the number of those who died during the Holocaust was simply invented) and virulently racist rhetoric.

There are four levels of Proud Boy membership. First is to declare yourself to be a Proud Boy (“This means you make your Western chauvinism public and you don’t care who knows it.”) The second level is the swearing-off of masturbation (known online as “nofap” or #NoWanks) combined with a “cereal beat-in” — if you want into the group, you have to get beaten up while successfully reciting the names of five breakfast cereals, because “defending the West against the people who want to shut it down is like remembering cereals as you’re being bombarded with ten fists.”

(As the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer wrote in February 2017, the Proud Boys’ rules are a “mindbender.” But this is real.) The third level is to get a specific Proud Boys tattoo.

But it’s the fourth and newest level that is getting the most attention in the wake of Friday’s events: get into a physical altercation for the “cause.” “You get beat up, kick the crap out of an antifa,” McInnes explained in 2017. He added, “People say if someone’s fighting, go get a teacher. No, if someone’s f---ing up your sister, put them in the hospital.”

It’s that violence that the Proud Boys have become best known for, with the group even boasting of a “tactical defensive arm” known as the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (or “FOAK”) reportedly with McInnes’s backing. McInnes made a video praising the use of violence this June, saying, “What’s the matter with fighting? Fighting solves everything. The war on fighting is the same as the war on masculinity.”

In parades and rallies across the country, from Berkeley, California, to New York City, members of the Proud Boys have fought with counterprotesters, antifa, and anyone who gets in their way. Jared Holt, of Right Wing Watch, told me that the group “acts as a violent pack of enforcers for the far right.”

And at events for conservative commentator Ann Coulter and right-leaning speaker Milo Yiannopoulos, members of the Proud Boys have even attempted to act as “security,” but those efforts have descended into chaotic violence (although they spun it as a victory):

For his part, McInnes believes the violence of the Proud Boys (in his view, a response to left-leaning violence) is a logical response to how the “left” has responded to right-wing speaking events, writing in June 2017:

The right isn’t violent. The left is. By allowing these sociopaths to shut down free speech with violence you are all but demanding a war. Okay, fine, you got it. It’s official. This is a war.

But McInnes left the Proud Boys in 2018 after the group was involved in a violent clash with anarchists on the streets of Manhattan, following an event in which McInnes portrayed Otoya Yamaguchi, a young far-right extremist who assassinated the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party. McInnes even had a fake katana (a type of Japanese sword), which he was filmed swinging at counterprotesters. Ten members of the group were eventually charged following the violent melee, with two ultimately sentenced to serve four-year terms in prison in October 2019.

In a since-deleted video, McInnes said, “I am officially disassociating myself from the Proud Boys. In all capacities, forever, I quit,” adding, “I’m told by my legal team and law enforcement that this gesture could help alleviate their sentencing,” referring to the Proud Boys who were facing legal problems.

 

 

 

The group also faced allegations that the FBI had classified the organization as “an extremist group with ties to white nationalism,” but in a statement to me made on background by a law enforcement official, I was told that “the FBI doesn’t designate groups.”

The Proud Boys’ embrace of violence — and Trump

While McInnes no longer technically leads the group, his inspiration remains visible, particularly in the violence embraced by the organization. At rallies in Portland and Seattle, the group — alongside right-wing militia organizations like Patriot Prayer — have taken part in events that have frequently turned violent.

Like Patriot Prayer, another multiracial far-right group that has embraced street fighting as a political tactic, the Proud Boys often rely on the actions of their opposition to draw attention to themselves and their cause. In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting in November 2019, Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said the Proud Boys hold events purely to attract counterprotesters, with the understanding that provoking any counterprotesters can feed a “victimization narrative.” “So when antifa throw stuff at them ... Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are able to say, ‘See, they are trying to silence us and stop our freedom of speech,’” he said.

The group has also effectively parlayed its anti-liberalism into MAGA-centric politics, intersecting with right-leaning politicians like Rep. Matt Gaetz. And Trump’s mention of the group and the resulting media attention might provide the group with its largest narrative boost of all. Enrique Tarrio, who serves as chair of the Proud Boys, shared in a since-deleted tweet that he was “extremely PROUD” of Trump, and that “stand back and stand by” is what the Proud Boys have “ALWAYS” done.

Tarriowho briefly ran for Congress against Rep. Donna Shalala earlier this year, attended the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (but allegedly left before the murder of Heather Heyer). He got involved with the Proud Boys after volunteering at an event for the far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017, and became a fourth-degree Proud Boy after punching a purported member of antifa in the face in June 2018.

He is also the Florida state director for a “Latinos for Trump” organization. In an email on Thursday, the Trump campaign told me that Tarrio and his “Latinos for Trump” group is not associated with the campaign or the family. The campaign also provided cease and desist orders sent to the group in 2019 demanding the group “immediately cease and desist all activities suggesting that it is affiliated, authorized, endorsed, and/or sponsored by the Campaign.”

 

Him telling the ProudBoys to stand back and standby is what we have ALWAYS done.


I’m am extremely PROUD of my President’s performance tonight.

 

ATTACHMENT FOUR – from Huffington Post

 

GOP POLLSTER ASKS FOR 1-WORD REVIEWS OF TRUMP’S DEBATING. THE ANSWERS ARE WILD.

 

A Republican pollster asked a focus group of undecided voters to weigh in on the two presidential candidates after their first debate Tuesday. Many said they were still unsure who they would vote for, but there was one general consensus: President Donald Trump’s performance was not good.

Conservative public opinion pundit Frank Luntz asked 16 voters from assorted states for their takeaways after watching Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden go head to head Tuesday night. The 90-minute roller coaster was characterized by incessant crosstalk and interruptions from the president. Fox News moderator Chris Wallace was forced to scold Trump on multiple occasions for talking over both Biden and himself.

Luntz asked his participants to each provide one word to describe Trump’s performance. The responses were:

“Horrid,” “chaotic,” “unpolished,” “crackhead,” “eh,” “puzzling,” “Un-American,” “unhinged” (twice), “an ass, but a confident ass,” “classic Trump,” “forceful,” “bully,” “arrogant” (twice) and “typical.”

Asked about how Trump could improve, Michelle from Florida said he needed to stop talking over people. “It’s very rude and just gives a bad impression,” she said.

The voters were overall more positive about Biden’s performance. The short descriptions were:

“Surprised at how well he did,” “better than expected,” “more professional,” “confident,” “politician” (twice), “restraint and compassion,” “predictable” (three times), “nice guy but lacking vision,” “coherent,” “leader,” “attentive and rehearsed,” “evasive” and “humanity and integrity.”

Voters in past versions of this panel voiced similar objections to Trump ahead of the 2016 election.

After one GOP primary debate, the majority of Republican voters in one of Luntz’s groups said they’d changed their opinion of Trump from positive to negative after his performance.

And ahead of the 2016 GOP convention, where Trump was awarded the Republican nomination, a focus group described Trump with terms like “fascist” and “dumpster fire.”

Though, the reviews of his then-opponent Hillary Clinton, whom they described as “corrupt” and “dishonest,” were not much better.

 

ATTACHMENT FIVE – from Time

 

RELIABLE POLLS SHOW THAT BIDEN WON THE DEBATE — SO THOSE AREN’T WHAT TRUMP’S ALLIES ARE HIGHLIGHTING

 

September 30, 2020

Shortly after the first presidential debate ended on Tuesday night, Fox News’s Sean Hannity seized upon two online surveys to declare victory for his friend President Trump.

One, from Telemundo, had Trump winning by a 2-to-1 margin, he said. Another, from WGN, had a similarly lopsided result.“Early reviews, instant response, instant polls,” Hannity said. “I’m sure the, you know, the mainstream media will have corrupt polls, as they always do, but those are the two flash polls that we have already.”

The press secretary Trump formally employs made a similar argument on Twitter.

The thing about those surveys is that they are garbage. This isn’t meant as disparagement; it’s meant as an accurate reflection of the utility of a survey that consists of a media outlet such as C-SPAN asking people on Twitter whom they think won. A good rule of thumb for a poll is that if anyone can weigh in on it and can encourage other people to participate as well, it’s not going to yield a useful result. When Telemundo announced the results of its informal Twitter survey, it deliberately pointed out that the results weren’t scientific, slightly moderating the uselessness of sharing such information in the first place.

Hannity, of course, offered no such qualifier — instead disparaging mainstream media polls that he certainly knew would be less generous in their assessments of the results. (If you enjoy watching Hannity amplify uninformative results to make a political point while we wait for more accurate results to come in, you’re going to want to watch Fox News on election night.)

In short order, scientific polls from reputable outlets were released. While White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany decided to share the results of a CNN reporter asking an on-air focus group whom they planned to support, the network’s actual poll, conducted with SSRS, offered a much bleaker review of Trump’s performance.

Sixty percent of respondents in CNN’s real poll thought that former vice president Joe Biden won the debate. Only 28 percent thought that Trump did.

CNN had asked its respondents before the debate whom they expected to win. Biden had the advantage there, too, by 13 points. Tellingly, Trump was far less likely to have been declared the winner than respondents expected, across party groups. Nearly 9 in 10 Republicans expected Trump to win, for example, but only about two-thirds actually did. Fully a quarter of Republicans thought Biden won, as did 1 in 8 Trump supporters.

It’s worth noting that this was a particularly friendly group of respondents. The network’s David Chalian noted in CNN’s broadcast that the pool of those interviewed skewed more heavily Democratic. That’s probably one reason, coming into the debate, 6 in 10 had favorable views of Biden compared to 4 in 10 who said the same of Trump. After the debate, there wasn’t much change — some slight shifts that aren’t statistically significant.

poll released by CBS News and conducted by YouGov had a narrower margin of victory for Biden, with 48 percent viewing him as the winner and 41 percent saying that Trump prevailed.

The pollsters also asked respondents, both before and after the debate, how they viewed the candidates on three qualities: physical and mental stamina, honesty or trustworthiness, and the extent to which the candidates seemed to care about voters like them. The debate did little to change people’s views of Trump or Biden on these measures, with Trump maintaining an advantage on stamina and Biden being viewed as more honest and caring.

This is obviously a less clear-cut result than the one CNN offers, but the implication is the same: In a moment in which Trump very much needed a victory to redirect the course of a race that he’s losing, it seems unlikely that he did. His allies can lift up random Twitter polls to argue that he won, but that will probably serve only to bolster the confidence of his existing base of support, not to actually convince undecided voters that he triumphed.

Particularly because, in that CBS-YouGov poll, respondents were more likely to say that their view of Biden improved than worsened — and to say the opposite of Trump.

Over time, as more polls come out evaluating the debate and the race, we’ll have a better sense for what Tuesday night meant. We nonetheless focus on this “who won” question because it seems concrete, a tick forward in the long contest between the candidates. But a debate in which Trump didn’t clearly advance relative to Biden is a loss for the president.

No matter what Hannity says Telemundo said.

 

 

ATTACHMENT SIX – from BBC

 

HOW TO AVOID ANOTHER TRUMP-BIDEN 'CAR-CRASH' DEBATE

·         1 October 2020

·          

Among those who tuned in for the first US presidential debate, there is a clear and growing consensus that the first on-air face-off between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was a mess.

For some 90 minutes, the candidates shouted, bickered and largely ignored the topics at hand, despite repeated pleas from moderator Chris Wallace.

And it looks like the Commission on Presidential Debates - the nonpartisan charity that sponsors the events - agrees. On Wednesday, the group said the first debate had "made clear" that additional structure must be added for the remaining two match-ups. One possible change being considered is cutting candidates' microphones if they try to interrupt each other, according to CBS News.

President Trump has since responded, in a tweet, implying that he would not be willing to accept changes to the format.

With two weeks until Mr Trump and Mr Biden are back in the ring, what could these next debates look like?

Mute the candidates?

Typically, presidential debates give voters a chance to hear what the candidates have to say before casting their ballots. During's Tuesday event, however, there was a prevailing wish among those watching for the two men on stage to be quiet.

As the debate wore on, social media was flooded with requests - from voters, pundits and journalists - for moderators to be given the power to selectively mute the candidates and prevent them from jumping in out of turn. Though both nominees were guilty of interruptions, President Trump was by most accounts the more egregious offender, cutting in some 73 times, according to CBS news.

This change is now said to be at the top of the list of those proposed by the debate commission, according to US media.

The calls for muting seem to be a product of the Zoom-era brought about by the coronavirus pandemic. When working from home and using video-chat apps, such as Zoom, we're now able to mute ourselves and turn the volume down on colleagues - a tool that could conceivably lend a hand to a moderator desperate to maintain calm.

A better moderator?

Many who were unhappy with Tuesday's performances expressed dissatisfaction with moderator Chris Wallace.

From the outset, the Fox News anchor struggled to maintain control of the candidates, resorting to desperate appeals to Mr Trump to stop talking and allow his opponent to finish, at one point shouting for the president to "Let him [Mr Biden] answer!"

But many defended him, saying that dealing with this set of candidates - namely Mr Trump - was a tough order for anyone.

"I don't blame Chris Wallace at all. He's a stellar, stand-up journalist," presidential historian Laura Ellyn Smith told the BBC. "He did well with the Clinton-Trump debate in 2016, he was a good choice to moderate. He was given an almost impossible task, straight out of the gate."

Speaking to the New York Times the morning after, Mr Wallace said he was saddened by the way the evening had unfolded.

"I never dreamt that it would go off the tracks the way it did," he said.

For the next two debates, Mr Wallace will pass the torch. First, to Steve Scully, a political editor with the C-SPAN television network and then to Kristen Welker, White House Correspondent for NBC News.

Will they have a better chance of keeping the candidates in check? That is a great unknown. As a conservative veteran from Mr Trump's favourite network, praised for his work as moderator in the last presidential election, Mr Wallace was thought to have as good a chance as any. But even he proved no match for the chaotic collision this year.

A new format?

This change is already certain. The next debate, on 15 October in Miami, Florida, will be in a town-hall format, where candidates take questions from voters instead of journalists. Here, the environment is generally more casual. In pre-coronavirus elections past, candidates have been seated within arms' reach of voters, instead of protected behind a podium on stage.

The town-hall style may serve to benefit these particular candidates, Ms Smith said, adding that it might bring some civility. "In the first debate, they were just looking at Chris Wallace, the room otherwise is pretty dark," she says.

This time, neither Mr Biden nor Mr Trump will get to steamroll the moderator - they'll have to answer directly to voters.

"It might inspire a bit more confidence and might bring a bit more pride back into the format of debate," Ms Smith said.

Call them off?

Some voters and pundits alike who tuned into the first debate think the events aren't worth saving. As Tuesday's contest was unfolding, Twitter was alighting with pleas to cancel the remaining match-ups entirely.

"I wouldn't be surprised if this is the last presidential debate between the president of the United States and the former vice-president of the United States," CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer said minutes after the face-off concluded.

"For the sake of democracy, cancel the Trump-Biden debates", read the headline of a New York Times column by Frank Bruni. The call was echoed by the Washington Post, Slate and the Atlantic magazine.

But the debates still have their defenders, including Ms Smith.

"I think that would be a step in the wrong direction [to cancel]. It would be admitting defeat at this point," she said. "The debate has been a helpful way in the past to demonstrate candidates' skills. To see policy, even, in a bit more detail."

She added: "I don't think you should ever cut back on dialogue in democracy, even if it's loud."

The remaining debates will proceed as scheduled on 15 October and 22 October, with new rules from the debate commission to be announced this week.

But the running mates - Vice-President Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris - will be squaring off first in their debate on 7 October. It is expected to be less raucous than the one between the two men at the top of the ticket.

 

 

ATTACHMENT SEVEN – from CNN

 

SIX TAKEAWAYS FROM THE OFF-THE-RAILS FIRST DEBATE BETWEEN BIDEN AND TRUMP

 

Trump bullied, bulldozed and obfuscated his way through the 90-minute showdown, interrupting Biden and moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News at every turn. He ignored substantive questions and Biden's policy arguments, and instead swung at a straw-man version of Biden, taking aim at both Biden's son and a distorted description of his record that exists primarily in far-right media.

Over Trump's interruptions, Biden responded by mocking the President, calling him a "clown," a "racist" and "the worst president America has ever had." He criticized Trump's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, his failure to produce a health care plan and his response to protests over racial injustice.

Over and over, Wallace tried to regain control of the debate, without success.C

When Trump complained that only he was being chastised for talking over questions and Biden's answers, Wallace shot back: "Frankly, you have been doing more interrupting."

Trump, who has trailed Biden in national and swing-state polls, made little effort to reach out to voters who do not currently support him. He could have further damaged his standing by refusing to condemn White supremacists after being asked to do so multiple times.

 

Trump doesn't condemn White supremacists

 

Repeatedly and directly, Biden called Trump racist.

"This is a President who has used everything as a dog whistle to try to generate racist hatred, racist division," the former vice president said.

During a portion of the debate that focused on race relations, protests, violence and policing, Trump tried to latch Biden to the violent and destructive elements of this summer's protests over the police killings of George Floyd in Minnesota, Breonna Taylor in Kentucky and others, even as Biden condemned violence. Trump also claimed that America's suburbs -- which have tilted in Democrats' favor during his tenure -- would be "gone" if Biden is elected.

"He wouldn't know a suburb unless he took a wrong turn," Biden shot back, adding that "this is not 1950" and Trump's dog whistles "don't work anymore." He said Trump's handling of the pandemic and the climate have damaged the suburbs.

The section ended with Trump flatly refusing to condemn White supremacy when asked to do so by Wallace and Biden. "Stand back and stand by," he said to the white supremacist militia group Proud Boys, in a moment reminiscent of his response to White supremacists' march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

"The commander in chief refused to condemn White supremacy on the global stage in front of my children, in front of everybody's families, and he was given the opportunity multiple times to condemn White supremacy and he gave a wink and a nod to a racist, Nazi, murderous organization," said Van Jones, the CNN political commentator.

"That's the only thing that happened tonight," he said. "That's what happened tonight."

 

Disputing the election

 

Amid unleashing a barrage of misinformation and falsehoods about mail-in voting, Trump failed to affirm the one thing he was asked about it: whether he would encourage his supporters to be peaceful if election results are unclear.

"I'm encouraging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully," Trump said when asked what he would tell his followers in a post-November 3 world.

After issuing his usual falsehoods about widespread fraudulent voting -- albeit in front of a newly massive audience and without an ounce of fact-checking from the moderator -- Trump declared he wouldn't support a result under certain circumstances.

"If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can't go along with that," Trump said.

It was an answer that will do little to calm fears of post-election chaos.

For his part, Biden insisted that if Americans vote in large numbers -- presumably for him -- a contested election could be prevented.

Anything but coronavirus

 

If Trump has an overriding strategy in the final days of the campaign, it is to divert attention from the coronavirus pandemic, which voters say in polls that he has badly mismanaged. It has been evident for months Trump is eager to move on.

And if his goal Tuesday was to obscure his coronavirus record, Trump may have been successful. Despite Biden's attempts to inject it back into the discussion periodically, the debate devolved into arguments and bickering that ultimately did not center on the global pandemic, which has now killed 1 million people.

Trump openly said the vaccine process is political, mocked Biden for wearing a mask and instead of a robust defense of his record he sought to claim a hypothetical President Biden would have done worse.

The scaled-down audience and lack of a handshake also brought the health crisis into the debate hall atmospherics. And Biden made multiple references to the 200,000 Americans who have died.

But ultimately the debate was not about the pandemic. It was about Trump's belligerence, which in his view can only be considered a positive.

 

Taking over — and talking over — the Supreme Court

 

The dominant issue on Capitol Hill right now is Trump's nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to replace the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

But while the debate opened with questions about the high court, the details were largely lost amid the chaos, as Trump interrupted Biden's answers and Wallace struggled to rein in a debate that was devolving into disarray from its opening moments.

Biden attempted to turn the discussion into one over health care, pointing to the potential for a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority to overturn the Affordable Care Act, including its protections for those with preexisting conditions, and undo Roe v. Wade, the 1973 court decision that legalized abortion nationally.

Trump tried to pin Biden down on progressive proposals to end the Senate's filibuster and expand the Supreme Court. "Why wouldn't you answer that question?" Trump said.

None of those substantive differences really broke through, though, as Trump repeatedly interrupted Biden and the moderator and the two candidates talked over each other.

 

'Will you shut up, man?'

 

Biden largely responded to Trump's obfuscations and interruptions with eye rolls, head shakes, chuckles and "C'mon, man" comments. He never lost his temper -- but he made glaringly clear how little he thinks of Trump.

The first example came about 18 minutes into the debate, when Biden responded to a series of Trump interruptions by saying: "Will you shut up, man?"

"You're the worst president America has ever had. Come on," Biden said later, as the two debated taxes and the economy.

"It's hard to get any word in with this clown," he said later.

And at the end of a portion focused on race, Biden bluntly said, "He's the racist."

 

Family matters

 

It took about 45 minutes for Trump to raise an issue his advisers said he was itching to bring up: Hunter Biden.

Trump and his allies have repeatedly made unfounded and false claims to allege that the former vice president and his son acted corruptly in Ukraine.

It's an issue Republicans believed at one point would dominate this year's campaign, though it has failed to catch hold amid a global pandemic, urban violence and an economic downturn.

Still, some Democrats had wondered how Biden would respond when the topic arose. Some feared he would lose his cool, sensitive to matters of family.

Instead, Biden seem prepared and spoke straight to the camera as he sought to rebut Trump's claims that his son engaged in wrongdoing when he served on the board of a Ukrainian energy company.

"This is not about my family or his family, this is about your family -- the American people," Biden said. "He doesn't want to talk about what you need."

Undeterred, Trump kept returning to the issue. As Biden sought to criticize the President for reportedly calling US war dead "losers," he brought up his late son, Beau -- who served in Iraq before succumbing to brain cancer in 2015.

Instead of rebutting the claims about his views of the military, Trump sought to return the debate to Hunter Biden. "I don't know Beau Biden," Trump scoffed.

As Trump launched into an attack on Hunter Biden, including raising his past issues with drug addiction, Biden again turned to the camera and addressed the issue, even as Trump was seeking to interrupt.

"My son had a drug problem, but he's overcome it and I'm proud of him," Biden said.

The personal moment was powerful, and could forge a link between Biden and millions of Americans whose families have faced drug and alcohol addiction.

 

 

ATTACHMENT EIGHT – from Time

 

JUST CANCEL THE LAST TWO DEBATES. AMERICA HAS SUFFERED ENOUGH

SEPTEMBER 30, 2020

On Tuesday evening, millions of Americans hobbled by the coronavirus, exhausted after a long summer of wildfires and civil rights protests, suffering through mass unemployment and growing ever more cynical about government from years of toxic political discourse switched on our televisions to hear what the two men vying for our nation’s highest office had to say for themselves. What were their plans for ending the pandemic and getting people back to work? How about the climate crisis, or filling Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat, or the recent resurgence of militant white supremacy? Could our current President explain his already-notorious $750 income tax bill? The first 2020 presidential debate didn’t offer much novel information on any of those urgent topics. It did, however, leave many of us with a new question to ask ourselves: Why did we just put ourselves through that? Whatever the reason, we shouldn’t make the same mistake again.

It’s not that the debate—which was scheduled to run 90 commercial-free minutes but ended up bleeding into the next half-hour as egregiously as any Oscars telecast—produced any shocking revelations. The candidates performed exactly as pundits (and probably most laypeople) predicted. President Trump attacked and interrupted, showing little regard for facts. He shouted over not just the former Vice President, but also the moderator, Chris Wallace, of Trump’s beloved Fox News. He turned frequent criticisms of his own administration around on his opponent, claiming that it wasn’t him but Joe Biden who had a history of racism, Joe Biden who had a problematic relationship with Russia, Joe Biden whose response to COVID-19 would be catastrophic. Trump accused his moderate rival of adopting a “radical leftist” platform, then repeatedly chided him for taking stances the far left wouldn’t like. He also dodged inquiries about the biggest controversies that have surrounded him, from his skepticism regarding the settled science of climate change to his newly leaked tax returns. He responded to a question about whether he would disavow his white supremacist groups by, confusingly, instructing the neofascist Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by.” The group interpreted the mention as an endorsement.

Biden started off a bit shaky, as usual. But he recovered quickly enough, relaxing into his standard persona: the decent, reasonable, compassionate guy offended by Trump’s lack of decorum and put off by radicalism of all stripes. Faced with an opponent who has never showed much interest in meat-and-potatoes debate, the conspicuously prepared Biden mixed his recitations of facts, figures and policy ideas that once dominated such events with equally rehearsed responses to the President’s antics. He chuckled ruefully when Trump made a wild accusation and winced as if enduring mortal pain when Trump boasted or prevaricated. Amid so much bluster, even the bluntest comebacks (“You are the worst President America has ever had,” “Everybody knows he’s a liar“) barely registered. So Biden also tried speaking directly into the camera, warning viewers that he didn’t trust Trump to produce a COVID-19 vaccine and encouraging early, in-person voting. If his insistence on civilized discourse kept him from, say, mentioning the late Herman Cain when Trump claimed his corona-era rallies had done no harm or questioning the “secret police” the President deployed in Portland when Trump denounced Democrats’ handling of the city’s Black Lives Matter protests, well, at least he avoided any major gaffes.

Judged against their respective past debate performances, both candidates had a pretty average night. It was Wallace who turned out to be the weak link. Alternately timid, mildly annoyed and chummy with one candidate or the other, he often allowed them to answer the questions they wanted rather than the ones he posed. He rarely followed up when a response called for more context. Trump was allowed to describe critical race theory as “sick” and “racist” without demonstrating any knowledge of the principles it teaches. Biden got to defend his moderate cred by saying things like “I am the Democratic Party right now,” without elaborating on where and why he diverged with his colleagues on the left. In more than one instance, Wallace spoke to Trump as though addressing a preschooler, coaxing him to move on from arguments he wouldn’t drop by suggesting that, “Mr. President, you’re gonna be very happy” with the next topic. Rarely did he bother to correct a misleading statement.

And so we came out of the debate, us weary Americans, just as informed or ignorant as we were going into it. That frustration was to be expected. In advance of the showdown, most analysts seemed to agree that it would be futile for the candidates to try to persuade undecided voters. “If a global pandemic and recession couldn’t fundamentally change the numbers in this race, it’s hard to believe 90 minutes of televised debate will,” Democratic operative Lis Smith pointed out in an interview with TIME’s Molly Ball. “It’d be easier to find a Nepalese yeti in Cleveland than a voter who truly hasn’t decided between the two diametrically opposed candidates and their political parties,” wrote Lorraine Ali of the L.A. Times. So each delivered a familiar spiel to his own base, something the candidates don’t even need to be in the same conversation—or the same room—to do

It is traumatic to live in a country where everyone is suffering, some much more than others, but political polarization has made even the most seemingly apolitical crises into us-vs.-them conflicts. In the end, all Tuesday’s tête-à-tête accomplished was to pour fresh salt on festering wounds. And with that in mind, canceling the final two debates of the 2020 election cycle—debates that seem more likely to create confusion than to dispel it—sounds like the only humane option. Networks could fill the time with fact-checked primers on the issues, or crucial information on how to exercise our voting rights, or reruns of Scandal. Just about anything would be more helpful in preserving our democracy than what we just witnessed.

 

ATTACHMENT NINE – from Goodreads

 

Hubris Quotes

 

“The first lesson every child of Athena learned: Mom was the best at everything, and you should never, ever suggest otherwise.”
― 
Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

 

“We can never be gods, after all--but we can become something less than human with frightening ease.”
― 
N.K. JemisinThe Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

 

“I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.”
― 
Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita

 

“Some of the biggest cases of mistaken identity are among intellectuals who have trouble remembering that they are not God.”
― 
Thomas Sowell

 

“Don't you ever feel like, what if the world really IS messed up? What if we COULD Do it all over again from scratch? No more war. Nobody homeless. No more summer reading homework.
'm listening.
Annabeth: I mean, the West represents a lot of the best things mankind ever did--that's why the fire is still burning. That's why OlympusIs still around. But sometimes you just see the bad stuff, you know? And you start thinking the way Luke does: 'If I could tear this all down, i would do it better.'. Don't you ever feel that way? Like YOU could do a better job I'd you ran the world?
Percy:Um...no. Me running the world would be kind of a nightmare.
Annabeth: then you're lucky. Hubris isn't your fatal flaw.
Percy: what is?
Annabeth: I don't know, Percy, but every hero has one. If you don't find it and learn to control it...well, they don't call it 'fatal' for nothing.
Percy(thinking to himself): I thought about that. It didn't exactly cheer me up.”
― 
Rick Riordan, The Sea of Monsters

 

“But who names a starship the Icarus? What kind of man possess that much hubris, that he dares it to fall?”
― 
Amie Kaufman, These Broken Stars

 

“It is the mark of the mind untrained to take its own processes as valid for all men, and its own judgments for absolute truth.”
― 
Aleister Crowley, Magical and Philosophical Commentaries on The Book of the Law

 

“The true artist will let his wife starve, his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means them to do it for his. He steals the mother’s milk and blackens it to make printer’s ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He pretends to spare her the pangs of child-bearing so that he may have for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a blood-sucker, a hypocrite, and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist’s work is to shew us ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as surely as any woman creates new men. In the rage of that creation he is as ruthless as the woman, as dangerous to her as she to him, and as horribly fascinating. Of all human struggles there is none so treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man and the mother woman. Which shall use up the other? that is the issue between them. And it is all the deadlier because, in your romanticist cant, they love one another.”
― 
George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman

 

“It may be a species of impudence to think that the way you understand God is the way God is. (60).”
― 
Joseph Campbell, Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor

 

“And on the pedestal these words appear:
'My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains.
Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
― 
Percy Bysshe Shelley, Ozymandias

 

“People who worship only themselves get a slick, polished look -- like monuments. Too bad they had to go so soon.”
― 
Vanna BontaDegrees: Thought Capsules

 

 “Religion grants its adherents malign, intoxicating and morally corrosive sensations. Destroying intellectual freedom is always evil, but only religion makes doing evil feel quite so good.”
― 
Philip Pullman


“Dreams of innocence are just that; they usually depend on a denial of reality that can be its own form of hubris.”
― 
Michael PollanThe Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

 

“There were long stretches of DNA in between genes that didn't seem to be doing very much; some even referred to these as "junk DNA," though a certain amount of hubris was required for anyone to call any part of the genome "junk," given our level of ignorance.”
― 
Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief

 

 

“Even great men bow before the Sun; it melts hubris into humility.”
― 
Dejan Stojanovic

 

“In the same way that the picturesque designers were always careful to include some reminder of our mortality in their gardens -- a ruin, sometimes even a dead tree -- the act of leaving parts of the garden untended, and calling attention to its margins, seems to undermine any pretense to perfect power or wisdom on the part of the gardener. The margins of our gardens can be tropes too, but figures of irony rather than transcendence -- antidotes, in fact, to our hubris. It may be in the margins of our gardens that we can discover fresh ways to bring our aesthetics and our ethics about the land into some meaningful alignment.”
― 
Michael PollanSecond Nature: A Gardener's Education

 

“It is the certainty that they possess the truth that makes men cruel.”

 ― Anatole France

 

“And there they ring the walls, the young, the lithe. The handsome hold the graves they won in Troy; the enemy earth rides over those who conquered.

― 
Aeschylus, Agamemnon

 

“While the financial crisis destroyed careers and reputations, and left many more bruised and battered, it also left the survivors with a genuine sense of invulnerability at having made it back from the brink. Still missing in the current environment is a genuine sense of humility.”
― 
Andrew Ross SorkinToo Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the Financial System from Crisis — and Themselves

 

“Can anything be imagined so ridiculous, that this miserable and wretched creature [man], who is not so much as master of himself, but subject to the injuries of all things, should call himself master and emperor of the world, of which he has not power to know the least part, much less to command the whole?”
― 
Michel de Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond

 

 “No egoism is so insufferable as the Christian with regard to his soul.”
― 
W. Somerset Maugham

 

“Carved on the temple [at Delphi] were the exhortations "Know yourself" and "Nothing too much," mottoes with a similar meaning: You are only human, so don't try more than you are able (or you will pay the price). A recurring theme in Greek myth is the man or woman who loses sight of human limitations and acts arrogantly and with violence, as if immortal. And pays a terrible price.”
― 
Barry B. Powell, Classical Myth

 

“People of the Philippines: I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil—soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. We have come dedicated and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control over your daily lives, and of restoring upon a foundation of indestructible strength, the liberties of your people.”
― 
Douglas MacArthur

 

 “Nothing is more beautiful than to know all.”
― 
Athanasius Kircher

 

 

“The Duke has decreed that the Castle is not cold." The gentleman's lips are almost blue from this lack of cold. "And the Duke is right and correct in this as in all things."
...some very beautiful tapestries line the walls, but many of them are also full of holes. Perhaps the Duke has decreed that there are no moths, either.”
― 
Christopher Peter Grey, Leonardo's Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo Da Vinci's Servant


“The Duke would not pay for the works. He says that the Castle can never be taken. That is called hubris, Giacomo, the belief that you are never wrong. Believing you are never wrong is an error that afflicts great men. I have learned that to be right you must first be wrong many times. Without making errors--and learning from them--a man cannot find the truth.”
― 
Christopher Peter Grey, Leonardo's Shadow: Or, My Astonishing Life as Leonardo Da Vinci's Servant

 

“Don't you know that what you can do, I can do? Don't you know that I can summon your own winds, move the plates of this earth, just as you do? This earth is not yours; it's ours. Don't you fucking know this? Why do you play with us when you know I will do the same, and worse, to you? I will bring the winds of your world to bear against you. I will take your winds and twist them and throw them to you. I will mix them with your oceans, I will wrench them together and send them up to you and watch you drown in screaming waters of the blood and bones of your favorites. Look at you. Look at you! You all hairless and white with eyes burning black and red --- what makes you so sure I won't hurt you the same way? ... What makes you think i won't stalk you to the corners of the earth to pay for this? What makes you so sure that I won't bring it all back to you? I shall have waters of blood cast yuo away! I will sit upon the mount and send judgment down upon you. You shall cleave to my house! Therefore shall evil come upon thee; and mischief shall fall upon thee; thou shalt not be able to put it off: and desolation shall come upon thee suddenly, which thou shalt not know! ... To who will ye flee for help? And where will yet have your glory?--”
― 
Dave Eggers, You Shall Know Our Velocity!

 

“There is no more insidious poison than hubris”
― 
C.A.A. Savastano

 

“The son of Peleus pressed on in search of glory, bespattering his unconquerable hands with gore.”
― 
Homer, The Iliad

 

 

ATTACHMENTS TEN (A), (B), (C) and (D) – from the New York Times

 

(A)           

(B)              (A)   AS TRUMP SEEKS TO PROJECT STRENGTH, DOCTORS DISCLOSE ALARMING EPISODES

·         Published Oct. 4, 2020, Updated Oct. 5, 2020, 6:33 a.m. ET

·          

WASHINGTON — President Trump sought to dispel any perception of weakness on Sunday with a surprise and seemingly risky outing from his hospital bed to greet supporters even as his doctors once again rewrote the official narrative of his illness by acknowledging two alarming episodes they had previously not disclosed.

The doctors said that Mr. Trump’s blood oxygen level dropped twice in the two days after he was diagnosed with the coronavirus, requiring medical intervention, and that he had been put on steroids, suggesting his condition might be more serious than initially described. But they insisted that his situation had improved enough since then that he could be released from the hospital as early as Monday.

The acknowledgment of the episodes raised new questions about the credibility of the information provided about the commander in chief of a superpower as he is hospitalized with a disease that has killed more than 209,000 people in the United States. With the president determined not to concede weakness and facing an election in just 30 days, officials acknowledged providing rosy assessments to satisfy their prickly patient.

Determined to reassert himself on the political stage on his third day in the hospital, Mr. Trump made an unannounced exit from Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in the early evening, climbing into his armored Chevrolet Suburban to ride past supporters holding Trump flags gathered outside the building. Wearing a suit jacket and face mask but no tie, Mr. Trump waved at the crowd through a closed window as his motorcade slowly cruised by before returning him to the hospital.

“It’s been a very interesting journey,” Mr. Trump said in a one-minute video posted on Twitter, looking stronger and sounding more energetic than he had the last couple of days. “I learned a lot about Covid. I learned it by really going to school. This is the real school. This isn’t the let’s-read-the-books school. And I get it. And I understand it. And it’s a very interesting thing and I’m going to be letting you know about it.”

Mr. Trump’s camera-friendly, morale-boosting “surprise visit,” however, may have masked the reality of his condition, and his seeming energy may have reflected the fact that he was given the steroid dexamethasone, according to medical experts. Dexamethasone has been shown to help patients who are severely ill with Covid-19, but it is typically not used in mild or moderate cases of the disease.

Moreover, some medical experts said Mr. Trump’s trip out of the hospital was reckless, unnecessarily putting both hospital staff members and Secret Service agents at risk for a stunt. Others questioned the president’s statement in his video that he had met soldiers while at Walter Reed.

“Every single person in the vehicle during that completely unnecessary Presidential ‘drive-by’ just now has to be quarantined for 14 days,” Dr. James P. Phillips, an attending physician at Walter Reed, wrote on Twitter. “They might get sick. They may die. For political theater. Commanded by Trump to put their lives at risk for theater. This is insanity.”

In a telephone interview on Sunday night, Dr. Phillips also said the trip raised the alarming question of whether the president was directing his doctors.

“At what point does the physician-patient relationship end, and does the commander in chief and subordinate relationship begin, and were those doctors ordered to allow this to happen?” he said, noting that it violated standards of care and would not be an option open to any other patient. “When I first saw this, I thought, maybe he was being transported to another hospital.”

Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said precautions were taken in organizing the excursion. “The movement was cleared by the medical team as safe to do,” he said.

But the criticism threatened to reinforce views of Mr. Trump’s handling of the pandemic as a whole, which has been widely criticized and remains his biggest political vulnerability.

Even as the White House released new details about the president’s condition on Sunday, it continued to withhold others, including when Mr. Trump had his last negative test for the coronavirus and his first positive one. Two administration officials speaking on the condition of anonymity acknowledged that he had an undisclosed positive result from a rapid test on Thursday evening after returning from a fund-raiser at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J. But he did not reveal it when he subsequently called into Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and, in a raspy voice, said he was still waiting for results.

Only after the television show did the results of another, more sophisticated PCR test come back confirming the positive reading, according to the officials, an account previously reported by The Wall Street Journal. It was that later test result that Mr. Trump announced on Twitter around 1 a.m. Friday.

Speaking with reporters on Sunday without wearing a mask, Kayleigh McEnany, the White House press secretary, would not specifically confirm the earlier test but said that “the first positive test he received was after he returned from Bedminster.”

Each passing day brings new information about those early hours of the illness that contradicts the version of events originally put out by the White House. Dr. Sean P. Conley, the White House physician, acknowledged on Sunday that Mr. Trump had a high fever and saw his oxygen drop on Friday morning, confirming reports by The New York Times and other news outlets.

That episode helped prompt the decision to transfer Mr. Trump to the hospital later in the day, a move initially described by the White House as simply a precautionary measure. Dr. Conley also disclosed for the first time another episode of falling blood oxygen level on Saturday.

Mr. Trump was put on supplemental oxygen during the Friday spell over the president’s strenuous objections, Dr. Conley confirmed. “He was fairly adamant that he didn’t need it,” he said. The doctor said he was not sure if the president was given oxygen on Saturday, but if so, it was “very, very limited.” The steroids were administered afterward.

Dr. Conley had refused repeatedly during his televised briefing on Saturday to say whether the president had received supplemental oxygen and provided such a relentlessly upbeat assessment that Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff, afterward felt compelled to tell reporters off camera that the president’s situation had been more serious.

IMr. Trump’s physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, acknowledged on Sunday that the president had received supplemental oxygen, a fact he had repeatedly refused to confirm on Saturday.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

During his briefing on Sunday, Dr. Conley acknowledged that he had provided a rosy version of events to please his notoriously sensitive patient. “I didn’t want to give any information that might steer the course of illness in another direction, and in doing so, you know, it came off that we were trying to hide something, which wasn’t necessarily true,” he said.

Alyssa Farah, a White House communications adviser, conceded that Dr. Conley had been speaking to an audience of one during his Saturday briefing. “When you’re treating a patient, you want to project confidence, you want to lift their spirits, and that was the intent,” she said. She said that Mr. Meadows was trying “to be as transparent as we can” be by amending the report later.

But Dr. Conley and other doctors were nonetheless optimistic on Sunday that Mr. Trump was doing better and could be sent back to convalesce at the White House perhaps on Monday. “If he continues to look and feel as well as he does today, our hope is to plan for a discharge as early as tomorrow to the White House, where he can continue his treatment course,” said Dr. Brian Garibaldi, another physician treating the president.

In addition to the steroids, Mr. Trump has received an experimental antibody cocktail and is in the midst of a five-day course of remdesivir, an antiviral drug. The White House has a medical unit capable of responding to a president’s health troubles but not with the sophisticated equipment available at Walter Reed.

Mr. Trump, who historically hates hospitals and anything related to illness, has been hankering to get released, according to two people close to him, and some aides expressed fear that he would pressure Dr. Conley into releasing him by claiming to feel better than he actually does. But advisers were also troubled by the doctors’ prediction that they might release him on Monday because if they do not, it would signal that the president is not doing as well as indicated. They also worried that a premature return could lead to a second trip to the hospital if his condition worsens.

Mr. Trump was said to be working from his hospital suite, including receiving a briefing via secure video conference from Robert C. O’Brien, his national security adviser, as well as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The president has also been watching lots of television, even more than usual, and has been exasperated by coverage of Saturday’s calamitous handling of his medical information by Dr. Conley and Mr. Meadows, as well as speculation about whether he would transfer powers to Vice President Mike Pence.

He was also angry that no one was on television defending him, as he often is when he cannot inject his own views into news media coverage, aides said. As a result, Rudolph W. Giuliani, his personal lawyer, was expected to appear on several television shows, as was Corey Lewandowski, who was Mr. Trump’s first campaign manager in the 2016 race.

The president was not the only one angry over the weekend. So were many people who work for him at the White House, frustrated at how little information they had received about the health concerns in their workplace. In addition to Mr. Trump, a number of others who work or visit the building regularly have tested positive, including Melania Trump; Hope Hicks, a senior adviser to the president; Nicholas Luna, the director of Oval Office operations; Bill Stepien, the campaign manager; Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee; and Kellyanne Conway, the president’s former counselor.

Two members of the White House residence staff tested positive for the virus a few weeks ago, two people briefed on their cases said, although they were said not to come in close contact with the president or the first lady. Nonetheless, the presence of the virus in the first couple’s personal quarters once again raised questions not just about what they have been exposed to, but whom they have made vulnerable with lax mask policies around the White House.

Ms. Farah told reporters that the White House would disclose the number of positive cases among the White House staff, but Ms. McEnany later seemed to reject that, citing “privacy concerns,” without explaining how a statistic without names would violate anyone’s privacy.

The White House has not sought help from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to trace the contacts of people who attended a celebration in the Rose Garden and a follow-up reception inside the White House on Sept. 26 for the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, the event seen as a likely source of the outbreak

A federal official familiar with the matter said the C.D.C. had a team of experts on standby to help the White House but had not been approached to do so. Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under Mr. Trump, said on Sunday that he had spoken to several officials who attended the Barrett event but had not been contacted by contact tracers.

“I think they have an obligation to understand how the infection was introduced into that environment,” he said of the White House, speaking on “Face the Nation” on CBS. “There doesn’t seem to be a very concerted effort underway.”

But after months of eschewing masks in keeping with the president’s scorn for face coverings, the White House was moving to finally enforce such practices. Mr. O’Brien said National Security Council staff members working at the White House complex must now wear face masks when around others or in common areas.

“Over the past couple days as this spread through the West Wing, notwithstanding the bubble that was created here in the testing, we made mask wearing mandatory for National Security Council staff,” Mr. O’Brien, who had a mild case of the virus himself in July, told reporters at the White House.

·         Trump did not disclose to the country the first positive virus test result he received, The Wall Street Journal reported. That first positive test came Thursday during the day. He appeared on Fox News that night and said he was awaiting his test result, which was in fact a follow-up test.

·         Trump’s doctors are treating him with dexamethasone, a steroid that has helped severely ill patients, but not typically used in milder cases. Outside health experts said they could not tell if Trump was sicker than he appeared in photos — or if doctors were treating him with unusual aggressiveness.

·         Dexamethasone can cause side effects, including confusion, sleep loss and changes in mood and cognition, raising concerns about whether the president’s treatment may affect his ability to do his job.

·         Trump briefly left the hospital in an S.U.V. to wave at supporters, potentially putting at risk of infection the two Secret Service agents who were also in the car. “The irresponsibility is astounding,” Dr. James Philips, an attending physician at the hospital where Trump is being treated, tweeted.

·         Joe Biden’s campaign said he had tested negative for the virus again, five days after sharing a debate stage with the president. Biden will campaign today in Florida, despite public health guidelines calling for a 14-day quarantine after potential exposure. His campaign said he did not need to because he did not have “close contact” with Trump.

·         Fearing a second wave of the virus, Mayor Bill de Blasio proposed new restrictions in 20 hot spots in New York City.

 

 

(B) THE SACRIFICES of MANY

October 5th

 

 

Millions of Americans have gone months without seeing some of their closest relatives or their colleagues. They have canceled weddings and graduations. They have said goodbye to dying loved ones by phone.

But when many of the nation’s political leaders gathered at the White House nine days ago to celebrate the Supreme Court nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, they decided the pandemic rules that applied to everybody else didn’t apply to them.

 

Some of them assumed, wrongly, that because they had received a fast-response virus test when arriving at the White House, they could not be infectious. Others simply chose not to think about the virus, it seems. Instead, dozens of them sat, unmasked, within inches of one another. They shook hands, hugged and kissed. After starting outdoors, the event moved indoors, where the participants continued to celebrate like it was 2019.

There is now reason to believe that the gathering was a superspreader event for the coronavirus. The president and the first lady are sick, as are two senators who attended, a former governor, the president of the University of Notre Dame and multiple White House staff members, journalists and others.

 

And anyone infected at the White House that day may have later infected others.

Andrew Joseph of the health publication Stat wrote this weekend that the event at the White House “offers a case study in what experts say has been the administration’s recklessness.” The Times has compiled photos from the event, with labels identifying many of the attendees.

 

Rebecca Ruiz of Mashable tweeted, in response to a photo of the indoor reception for Barrett: “I haven’t hugged my parents since March 8 and they haven’t hugged their grandchildren since then either. 6yo desperately wanted to hold hands w/ her grandpa on her birthday and I said no, we can’t take that risk.”

David French of the conservative website The Dispatch, wrote, “What a breathtaking contrast to the way so many millions of Americans have lived their lives.”

 

Perhaps the most poignant response came from, the Notre Dame president, the Rev. John Jenkins. This spring, Jenkins had made the case that colleges had a moral obligation to reopen, for the sake of the “body, mind and spirit” of their students. But Notre Dame would do so carefully, he promised. When some students violated campus rules by holding parties — without masks or social distancing — and a virus outbreak followed, Jenkins canceled in-person classes for two weeks as a punishment and a precaution.

Early last week, even before it was clear that the White House helped spread the virus, Jenkins wrote a letter to the Notre Dame community expressing regret for his behavior there. “I failed to lead by example, at a time when I’ve asked everyone else in the Notre Dame community to do so,” he wrote. “I especially regret my mistake in light of the sacrifices made on a daily basis by many.”

 

(C) At His Core, Trump Is an Immoralist

Will we let this man and his felons drag us to moral chaos?

 

By David Brooks

Opinion Columnist

·         Oct. 1, 2020

 

So far, the 21st century has been a century of menace and insecurity. The threats have come in rapid succession: terrorism, financial collapse, plague, climate change, the quaking of our democracy. For good reasons, a tone of heightened alarm has become the default setting across the media.

People on the right and the left see threats coming from different places. In his new book, “The Securitarian Personality,” the political scientist John R. Hibbing argues that people on the right tend to react to threats coming from outside America, while people on the left see threats coming from the powerful financial and political spheres inside America.

Hibbing’s book, based on reporting, focus groups and surveys, is an attempt to understand what motivates the most enthusiastic Trump supporters. The most ardent ones, he notes, are not economically marginalized, not submissive, not authoritarian, not religious or conventionally conservative. They have a strong concept that there is a core America, a concept which I suppose you could summarize as white, rural, John Wayne, football and hunting.

They feel that core America is under existential threat from people they view as outsiders: immigrants, Chinese communists, cosmopolitan urbanites and people of color. They see themselves as strong and vigilant protectors, defending the sacred homeland from alien menace.

People who feel themselves under threat have a high tolerance for cruelty in their leaders: A little savagery to defend the homeland might be a good thing. But the crucial thing about Donald Trump is that he is not a nationalist who uses immoral means. He is first and foremost an immoralist, whose very being was defined by dishonesty, cruelty, betrayal and cheating long before he put on political garb.

In this presidential campaign, Trump’s nationalist platform — trade, immigration — has faded into the background while his immoral nature has taken center stage. Compared to 2016, it’s more pure Trump and less Pat Buchanan.

The key events of the campaign have been moral events: Trump reportedly calling military veterans and the war dead suckers and losers; Trump downplaying a deadly pandemic to the American people; Trump failing to pay fair taxes; Trump sidling up to white supremacists, resorting to racist and QAnon dog whistles.

The debate was an important moment. You and I can give sermons about how cruel, dishonest behavior shreds the norms of a decent society. But moral degradation is an invisible process. It happens subtly over time.

During Tuesday night’s debate, by contrast, people got to see, in real time, how Trump’s vicious behavior destroyed an American institution, the presidential debate. They got to see how his savagery made ordinary human conversation impossible. Debate watchers were confronted with a core truth: What Trump did to that debate Tuesday night is what he’ll do to America in a second term.

 

On Tuesday we got see that immorality isn’t just a vague thing people talk about in Sunday school. It is a Howitzer that blows through walls and leaves rubble. It is an attempt to serve yourself by breaking things and making other people suffer.

Biden should continue to talk about his economic recovery and pandemic control plans and all that stuff, but this election has devolved to certain key questions: Does America still have a moral core, a basic framework that makes this a decent place to live? Will we let Trump and his felons drag us to moral chaos?

As a temperament and philosophy, conservatism has one central premise: Humans are fallen beings, and the crust of civilization is thin. We are able to live sweetly because over centuries we have constructed a moral and social order, which is fragile and requires constant tending.

With his conduct, Trump assaults this core conservative instinct. He is separating the nationalists from some temperamental conservatives. The nationalists relish Trump’s disruption, his savagery. Some everyday conservatives — homeowners, parents, shopkeepers — feel in their bones that some new danger is afoot.

You can see this separation in the polls. Fourteen percent of Trump’s 2016 battleground state supporters are not sure they will support him again. Only 16 percent of white evangelicals supported Hillary Clinton in 2016; 28 percent now support Joe Biden, according to an August Fox News poll.

In 2016, Trump won noncollege-educated white women in Wisconsin by 16 percentage points. Now he is losing them by 9 points. In 2016 Trump tied Clinton among college educated whites in Pennsylvania. Now they are going for Biden, 61 percent to 38 percent. In 2016 in Ohio, Trump carried union households by 13 points. Now he is losing them by 8 points.

Some Republicans see Trump’s immorality as a sideshow they will tolerate to secure other goods. But his immorality is voracious, a widening gyre that threatens the basic stability of civic life. If he undermines this election, and his Republican enablers let him, he’ll approach what comes next with appalling ferocity.

 

My intuition tells me, as does the polling data, that more people are paying attention, have recognized what’s before them and will make the right decision. Abraham Lincoln’s Secretary of State William Seward made the essential point: “There was always just enough virtue in this republic to save it; sometimes none to spare.”

 

(D)  For the Sake of Democracy, Cancel the Trump-Biden Debates

The president is maneuvering to steal the election. Why help him?

 

By Frank Bruni

Opinion Columnist

·         Oct. 1, 2020

·          

Little more than 12 hours after the conclusion of the most chaotic, counterproductive and outright offensive American presidential debate in my lifetime, the Commission on Presidential Debates promised unspecified format changes in the two remaining faceoffs between Donald Trump and Joe Biden so that the events would be more orderly, which is to say watchable at all.

Hooray for the commission, but give me a break. If its members fully absorbed President Trump’s 90-minute snit on Tuesday night in Cleveland, then they know that they can show him the way toward decency and give him a few forceful shoves in its direction, but they can never get him there. That’s the lesson of his entire presidency. The debate just put a gargantuan exclamation point on it.

A destructive, dangerous exclamation point, too, which is why the commission isn’t going far enough. It should cancel the coming Trump-Biden debates altogether.

Let Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Kamala Harris have their matchup next Wednesday night, then let Americans move on. They have all the information they need to decide whether they want another four years of Trump. Giving him more time in front of a national television audience isn’t a route to clarity. It’s an expressway to autocracy, because his performance on Tuesday night proved that he will use these showcases to subvert democracy.

In what sane country should that be abetted? By what sound reasoning should that be endorsed?

On Wednesday morning I published a column, written fast on the heels of the debate, that exhorted Biden to refuse to participate in a second or third one. But the more I thought about that, the more I realized that he shouldn’t bear that onus and open himself to baseless charges by Trump and his minions that he’s running scared. The architects and arbiters of these events should take on that responsibility.

They have ample cause. In fact they have an open-and-shut case.

Did you tune into the debate? Then you saw that Trump acted like a spoiled child, a machine gun of interruptions, a gusher of insults. His misbehavior rendered any illuminating exchange of ideas or contest of opinions impossible. But that’s not the commission’s real cause. That’s not its best case.

This is: Trump’s core strategy in the debate — reflective of his core strategy overall — was to make voters so disgusted that many would turn away from the election and so distrustful that many would follow his lead should he reject the official results. He’s maneuvering himself into position to steal this election. On Tuesday night he turned the debate commission and every television network and internet site that aired or streamed the event into his accomplices.

As my Times colleague David Sanger wrote in an analysis with the on-the-money headline “Tuesday’s Debate Made Clear the Gravest Threat to the Election: the President Himself,” every inflated or baseless charge about voting that Trump made during the debate had already been “delivered in recent weeks, in tweets and rallies with his faithful. But he had never before put it all together in front of such a large audience.”

He said the election was “rigged.” He used the words “fraud” and “fraudulent.” He insisted that the Democrats would “cheat.” He cast mail-in ballots, a crucial alternative in the midst of a pandemic, as an enormous scam. He raised the specter of “tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated.”

He said that he was “counting on” Supreme Court justices — including, if all goes according to his and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plans, three whom he appointed — “to look at the ballots.” He ducked a question from the moderator, Chris Wallace, about whether he would pledge not to declare victory “until the election has been independently certified.” He gave every indication that he would challenge any outcome not to his liking.

He also repeated previous appeals to his supporters to go to the polls to watch for suspicious conduct. That scenario smacks of voter intimidation. It’s also a recipe for violence, especially when you add the ingredient of the Proud Boys, whom he told to “stand by.”

All of that was on top of a florid show of flamboyant nastiness that was equally tactical — and plenty corrosive on its own. Trump figures that if he demoralizes the electorate, that redounds to his benefit, and he’s right. That has long been his way: to treat Americans to a spectacle so coarse and dark that its ugliness befogs everything and befouls everyone. He looks horrible, but nobody else looks much better.

But while his posture toward Biden was grotesque, it was also an exaggeration of familiar political feuding. His attack on American democracy, on the other hand, was inexcusable and impermissible. The commission — a bipartisan nonprofit group that has run presidential debates since the ’80s — should respond accordingly.

I can hear the objections: That will seem biased. That will seem partisan. Best to err on the side of detachment.

But that sort of hesitancy prevented officials in President Barack Obama’s administration from publicizing what they knew about Russian interference in the 2016 election until it was over. That kind of reluctance discouraged journalists from boycotting White House news briefings when they should have, toward the very start of the Trump administration.

Trump continues to take a wrecking ball to vital American institutions and sacred American traditions. He did it on Tuesday night to the process by which we choose the person who will shape the country’s future and lead us into it. To give him a stage that grand again is to commit civic suicide.

 

 

 

ATTACHMENT ELEVEN – from RCP

 

 

Wednesday, October 7

 

Race/Topic   

Poll

Results

Spread

Wisconsin: Trump vs. Biden

Marquette*

Biden 46, Trump 41

Biden +5

Ohio: Trump vs. Biden

NY Times/Siena*

Biden 45, Trump 44

Biden +1

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

Emerson

Biden 50, Trump 45

Biden +5

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

Quinnipiac

Biden 54, Trump 41

Biden +13

Florida: Trump vs. Biden

Quinnipiac

Biden 51, Trump 40

Biden +11

Iowa: Trump vs. Biden

Quinnipiac

Biden 50, Trump 45

Biden +5

Nevada: Trump vs. Biden

NY Times/Siena*

Biden 48, Trump 42

Biden +6

West Virginia: Trump vs. Biden

WMOV

Trump 56, Biden 38

Trump +18

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

Economist/YouGov

Biden 51, Trump 42

Biden +9

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

Rasmussen Reports

Biden 52, Trump 40

Biden +12

North Carolina Senate - Tillis vs. Cunningham

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Cunningham 50, Tillis 46

Cunningham +4

Michigan Senate - James vs. Peters

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Peters 51, James 43

Peters +8

Arizona Senate - McSally vs. Kelly

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Kelly 51, McSally 43

Kelly +8

Iowa Senate - Ernst vs. Greenfield

Quinnipiac

Greenfield 50, Ernst 45

Greenfield +5

New Mexico Senate - Ronchetti vs. Lujan

PPP (D)*

Lujan 51, Ronchetti 41

Lujan +10

West Virginia Governor - Justice vs. Salango

WMOV*

Justice 48, Salango 37

Justice +11

Arizona 6th District - Schweikert vs. Tipirneni

OH Predictive Insights

Schweikert 49, Tipirneni 46

Schweikert +3

President Trump Job Approval

Politico/Morning Consult

Approve 45, Disapprove 54

Disapprove +9

President Trump Job Approval

Rasmussen Reports

Approve 44, Disapprove 54

Disapprove +10

President Trump Job Approval

Economist/YouGov

Approve 43, Disapprove 55

Disapprove +12

Recommended

 

X

More from Real Clear

·      Pressure Is on Pence to Ace the Debate

·      Biden Makes His Florida Pitch as Covid Sidelines Trump

·      Trump Returns to WH: Don't Be Afraid of Covid, Don't Let It Dominate You

Congressional Job Approval

Economist/YouGov

Approve 16, Disapprove 61

Disapprove +45

Direction of Country

Economist/YouGov

Right Direction 28, Wrong Track 65

Wrong Track +37

Direction of Country

Politico/Morning Consult

Right Direction 35, Wrong Track 65

Wrong Track +30

 

Tuesday, October 6

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

North Carolina: Trump vs. Biden

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Biden 49, Trump 47

Biden +2

North Carolina: Trump vs. Biden

Reuters/Ipsos

Biden 47, Trump 47

Tie

North Carolina: Trump vs. Biden

East Carolina U.

Biden 50, Trump 46

Biden +4

Florida: Trump vs. Biden

USA Today/Suffolk*

Biden 45, Trump 45

Tie

Florida: Trump vs. Biden

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Biden 50, Trump 46

Biden +4

Florida: Trump vs. Biden

UNF

Biden 51, Trump 45

Biden +6

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Biden 50, Trump 46

Biden +4

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

Monmouth*

Biden 54, Trump 43

Biden +11

Michigan: Trump vs. Biden

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Biden 51, Trump 43

Biden +8

Michigan: Trump vs. Biden

Reuters/Ipsos

Biden 51, Trump 43

Biden +8

Michigan: Trump vs. Biden

Detroit News/WDIV-TV

Biden 48, Trump 39

Biden +9

Wisconsin: Trump vs. Biden

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Biden 51, Trump 44

Biden +7

Arizona: Trump vs. Biden

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Biden 51, Trump 45

Biden +6

Maine: Trump vs. Biden

Bangor Daily News*

Biden 51, Trump 40

Biden +11

Maine CD2: Trump vs. Biden

Bangor Daily News*

Trump 49, Biden 41

Trump +8

Maine CD1: Trump vs. Biden

Bangor Daily News*

Biden 62, Trump 30

Biden +32

New Mexico: Trump vs. Biden

PPP (D)

Biden 53, Trump 39

Biden +14

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

CNN

Biden 57, Trump 41

Biden +16

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

SurveyUSA

Biden 53, Trump 43

Biden +10

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

CNBC/Change Research (D)*

Biden 52, Trump 42

Biden +10

General Election: Trump vs. Biden vs. Jorgensen vs. Hawkins

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Biden 52, Trump 42, Jorgensen 3, Hawkins 1

Biden +10

Maine Senate - Collins vs. Gideon

Bangor Daily News*

Gideon 44, Collins 43

Gideon +1

North Carolina Senate - Tillis vs. Cunningham

East Carolina U.

Cunningham 45, Tillis 46

Tillis +1

North Carolina Senate - Tillis vs. Cunningham

Reuters/Ipsos

Cunningham 47, Tillis 42

Cunningham +5

Michigan Senate - James vs. Peters

Reuters/Ipsos

Peters 50, James 43

Peters +7

Michigan Senate - James vs. Peters

Detroit News/WDIV-TV

Peters 45, James 40

Peters +5

North Carolina Governor - Forest vs. Cooper

East Carolina U.

Cooper 53, Forest 40

Cooper +13

President Trump Job Approval

The Hill/HarrisX

Approve 46, Disapprove 54

Disapprove +8

President Trump Job Approval

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Approve 45, Disapprove 55

Disapprove +10

 

Monday, October 5

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

JTN/RMG Research*

Biden 51, Trump 43

Biden +8

Ohio: Trump vs. Biden

Trafalgar Group (R)*

Biden 44, Trump 48

Trump +4

Arizona: Trump vs. Biden

NY Times/Siena*

Biden 49, Trump 41

Biden +8

North Carolina: Trump vs. Biden

PPP (D)

Biden 50, Trump 46

Biden +4

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

Reuters/Ipsos

Biden 50, Trump 45

Biden +5

Wisconsin: Trump vs. Biden

Reuters/Ipsos

Biden 50, Trump 44

Biden +6

Utah: Trump vs. Biden

Y2 Analytics

Trump 50, Biden 40

Trump +10

Alabama: Trump vs. Biden

Auburn Univ.

Trump 57, Biden 37

Trump +20

Delaware: Trump vs. Biden

University of Delaware*

Biden 54, Trump 33

Biden +21

Arizona Senate - McSally vs. Kelly

NY Times/Siena*

Kelly 50, McSally 39

Kelly +11

North Carolina Senate - Tillis vs. Cunningham

PPP (D)

Cunningham 48, Tillis 42

Cunningham +6

Alabama Senate - Tuberville vs. Jones

Auburn Univ.

Tuberville 54, Jones 42

Tuberville +12

Delaware Senate - Witzke vs. Coons

University of Delaware*

Coons 57, Witzke 27

Coons +30

North Carolina Governor - Forest vs. Cooper

PPP (D)

Cooper 52, Forest 40

Cooper +12

Utah Governor - Cox vs. Peterson

Y2 Analytics

Cox 55, Peterson 29

Cox +26

Delaware Governor - Murray vs. Carney

University of Delaware*

Carney 55, Murray 26

Carney +29

Oklahoma 5th District - Bice vs. Horn

CHS & Associates

Bice 49, Horn 45

Bice +4

New Jersey 2nd District - Van Drew vs. Kennedy

Monmouth

Kennedy 50, Van Drew 44

Kennedy +6

Delaware At-Large District - Murphy vs. Blunt Rochester

University of Delaware*

Blunt Rochester 51, Murphy 29

Blunt Rochester +22

President Trump Job Approval

CNN

Approve 40, Disapprove 57

Disapprove +17

Direction of Country

Rasmussen Reports

Right Direction 31, Wrong Track 64

Wrong Track +33

 

Sunday, October 4

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl

Biden 53, Trump 39

Biden +14

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

CBS News/YouGov

Biden 51, Trump 44

Biden +7

Ohio: Trump vs. Biden

CBS News/YouGov

Biden 47, Trump 47

Tie

New York 24th District - Katko vs. Balter

NY Times/Siena*

Balter 42, Katko 40

Balter +2

Florida 21st District - Loomer vs. Frankel

St. Pete Polls*

Frankel 61, Loomer 33

Frankel +28

President Trump Job Approval

NBC News/Wall St. Jrnl

Approve 43, Disapprove 55

Disapprove +12

 

Saturday, October 3

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

Florida: Trump vs. Biden

NY Times/Siena*

Biden 47, Trump 42

Biden +5

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

NY Times/Siena*

Biden 49, Trump 42

Biden +7

Missouri: Trump vs. Biden

Missouri Scout

Trump 51, Biden 46

Trump +5

Missouri Governor - Parson vs. Galloway

Missouri Scout

Parson 51, Galloway 44

Parson +7

 

Friday, October 2

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

IBD/TIPP

Biden 49, Trump 46

Biden +3

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

The Hill/HarrisX

Biden 47, Trump 40

Biden +7

General Election: Trump vs. Biden vs. Jorgensen vs. Hawkins

IBD/TIPP

Biden 49, Trump 46, Jorgensen 1, Hawkins 1

Biden +3

Arizona: Trump vs. Biden

USA Today/Suffolk*

Biden 50, Trump 46

Biden +4

New Hampshire: Trump vs. Biden

Emerson

Biden 52, Trump 45

Biden +7

New York: Trump vs. Biden

Siena*

Biden 61, Trump 29

Biden +32

Arizona Senate - McSally vs. Kelly

USA Today/Suffolk*

Kelly 49, McSally 40

Kelly +9

New Hampshire Senate - Messner vs. Shaheen

Emerson

Shaheen 55, Messner 40

Shaheen +15

New Hampshire Governor - Sununu vs. Feltes

Emerson

Sununu 55, Feltes 40

Sununu +15

President Trump Job Approval

IBD/TIPP

Approve 46, Disapprove 49

Disapprove +3

 

Thursday, October 1

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

CNBC/Change Research (D)

Biden 54, Trump 41

Biden +13

Georgia: Trump vs. Biden

WSB-TV/Landmark*

Biden 47, Trump 45

Biden +2

Iowa Senate - Ernst vs. Greenfield

WHO-TV 13

Greenfield 51, Ernst 39

Greenfield +12

New Hampshire Senate - Messner vs. Shaheen

UNH*

Shaheen 54, Messner 41

Shaheen +13

New Hampshire Governor - Sununu vs. Feltes

UNH*

Sununu 55, Feltes 37

Sununu +18

New Hampshire 1st District - Mowers vs. Pappas

UNH*

Pappas 56, Mowers 38

Pappas +18

New Hampshire 2nd District - Negron vs. Kuster

UNH*

Kuster 48, Negron 42

Kuster +6

President Trump Job Approval

Gallup

Approve 46, Disapprove 52

Disapprove +6

President Trump Job Approval

Harvard-Harris

Approve 47, Disapprove 53

Disapprove +6

Direction of Country

Harvard-Harris

Right Direction 32, Wrong Track 60

Wrong Track +28

 

Wednesday, September 30

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

Economist/YouGov

Biden 50, Trump 42

Biden +8

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

Reuters/Ipsos

Biden 51, Trump 42

Biden +9

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

Rasmussen Reports

Biden 51, Trump 43

Biden +8

New Hampshire: Trump vs. Biden

UNH*

Biden 53, Trump 44

Biden +9

Iowa: Trump vs. Biden

WHO-TV 13

Biden 48, Trump 46

Biden +2

South Carolina: Trump vs. Biden

Quinnipiac

Trump 48, Biden 47

Trump +1

California: Trump vs. Biden

KGTV-TV/SurveyUSA

Biden 59, Trump 32

Biden +27

South Carolina Senate - Graham vs. Harrison

Quinnipiac

Graham 48, Harrison 48

Tie

President Trump Job Approval

Reuters/Ipsos

Approve 44, Disapprove 55

Disapprove +11

President Trump Job Approval

Economist/YouGov

Approve 45, Disapprove 55

Disapprove +10

2020 Generic Congressional Vote

Economist/YouGov

Democrats 48, Republicans 42

Democrats +6

Congressional Job Approval

Economist/YouGov

Approve 14, Disapprove 62

Disapprove +48

Direction of Country

Economist/YouGov

Right Direction 26, Wrong Track 65

Wrong Track +39

Direction of Country

Reuters/Ipsos

Right Direction 25, Wrong Track 66

Wrong Track +41

 

Tuesday, September 29

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

Harvard-Harris

Biden 47, Trump 45

Biden +2

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

JTN/RMG Research*

Biden 51, Trump 45

Biden +6

Wisconsin: Trump vs. Biden

Susquehanna

Biden 48, Trump 46

Biden +2

Arizona: Trump vs. Biden

Susquehanna

Biden 47, Trump 47

Tie

Texas: Trump vs. Biden

UMass Lowell

Trump 50, Biden 46

Trump +4

Georgia: Trump vs. Biden

Quinnipiac

Biden 50, Trump 47

Biden +3

North Carolina: Trump vs. Biden

UMass Lowell

Biden 48, Trump 49

Trump +1

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

ABC News/Wash Post

Biden 54, Trump 45

Biden +9

New Hampshire: Trump vs. Biden

UMass Lowell

Biden 53, Trump 44

Biden +9

New Hampshire: Trump vs. Biden

Rasmussen Reports

Biden 56, Trump 42

Biden +14

Georgia Senate - Perdue vs. Ossoff

Quinnipiac

Perdue 48, Ossoff 49

Ossoff +1

Georgia Senate Special Election - Open Primary

Quinnipiac

Loeffler 23, Warnock 31, Collins 22, Lieberman 9, Tarver 4, Slowinski

Warnock +8

Texas Senate - Cornyn vs. Hegar

UMass Lowell

Cornyn 50, Hegar 40

Cornyn +10

North Carolina Senate - Tillis vs. Cunningham

UMass Lowell

Cunningham 49, Tillis 43

Cunningham +6

New Hampshire Senate - Messner vs. Shaheen

UMass Lowell

Shaheen 56, Messner 37

Shaheen +19

North Carolina Governor - Forest vs. Cooper

UMass Lowell

Cooper 54, Forest 41

Cooper +13

New Hampshire Governor - Sununu vs. Feltes

UMass Lowell

Sununu 60, Feltes 34

Sununu +26

 

Monday, September 28

 

Race/Topic   (Click to Sort)

Poll

Results

Spread

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

Monmouth*

Biden 50, Trump 45

Biden +5

General Election: Trump vs. Biden

The Hill/HarrisX

Biden 45, Trump 40

Biden +5

General Election: Trump vs. Biden vs. Jorgensen vs. Hawkins

Monmouth

Biden 50, Trump 45, Jorgensen 1, Hawkins 1

Biden +5

Wisconsin: Trump vs. Biden

Trafalgar Group (R)*

Biden 48, Trump 45

Biden +3

Pennsylvania: Trump vs. Biden

NY Times/Siena

Biden 49, Trump 40

Biden +9

Florida: Trump vs. Biden

Susquehanna

Biden 46, Trump 43

Biden +3

Nebraska CD2: Trump vs. Biden vs. Jorgensen

NY Times/Siena

Biden 48, Trump 41, Jorgensen 4

Biden +7

Michigan Senate - James vs. Peters

Trafalgar Group (R)

Peters 47, James 47

Tie

Minnesota Senate - Lewis vs. Smith

Star Tribune/Mason-Dixon

Smith 49, Lewis 41

Smith +8

Nebraska 2nd District - Bacon vs. Eastman

NY Times/Siena*

Bacon 45, Eastman 43

Bacon +2

2020 Generic Congressional Vote

Monmouth

Democrats 50, Republicans 44

Democrats +6

Direction of Country

Rasmussen Reports

Right Direction 29, Wrong Track 66

Wrong Track +37