100 DAYS TO THE ELECTION

Today’s theme on the cable news talk shows is that we are now 100 days from the election. The talking heads are called on to speculate how the present day polls – so disastrous for Trump – may change over those 100 days. There is endless repetition of the banal observation that anything can happen 100 days. But no one seems to talk about what is certain to happen in the next 30 days so I’ll spend little time repeating what I have said here before.

Four things are sure to happen in the next 30 days and all of them will be disastrous for Trump. First, in less than a week 20 or 30 million Americans or perhaps more will be faced with eviction from their homes for nonpayment of rent or they will be faced with repossession of their houses for nonpayment of mortgages. This is a catastrophe of unimaginable dimensions and even if the Republicans can be persuaded to extend support payments and eviction delays in a new congressional support bill, their internal disagreements and consequent dillydallying ensure that before they can act millions of Americans will be displaced and made homeless.

The second thing that is going to happen, this time in 2 ½ weeks, is that the Republicans will put on some sort of half-assed nominating convention in Charlotte North Carolina or somewhere else at which Trump will be renominated. The event will be a shambles and will most certainly not produce a characteristic bump in the polls that past experience has taught us to expect from political conventions.

The third thing that will happen, or rather will continue to happen, is that the number of total confirmed virus cases will grow day by day and the number of total deaths will grow day by day and this will happen in red states as well as in blue states, and battleground states as well as in states that are not genuinely in contention in the forthcoming election. Since Trump is president, he will get the credit or in this case the blame.

Finally, the fourth thing that will happen – possibly the politically most consequential of all – is that some time in the next 30 days 50 million public elementary, middle school, and high school students will be faced with the prospect of returning to school in some form or other. If one adds to them their parents, their non-college-age brothers and sisters, their teachers, and their teachers’ immediate families, a total of perhaps 100 million Americans will be directly, unavoidably, and terrifyingly compelled to decide how to manage school this fall.

By the time these four developments play out, the election will be 60 or 70 days away, not 100 days, and early voting will be weeks away from starting. We must do everything in our power to run up the vote at every point on the ticket as much as possible and, of course, we must fight voter suppression and outright voter fraud as vigorously as we can, but I simply do not see how the Republicans can avoid a crushing defeat. The only downside to all of this is that when they finally have finished counting all the votes, not on November 3 but perhaps a week or two later, and the Democrats have taken the presidency, the house, and the Senate, we will be left with Joseph Biden as our president. But you can’t have everything. Sufficient unto the day.