Politics

I should clear up one thing straight away. I do not believe that Joe Biden is guilty of magical thinking. Magical thinking, though specious, is a form of thinking. It is a truth universally acknowledged that Joe Biden is not guilty of thinking of any kind, ergo, Joe Biden is not guilty of magical thinking. Quod erat demonstrandum. But Biden’s supporters? Well, that is another matter altogether. There you see a wild efflorescence of magical thinking. What is magical thinking? It is the irrational belief, rampant among primitive peoples and those exposed to too many woke college seminars, that our thoughts influence or ‘constitute’ reality.

The droplets had barely settled after Wednesday’s vice presidential debate when next week’s head-to-head between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was thrown into doubt.The Commission on Presidential Debates announced a change in format this morning, switching the October 15 debate to a virtual event ‘in order to protect the health and safety of all involved’. Trump currently has COVID-19 and no one on his campaign will tell us when his last negative test was before his diagnosis. The Commission’s concern is understandable.But not so fast. Reacting to the Commission’s change during an appearance on Fox Business, the President declared he would no longer participate. ‘I’m not gonna waste my time on a personal debate.

The vice presidential debate was a predictable clash between two solid professionals, each with plenty of debate experience. Both said what they came to say, and not one jot more. Both evaded several hard questions, such as how they would handle changes in abortion laws, if the Supreme Court rules force some changes. 'I'm glad you asked about baseball, Susan, because the American people love sports. And the sport they really love is football. That's what's on their mind now.' That's how they answered questions. If they had a prepared answer about football, that's the answer they gave. That meant Pence never explained how a second Trump term would handle pre-existing medical conditions and Harris never renounced a court-packing scheme.

Too many pundits are ready to call the 2020 presidential race with a month to go. Four weeks is a lifetime in politics, especially in the age of technology where news travels faster than the facts. With both candidates in their seventies, health issues are always going to cause things to shift quickly. A couple of weeks ago, Joe Biden offered further evidence that all is not well upstairs when he claimed that ‘it’s estimated 200 million people have died of COVID’.Sure, the debate last week appeared to be a debacle for Donald Trump who then ended the week by coming down with COVID — though Hispanic Telemundo viewers thought Trump won the debate soundly.

'Please tell me you’re Republicans,' President Ronald Reagan joked with his doctors as he headed into surgery after an assassination attempt against him in 1981. The joke worked in part because it was obviously absurd to think any doctor would alter their standard of care based on the politics of their patient. In 2020, can anyone be so sure? In the age of COVID, medical opinion has often become indistinguishable from politics. Laypeople cherrypick statements and studies that seem to confirm their biases, and when all else fails, glob on to anecdotal evidence from a friend, family member, or celebrity who got the virus. Sadly, too many doctors are no better.

Suburban women are understood to be one of the most crucial demographic groups in the presidential election on November 3. Many pollsters currently predict that President Donald Trump will lose due to his unpopularity with that category of voters. But have the Democrats really reclaimed the suburbs? Or are there more likely Republican voters than the polls suggest? The Spectator tracked down a series of so-called ‘closet Trump’ voters, women from the suburbs who would never publicly voice their support for the President for fear of recrimination in their social circles. These are their stories. Suburban women are understood to be one of the most crucial demographic groups in the presidential election on November 3.

Late on June 23, 1953, Winston Churchill had a stroke. As the great bulldog recovered, his advisers made the bold decision to keep his illness a secret. Officially, the prime minister was resting because of an arduous schedule. His doctors’ diagnosis of a ‘disturbance of the cerebral circulation which has resulted in attacks and giddiness’ was struck from the records.In public, John F. Kennedy shone with youthful health and vigor. Behind closed doors, he was a mess. As Robert Dallek has written for the Atlantic, JFK suffered from ‘ulcers and colitis as well as Addison’s disease...terrific back trouble...urinary-tract infections and depression.

The media is ablaze with worry. Thanks to COVID, Americans, especially Democrats, are voting early and absentee in record numbers. The press is convinced that states will be swamped by this flood of votes. As a result, the theory goes, Donald Trump will be ahead on the night of November 3, only to see his lead erode over the coming days and even weeks, fueling skepticism of the electoral process. The uncertainty will motivate street violence and a constitutional crisis. While there are some reasons for concern, these worries are overblown. States will do a better job tabulating votes than the received wisdom holds and, if past elections set the precedent, Americans will behave themselves.

It’s rather difficult to dissect or analyze policy areas from last night’s horrendous debate. But Freddy Gray and I attempt to do so on the latest episode of his Americano podcast — and considering today’s economic updates, I’ll give it another go.Even in a debate that spent most of its time in the gutter, both President Trump and former vice president Joe Biden had moments of cut-through. For Biden, his call for unity in America felt like a rare throwback to a form of traditional campaigning that tends to play well with watchers at home. For Trump, his most persuasive moments came early in the debate, when he was speaking about the economy.

The first presidential debate in Cleveland was a disaster, to put it bluntly. After 90 minutes of crosstalk, petty jabs, and 'c'mon man’s it's hard to believe many undecided voters will come out of the night with a clear candidate in mind. Most will be begging for presidential politics to stop rather than racing to the polls. In fact, judging from social media, many undecided voters are already saying this debate convinced them not to vote at all. President Trump's performance was perhaps his worst in a major debate so far because he squandered numerous opportunities to let Biden hang himself with his own words.