I cannot stand the news. This is comforting.

By Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post columnist. Sept. 1, 2020.

"Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden walloped President Trump during an event in Pittsburgh on Monday for making us sicker, poorer, more fearful and more insecure. But a less-noticed portion of his speech deserves further examination: “When President [Barack] Obama and I were in office, we didn’t look at cities as Democratic- or Republican-run. These are American cities,” Biden said. “But Trump doesn’t see himself as a president for all of America.”

"Trump has been writing off all sorts of places and groups that he needs to win reelection. He needs not only some segment of urban voters, but — much more importantly — he needs urban workers who commute into cities from the suburbs. By painting unrest in urban areas as solely the fault of local government, he has told these voters that it is not his job to secure the cities, and that it is up to someone else to keep them safe. If, in making this argument, Trump turns off suburbanites, he is going to lose. There simply are not enough White, rural Americans to carry him to a second term.

"Each time Trump race-baits or insults women, he is slicing off more and more voters. By the time he is done, he will be down to purely the hardcore MAGA set. That is not how he won in 2016. He won not only because Hillary Clinton made some tactical errors, didn’t turn out enough Black voters and was ambushed by former FBI director James B. Comey, but also because Trump somehow convinced a chunk of White, college-educated Americans and suburbanites that he would shake things up or bring business acumen to the job.

"As Trump burns one bridge to a key segment of the electorate after another, Biden has assembled about the broadest coalition I have seen in my lifetime. When a candidate can boast a range of endorsements spanning from Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) to former Arizona Republican senator Jeff Flake, to a slew of conservative national security experts, you know the former vice president is embracing people who would not normally "vote Democratic — all the while keeping the left in his tent. When have we ever heard a Democratic nominee insist: “I am not banning fracking. Let’s say that again. I am not banning fracking — no matter how many times Donald Trump lies about me”? Clearly, this is a politician interested in winning in the Rust Belt.

"Biden keeps everyone on board for two reasons. First, he is progressive in ways that satisfy the left and do not scare the center-right. He does not sound like a ranting left-winger out to destroy capitalism. He wants expanded Obamacare, not Medicare-for-all; a jobs-creating green energy plan, not something that freaks out moderates such as the Green New Deal; police reform, not defunding the police; subsidized care, not government-operated childcare; and higher taxes only for the really rich (making more than $400,000, he says).

"Second, Trump’s own failures and noxious character make it easy to overlook policy disputes that might ordinarily prevent certain voters from backing him. When you threaten democracy, try to incite racial violence, lie constantly, refuse to address a pandemic that may kill as many as 200,000 by Election Day and run a kleptocratic administration that would make Russian oligarchs blush, voters will put aside a whole lot of issues that simply are not as important as preserving representative democracy.

"We are heading for an unusual Election Day. One side is telling everyone but its base to get lost; the other is welcoming everyone it can find. The politics of subtraction vs. the politics of addition. It’s easy to understand why Biden remains the favorite."

[washingtonpost.com]