The Weekly Sift

I don’t know if you felt it, but a wave of anxiety went through the country in response to Barton Gellman’s Atlantic article “The Election That Could Break America“. It’s one thing to worry about a Biden collapse or Trump voters who have been lying to the pollsters. But it’s another thing entirely to worry about the ways Trump could circumvent the People, and stay in power despite the voters’ desire to get rid of him.

Gellman’s article raises two problems, which I’ll try to address in two ways. There are the practical considerations, the what-can-I-do-to-prepare stuff, which I don’t have completely knocked, but will try to address in the weekly summary.

Simultaneously, though, there’s the psychological challenge of it all. How are we going to deal with five more weeks of this kind of anxiety? That’s the subject of the featured article “Staying Sane in Anxious Times (without being useless)”, which should be out soon.

As I’ve said before, “Another week, another damaging Trump exposé.” This week the NYT has gotten several years of his tax information, which show that he pays less tax than you probably do. New Republicans have announced for Biden. The police who killed Breonna Taylor face no consequences. The virus is ramping up a third wave, just as Florida withdraws all restrictions. Trump issued a meaningless executive order on healthcare. And we all steel ourselves for tomorrow’s debate.

I’ll imagine the summary going out sometime between noon and one EDT.