This morning the AM shock jocks started off by saying that Biden should ‘suspend’ his campaign as a sign of respect to Trump. After the way Trump behaved during the debate, these guys have the balls to ask Joe to show respect? 

              I’m still willing to take the short odds that maybe, just maybe, Trump’s faking the whole infection thing. Why shouldn’t he? After all, the way things are going right now, the only votes he may get are sympathy votes.

In the national aggregate poll, the gap is now 8.2% in Joe’s favor, the widest it has been since August 29. As far as the way people reacted to Tuesday night’s debate, Joe hauled in more than $21 million in the 24 hours following the debate, a one-day record. I didn’t notice the Trump campaign releasing their fundraising numbers yet.

Of the 30 states that ended up in Trump’s W column the last time around, Joe now leads in 10. Some of the margins are razor-thin in states like Georgia, North Carolina, and Ohio. In other states like Michigan and Wisconsin, the lead is 7 points.

In all the ‘battleground’ states, the Sedaris dog-shit vote is now around 6%. So if every, single voter who hasn’t yet made up their minds decides to vote for Trump because they feel so bad that he has contracted Covid-19, he still can’t win but at least it will be close and then he can screw around and challenge the vote.

Trump’s bigger problem is that the guy who proclaimed that his 2016 victory marked the beginning of a new ‘movement,’ is actually having trouble convincing the same people who voted for him last time to vote for him again. In fact, the dismal state of Trump’s campaign in what has always been reliable red states is probably the most interesting and unspoken story of the 2020 campaign.

              While it’s true that Trump’s final Electoral College margin reflected the outcome of very close contests in states like Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, he couldn’t have been competitive without piling up huge numbers in states like Alabama, where he won by 28%, or Arkansas, where he won by 27%, or Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana and Tennessee, where his winning margins were 20%, 30%, 20% and 26%.

              That was then, this is now. Of the 17 pro-Trump states for which we have current polls, Trump’s lead this year is half of what it was in 2016. In Montana, an 18.5% gap four years ago is now 7.8%. In Kansas, a 20-point margin last time is now 8.7%. The South Carolina gap has gone from 14% to 5.8%. Taken together, the 17 most reliable red states gave Trump a victory amounting to 20.4% of all votes cast in those states in 2016.  Right now, that number is 10.4%

              I’m not saying that Joe can win any of those states. But if Trump can’t keep the support he got last time in the states that have always voted for the GOP, what chance does he have to overcome Biden’s lead in any of the battleground states? And by the way, the Sedaris dog-shit number in those 17 red states is also around 6%.

              Two other points of note. ‘Well-placed sources’ told the Daily Mail that Brad Parscale is “under investigation” for allegedly stealing $40 million from the campaign. And now we have another story floating around that Eric Trump’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, didn’t ‘resign’ from Fox News as she claimed, but was bounced out after management received numerous complaints about inappropriate sexual behavior.

              When these kinds of stories start coming out, you know that a campaign or any kind of organizational situation is in deep shit. But as far as I’m concerned, it couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of folks. And frankly, Frank Bruni should be ashamed of himself for his op-ed today in The (failing) New York Times, where he says that he feels ‘petty’ for thinking that maybe Trump’s infection is just another hoax.

              Want a proper perspective on Trump and his campaign?  Think about how he accused Biden of wanting to turn Minnesota into a “refugee camp.”

              If you want, go right ahead and feel sorry for Trump. I’m going to send Joe and Kammie $200 bucks so that I can attend their grass-roots fundraiser tonight.