Jon Stewart, a television comedian, just did an amazing and powerful thing. He actually caused Senate Republicans to feel shame.

In this day and age, that is a rarity. The Republican Party has been taught many bad habits by Donald Trump, but one of the worst of all is utter shamelessness, which I would describe (politically) as the inability of your fellow citizens' opinions to sway yours in the least. Trump's "come Hell or high water" attitude and his absolute refusal to ever admit he was wrong about the slightest thing (see: Sharpiegate, et al) has caused Republicans like Ted Cruz (a shameless politician if there ever was one, even before Trump appeared on the scene) to completely divorce themselves from public opinion. They will just insist that down is up, that black is white, and that everyone else in the world is wrong while they have a secret line to the absolute truth (with zero evidence to back it up, of course).

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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is visiting Taiwan, considered by many to be a highly provocative act. Mostly because it openly highlights the diplomatic fiction that has existed in one form or another for 73 years (and counting). The fiction is that there is "only one China." Now, there was indeed one China in the past -- and there may also be one China in the future. But for almost three-quarters of a century, there have been two Chinese governments, both of them claiming exactly the same thing: that they are the real and legitimate government of all of China. But this is not true (no matter which one of them sits at the United Nations) -- it is fictional. The Chinese Communist Party (C.C.P.), which governs the mainland it calls the Peoples' Republic of China (P.R.C.), also claims the island and territories of Taiwan as its own. The Republic Of China (R.O.C.), which governs Taiwan, also claims all of mainland China as its own. Neither is right -- their saying so is fiction, pure and simple.

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The conventional political wisdom all year has been that the Republicans were going to have a big "red wave" midterm election, which would mean Democrats would lose lots of seats pretty much everywhere -- the House, the Senate, and governors' offices. This idea was formulated back when the voters were worried about different things than they are now, however, because life (and politics) is not static -- constant change is the only thing that stays the same. We are just under 100 days until this year's election, which means there is still time for the public's focal point to change even further, as unforeseen events pop up. But it's worth taking a look at how things have shifted over the past few months, because things are looking decidedly better for the Democrats.

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