Another week, another stunning revelation about the dishonesty and shallowness of our president, it seems. Last week, you'll remember, it was the low regard Trump held ("suckers" and "losers") for American soldiers who died in wartime, American soldiers who were wounded ("nobody wants to see that"), and American soldiers and veterans in general. This week, Bob Woodward leaked a few key excerpts (backed up by audio recordings) from his upcoming book Rage, which showed that Trump understood how serious the coronavirus was going to be and then lied to the American public about it. There simply is no bottom, with Trump -- every time you think that he's reached the lowest of the low, he will once again prove that he can go even lower.

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We have a new contender for the biggest Trump lie yet. This is mostly due to its all-encompassing nature. Trump is lying not only about the issue of the day, but about his entire political career as a whole, as well.

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October surprises are supposed to be, well... surprising. It's right there in the name, after all. This year, however, President Donald Trump has already unveiled what he hopes will be his ace-in-the-hole October surprise a few months early: a COVID-19 vaccine announcement, which will likely happen just before Election Day. When this happens, though, it will come as no surprise. Maybe we'll have to come up with a better name for it -- the "prescheduled October event," perhaps? The "October expected announcement"?

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It has been three weeks since we've done this, since for the past two Fridays we were still writing up our notes on the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Now that all that hoopla is over, we can return once again to our usual Friday Talking Points format.

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Tomorrow, two months before the third of November, the general election for president will already have begun. North Carolina will begin absentee voting, with all the other states to follow in the coming days and weeks. How it will all play out is anyone's guess, at this point.

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Today's one of those days when I had a subject already in mind for a column, but then read a few other columns that essentially already said what I was going to say (and in at least one case, said it much better than I could have). Fortunately, a second subject also popped up while reading the news today. So what I'm going to do is provide a few longish excerpts from the articles I read on the first subject at the end of this column, as a sort of "imagine the column Chris would have written" mental exercise (I even had a theme song in mind...), complete with the links to the original articles.

Instead, I'm going to write about weed. Weed voters, in particular. Now, any longtime reader of this column knows that I've been banging this particular drum for a very long time -- in particular, the fact that marijuana legalization is a political issue ripe for support from one of the major political parties. Sadly, both parties continue to shy away from it, although the Democrats have done a lot more "evolving" on the issue than most Republicans. Some Democrats, I should say, because not everyone's on board yet. I didn't notice this at the time, but here's a rundown of what happened to the party's official platform document this time around:

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I realize that the last time I wrote one of these Electoral Math columns, I said I would only be doing them every three weeks for a while to come. However, I hadn't checked the political calendar closely enough, because doing so would have put the column right between the two parties' conventions, next Monday. Instead, I thought it would be more valuable to do one before both conventions, as a baseline, and then revisit the issue afterwards to see if either candidate (or both) got the traditional "convention bounce" in the polls. Because it's only been a couple of weeks, though, this is going to be a somewhat-abbreviated column, with quicker takes on the data.

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The check is not in the mail; the mail is being placed in check. That's an amusing way to put a very serious and rather existential threat to American democracy which is now playing out before our very eyes. President Donald Trump is so scared that he's going to lose the upcoming election that he is exploring any possible way he can cheat, right out in front of the public where everyone can see it. Rarely has Republican voter suppression been this blatant and this shameless, in fact, and that's saying quite a lot.

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The waiting game is over. Joe Biden announced today that Senator Kamala Harris will be his running mate. For better or for worse, the 2020 Democratic ticket is set. The Biden-Harris team will take on Trump-Pence (assuming Pence isn't replaced in some surprise last-minute move).

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I have to admit up front that I'm not a real big fan of the "veepstakes" guessing game. It all usually turns out to be pointless in the end, although it does give the pundits something to feverishly write about in the run-up to the conventions, I suppose. I am [checks thermometer] not currently feverish, but I suppose I'll write one article today about the subject that is consuming so many right now. I realize I should really be writing about the breakdown in the pandemic relief bill negotiations (while apologizing for being so optimistic last Wednesday, when I confidently predicted that we'd certainly have a deal by today... whoops!); but hey, it's Monday and I feel lazy, so as our president says: "it is what it is."

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