Since we are less than three weeks away from the election, we are going to diverge from our normal Friday Talking Points format today.

Instead of brief talking points at the end, instead we tried to make the case against electing Donald Trump in the most effective ways we could think up. But when we got done, we realized that this extended rant also served as a good round-up of the week's political news. Sure, there were a few other things going on in politics, but at this point we are so focused on the campaign and the election that anything else is really just a distraction, this close to Election Day.

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We are entering the homestretch of the presidential election, and who is going to win is anybody's guess. Polling is no real help since it shows many battleground states either perfectly tied or within a point or two. Both candidates are out there campaigning hard, but neither has a clear edge over the other one. It's going to go right down to the wire, that's about the only thing which seems certain at this point.

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The Supreme Court began its new year today. This could wind up being the most consequential term for the high court since they decided Bush v. Gore. Because unless Donald Trump scores a clear win in November -- winning so many of the battleground states that challenging the result would be pointless -- we are likely to see the election results wind up before the Supreme Court in one way or another. Which will give them the power, once again, of determining who will be president for the next four years.

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There were two major events in the presidential race this week, but we are left wondering if either one of them is going to make much of a difference one way or the other. Perhaps we're getting a bit jaded by it all....

The first was the one-and-only vice-presidential debate, held on CBS this Tuesday. Republican JD Vance faced off with Democrat Tim Walz, and it was watched by 43 million people as it aired. The second was the public release of a document prosecutor Jack Smith had previously filed with the court in Donald Trump's January 6th case. It laid out Smith's basic case, in great detail (165 pages' worth).

In a normal campaign season, either one of these would have been impactful, perhaps shifting the polling in significant ways. But in our hunkered-down tribalistic politics, the needle barely quivered. Maybe we're all getting a bit jaded?

There were two other rather large events that could affect politics this week: the massive damage Hurricane Helene did -- especially in the Appalachian Mountain region -- and an East Coast dockworkers' strike. The first shouldn't really have been political, and the second was over almost before anyone was aware it was happening.

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After what were arguably the two most consequential presidential debates since at least the Nixon-Kennedy debate (which launched the era of televised debates), last night's vice-presidential debate was pretty... well, normal. It harkened back to the age before Donald Trump entered the political scene, when two candidates would debate political issues without getting overly vicious or personal in their attacks, in the hopes of presenting themselves to the public as acceptable leaders of the country. That was really the striking takeaway from last night -- a return to normalcy, in the midst of yet another Trumpian rollercoaster of a presidential campaign. In fact, this normalcy stuck out as completely abnormal to the bizarre political landscape Trump has dragged us all into for the past nine years.

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Tomorrow night might be the last big television event of the 2024 presidential race. JD Vance and Tim Walz will debate each other, and since Donald Trump is so far resisting the idea of having a third presidential debate, this may be it for face-to-face encounters between the two campaigns. So I found myself wondering what I would ask the two candidates, if I had the chance.

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So the first night of the Democratic National Convention has come and gone. It was a night featuring two memorable swansong speeches. The first came from Hillary Clinton, who in an alternate universe would be finishing up her second term as president right about now. The second came from Joe Biden, who is currently finishing up his first (and only) term as president right now. It was a night for passing torches, in other words.

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Two more states -- Missouri and Arizona -- have now certified the signatures required to place abortion rights on their ballots in November. This brings the total for this election cycle up to eight states, although the possibility of the ballot measures having a meaningful impact on the other races on the ballot realistically only exists in three of them. So far, abortion rights have an unbroken 7-0 record of winning, even in some very red states, so it will be interesting to see if that continues or not. But beyond electoral geekiness, if any of them win it will be a victory for women's rights and freedom over government interference in the most personal of medical decisions.

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Democrats, rather astonishingly, seem to have JD Vance on the ropes already. He's been getting horrible coverage for over a week now, mostly about his rather unique ideas on how childless Americans should be treated as second-class citizens. What seems to be in order right now is a knockout punch. And I've got a doozy of an idea to suggest.

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President Joe Biden wrote a piece for the Washington Post today where he lays out three reforms he now supports: a strong code of ethics for the Supreme Court, term limits for Supreme Court justices, and a constitutional amendment that clearly states that presidents are not above the law. All are good ideas and having the president get behind them is even better. But forgive me if there's also the feeling that Biden's move comes way too late to change anything any time soon. It feels like nothing more than political posturing, at this point.

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