We begin today with a few definitions, from Merriam-Webster:

fasces
a bundle of rods and among them an ax with projecting blade borne before ancient Roman magistrates as a badge of authority

fascism
(1) a populist political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual, that is associated with a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, and that is characterized by severe economic and social regimentation and by forcible suppression of opposition
(2) a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control

surprise
(1) an attack made without warning
(2) something that surprises
(3) the feeling caused by something unexpected or unusual

October surprise
[US politics] a significant revelation or event in the month prior to an election that has the potential to shift public opinion about an election candidate and that is often orchestrated to influence the election's outcome

That's what the dictionary says.

Today the political world is in a tizzy as Democrats from Kamala Harris on down have latched on to a recent New York Times article in which Donald Trump's longest-serving White House chief of staff, retired four-star Marine General John F. Kelly, stated that he believed Donald Trump fit the definition of a fascist. Here's how he defined the term fascism: "It's a far-right authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy." That's pretty close to that dictionary definition, you've got to admit.

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Last week, we called the presidential race "as close as things can get." This week we have to up that to "even closer than close," we suppose. As things stand, there are two states perfectly tied in the polls, which leaves neither candidate with enough to win the Electoral College outright without adding at least one of them.

At this point, it's hard to say if anything that is happening in the polls is truly all that meaningful. All of the changes that have been happening have been states wobbling around on razors' edges, between favoring one candidate by a point or two to being perfectly tied to favoring the other by a point or two. All seven of the battleground states are essentially doing this, so the shifts are really just the margin of error between the different pollsters, for the most part. Neither candidate has managed to secure a definitive edge in any of them. No clear trends have appeared anywhere.

With two weeks to go before Election Day, it's anyone's guess what is going to happen. Things could go either way. Either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris could sweep all (or almost all) of the battleground states, or they could divvy them up between them. The result in the Electoral College might wind up being one of the closest elections in American history, or one candidate could wind up with over 300 votes. It's really anyone's guess.

Let's take a look at this week's charts, although I will admit that they really don't tell us much, other than "it's really close."

The first chart shows the state-by-state polling added up for both candidates. As always, data is provided by the Electoral-Vote.com site, which tracks current polling in every state. Each state's Electoral College votes are added into the totals for both candidates, to see who has enough states to win.

Donald Trump is represented in red, from the top of the chart downwards. Kamala Harris is in blue, from the bottom up. Whichever color crosses the center 50-percent line should (if all the polling is perfectly accurate) emerge as the winner. But as mentioned, the white areas show states that are Tied, and (just like last week) this week that's where the action was.

[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]

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Two weeks from tomorrow is Election Day. To be followed by Election Night, when we all gather 'round our screens and watch the returns come in and wait for the experts to call each of the states for one candidate or the other. But remember last time? This time might turn out the same -- instead of just one night of stress, we may all have to live through "Election Week," as the final votes are counted.

Four years ago, I heard a friend-of-a-friend anecdote about a small child who complained that Mommy and Daddy were hogging the television in order to endlessly watch the most boring show imaginable -- which the kid called: "The Map Show." All I'm saying is we might be in for season two of The Map Show this time around.

What with focusing on the actual election, what many are losing sight of (and I definitely include myself in that) is that Election Day isn't going to be the end of the stress, it could easily become just the beginning of a whole new phase of stress. That could all kick off with us all waiting on a handful of states to finish counting every single vote. Pennsylvania certainly springs to mind, as does Arizona and Georgia. Wisconsin and Michigan could also take a while, who knows?

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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.

We did manage to hand out our weekly awards, for two campaign videos that appeared this week, but we're going to whip through those pretty quickly in order to get on with the main event this week.

We apologize for the foreshortened introduction this week, but as we said we're finding it hard to focus on anything outside the realm of the presidential race.

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Election Day is still over two weeks away, so this might seem a little premature, but I thought I'd write today about the key races I will be watching as the night of November 5th unfolds. Because while the main event will be the presidential election, as we saw last time around these things can drag on for not just hours but days, and in the meantime there are plenty of other races worth paying attention to.

Since the Earth spins the way it does, the night of the election will be a staggered event, starting on the East Coast and moving slowly westward. How fast all the races will be called will depend on a number of variables -- when the polls close in each state, how fast they count votes, and how close the races are, just to name the biggest ones.

So what follows is a rough timeline of the races I will be watching, as it all unfolds on the evening of Election Day.

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Imagine, if you will, if President Joe Biden -- before he dropped his re-election bid -- had held what was billed as a televised town hall in a battleground state. Imagine further that after answering only five questions, Biden's brain seemed to freeze and he just stood there on stage while music played for the remaining 39 minutes of the scheduled event -- as Biden occasionally (and lethargically) moved his hands to the music a bit, but also occasionally just stood there with his eyes closed gripping the back of a chair. Now imagine what the media reaction would have been.

If you guessed an avalanche of "Biden's Too Old!" and "Biden Loses It At Town Hall!" and "Is It Time To Invoke The 25th Amendment?" stories would have flooded the media zone for at least a full week, you would be correct. That is exactly what would have happened.

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Three weeks out from Election Day, the presidential race seems to be a complete tossup. There was some movement in the past week's polling, but it was so tiny and incremental it all should really be chalked up as nothing more than statistical noise. The battleground races are so close that they're all teetering ever so slightly between the two candidates, but must really be seen as too close to call, or tied.

To put it another way: this is as close as things can get, folks. There's not a lot you can say in any sort of definitive way other than "the race looks tied." Which is going to make for a shorter-than-average Electoral Math column today.

The big winner of the week (if you can call it that) would have to be the "Tied" column. States that were barely leaning one way or another shifted just enough for the polling to be a dead heat, in multiple states. Some of them moved back to leaning one way or another, but all of these states are still incredibly close and could go either way.

Having said that, let's take a look at what the charts tell us (which, admittedly, can be summed up as "not much").

The first chart shows the state-by-state polling added up for both candidates. As always, data is provided by the Electoral-Vote.com site, which tracks current polling in every state. Each state's Electoral College votes are added into the totals for both candidates, to see who has enough states to win.

Donald Trump is represented in red, from the top of the chart downwards. Kamala Harris is in blue, from the bottom up. Whichever color crosses the center 50-percent line should (if all the polling is perfectly accurate) emerge as the winner. But as mentioned, the white areas show states that are Tied, and this week that's where the action was.

[Click on any of theses graphs to see larger-scale versions.]

There was a lot of movement both into and out of the Tied column, as you can see. Tied moved from zero to 45 Electoral Votes (EV) before falling back to 10 EV at the end of the week.

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The Republican Party is now allergic to the truth. This is what comes from the entire party following, with slavish devotion, a man who lies as easily as he breathes. When Donald Trump was president, the Washington Post counted up over 30,000 lies he told -- an average of 21 per day. Since then, Trump has successfully purged the party of pretty much everyone who has ever disagreed with him on any of them. All that are left are those that are willing to buy into the mindset that reality is what Donald Trump says it is, period. Democrats have been wishing for a while that the Republicans would all wake up one day and return to sanity, but now it's more of a wish that they return to some sort of objective reality -- rather than the Trumpian fantasyland they all now inhabit.

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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.

But that's the sort of thing you've been getting sick of reading, right? Horserace reporting whose only focus is predicting the outcome of the race is rampant at the moment, which seems a little odd after the mainstream media had such a hissy fit over the supposed lack of policy debates between the candidates. Currently, both candidates are announcing new policies (mostly on taxes) almost daily, promising voters things which may or may not ever become reality. Just today Donald Trump promised he'd wave a magic wand and allow hurricane victims to completely write off the purchase of electrical generators, after earlier promising to make interest on car loans deductible as well. Earlier in the week, Kamala Harris promised to make Medicare cover at-home care for seniors, and her campaign put out a fact sheet saying she'd also support Medicare covering vision and hearing benefits -- something Bernie Sanders has been championing for a while.

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America is about to experience a second large hurricane in a short period of time. Florida is battening down in preparation. Hurricane Milton comes on the heels of Hurricane Helene, which devastated communities all across the South. Mountain towns in Georgia and North Carolina were hit particularly hard. But what is absolutely disgraceful in all of this is the storm of lies that has erupted over the recovery and aid efforts.

These lies are not being told by sketchy online characters or your all-too-credulous uncle. They are instead coming from the Republican Party's candidate for president, as well as far too many other Republican politicians. They don't care that hundreds of people have died. They don't care that tens of thousands are in dire straights. They don't care that their lies are making things worse for the survivors of the storm. All they care about is sowing fear and mistrust, in a cynical effort to score some cheap political points.

This is beyond disgraceful, it is downright dangerous. Donald Trump spouting conspiracy theories and outright lies is hampering the ability of FEMA and other disaster responders to do their jobs. Trump and his ilk are exploiting people's distrust of government to make them even more fearful of people who are genuinely just trying to help others.

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