Here’s the coronavirus death toll through October 8. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

From Mitch McConnell, explaining why he hasn’t visited the White House recently:

My impression was their approach to how to handle this was different than mine.

In case it’s not obvious, “this” is the coronavirus. Whatever else you can say about the guy, McConnell has taken the virus seriously enough to insist on mask wearing and social distancing on the floor of the Senate. Of course, he doesn’t take it quite seriously enough to publicly disagree with President Trump about masks, nor does he take it seriously enough to bother doing much about it legislatively. Baby steps.

This is a picture of a black-eyed Susan vine. It’s not just a common old black-eyed Susan, like you might find down the street, it’s a special black-eyed Susan because it’s a vine and it lives in Colombia, which is thousands of miles away. I’m curious about why there’s such a big difference between a black-eyed Susan and a black-eyed Susan vine, so perhaps someone in comments will address this mystery.

President Trump went on CNBC this morning and rambled like a madman for an hour. He’s unhappy with pretty much everyone, it turns out, and in particular he’s mad at Secretary of State Mike Pompeo:

At another point, Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Pompeo for not releasing documents related to Hillary Clinton, who was secretary of state under President Obama. “They’re in the State Department, but Mike Pompeo has been unable to get them out, which is very sad, actually. I’m not happy about him for that reason,” Mr. Trump said. The president has been tweeting this week about documents that purportedly show that Mrs. Clinton planned to gin up a scandal tying Mr. Trump to Russia. Democrats say the documents that the administration released are misleading.

If I recall correctly—and I do—Hillary Clinton was secretary of state through 2012. There’s really no way she could have been running a State Department cabal in 2016 that tried to tie Trump to Russia. What’s more, she didn’t need a secret cabal anyway, since she was on the record publicly of accusing Trump of being Putin’s puppet. But this is the weirdo scandal of the week among Trumpies and I suppose there’s no point in trying to make sense of it.

In other news, Trump is also mad at Kamala Harris, Attorney General Bill Barr, and FBI Director Christopher Wray. Harris is a “monster” and a “communist,” according to Trump. And he’s pretty sure he’s no longer contagious at all.

Just another Thursday during the Trump era.

Unsurprisingly, new unemployment claims remained high this week:

These newly unemployed workers, along with those who have been out of work for months, will get nothing to help them out aside from standard unemployment insurance. Why? Because Republicans refuse to do anything about it. They’re too mad at Nancy Pelosi to think about anyone else.

Here’s the coronavirus death toll through October 7. The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here.

Over at National Review, Mike Pence has been enthusiastically declared the debate winner by Michael, Dan, Isaac (“Pence aces the audition”), David, Jack, Kyle (“Pence mops the floor with Harris”), and Jim. I have a feeling they might be a little less excited over there if they had a wee bit more gender diversity among their pundits.

“She was trying to hold back because she didn’t want to be seen as an angry woman and Pence was playing up the patronizing CEO thing and I promise you every woman in America noticed.”
– My wife just now.

— Mikel Jollett (@Mikel_Jollett) October 8, 2020

Number of times Harris continued to speak after @SusanPage signaled (“Thank you” or “Senator Harris”) that her time was up: 13.

Number of times Pence continued to speak after Page signaled (“Thank you” or “Vice President Pence”) that his time was up: 45.https://t.co/sbZL8dlZcl

— Will Saletan (@saletan) October 8, 2020

NEW @CNN snap poll of debate watchers: who won the debate?

Women
Harris – 69% (+39)
Pence – 30%

Men
Harris – 48% (+2)
Pence – 46%

(Sample is 38% Dem, 33% Ind and 29% GOP) pic.twitter.com/WveNbDXSZ1

— Andrew Solender (@AndrewSolender) October 8, 2020

.@KamalaHarris is every woman in the workplace. pic.twitter.com/aYv6ZBttVJ

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) October 8, 2020

This was, needless to say, a less fiery affair than the first Trump-Biden debate. Pence kinda sorta tried to emulate Trump and talk over Harris, but his heart wasn’t in it and Harris shut him down pretty effectively whenever he tried. “I’m talking,” she said, as if lecturing a child, and Pence mostly caved in.

Both candidates dodged a question here and there, but I’m not sure most people notice this kind of thing unless it’s pointed out. Pence did this once, but Harris never did.

On climate change, notably, Pence basically said fuhgeddaboutit. Wildfires? It’s forest management. Hurricanes? Nothing to see here. Rising temperatures? Sure, but NO ONE KNOWS what’s causing it. It’s a mystery! This kind of thing goes over big with the Limbaugh crowd, but I don’t think it flies with the suburban voters that Pence and Trump need to win. Harris, by contrast, talked about climate change a bit mechanically, but basically soundly. She didn’t sound radical, just committed to renewable energy, green jobs, etc. I’d say she won this exchange pretty easily.

On the coronavirus, Harris naturally attacked the Trump administration record, and Pence tried to pretend that Harris was disparaging the sacrifices of the American people. This is something Republicans do all the time when the subject is war (“How dare you attack our boys in uniform!”) but I’m not sure I’ve ever seen it in this context before. Then Pence went on to say that he and Trump didn’t believe in “mandates”—a conservative bête noir from the Obamacare debate—and that’s why they allowed people to wear masks or not just as they pleased. This was pretty lame, though I’m sure the Trump base cheered it. Harris just plugged away on the theme of 200,000 American deaths, which was probably a smart thing to do.

I think this debate actually did a fairly good job of showing up the policy differences between the two sides. As for who won, I’d give it to Harris on points. Nobody scored any knockouts, but Pence’s mini-Trump act didn’t really work well and I’ll bet that most women were unimpressed with Pence’s inability to respect normal boundaries.

---

It’s time to start the first presidential debate of 2024! Let’s go.

10:32 – And that’s a wrap.

10:30 – Why can’t we all get along? Pence says that if you turn off the news, we already do get along. Harris says Biden is a bipartisan god.

10:27 – Pence gets the same question and also ignores it.

10:25 – What will Biden do if he wins but Trump refuses to leave the White House? Harris declines to waste time answering this, which I think is the right thing to do.

10:20 – Pence says Harris misquoted Trump when he said there were “fine people on both sides” of Charlottesville. Actually, I think she got it right. Not everyone does.

10:19 – Harris: Trump is a big old racist.

10:16 – Pence’s heart goes out to Breonna Taylor, but he trusts our justice system. So, no, the police did nothing wrong. In fact, Trump and Pence support law enforcement at all times and under every circumstance (more or less).

10:10 – How would Trump protect people with pre-existing conditions? Unsurprisingly, Pence just flatly ignores the question.

10:01 – As near as I can tell, Pence has been practically begging for Susan Page to call him out for talking too long. She finally did it. I can only assume that this is part of the Trump strategy of insisting that the press is thoroughly biased against him.

9:56 – Pence says NATO is now contributing more to our common defense thanks to Trump. It’s actually more Obama’s doing.

9:55 – Harris defends the Iran deal. America is now less safe.

9:54 – Harris: “Trump has betrayed our friends and embraced dictators around the world.”

9:48 – Pence has gone all-in on accusing Harris of lying. But he does it nicely!

9:45 – Harris hasn’t really been willing to say much about Biden’s climate plan.

9:39 –  Pence: “The climate is changing.” But why? WHY?

9:33 – Pence says American household income rose $4,000 following the Trump tax cut. This is actually true: according to the Census Bureau, median household income rose $4,379 between 2018 and 2019. On the other hand, there’s also this:

9:30 – Harris says Joe Biden will invest billions of dollars in innovation. I don’t know how true that is, but it’s nice to hear it getting a brief shoutout.

9:27 – Pence says Trump has paid millions of dollars in taxes—sales taxes and property taxes. Income taxes are notably missing.

9:20 – Pence begs Harris to stop playing politics with the vaccine. That’s chutzpah, for sure, but I think it came across pretty well. He scored some points here.

9:16 – Pence is opposed to “mandates.” He trusts the American people to do what’s right. That’s why they didn’t insist on masks at the announcement of Amy Coney Barrett for the Supreme Court. Uh huh.

9:12 – Pence tries to pretend that Harris was criticizing the American people, not Pence, when she said that the administration’s COVID-19 strategy didn’t work. “The American people deserve credit for the sacrifices they’ve made.”

9:05 – Susan Page says we will have a civil debate.

8:55 – My recollection from 2016 is that Pence lied a lot in his debate with Tim Kaine. Will he do the same tonight? I don’t see why not. Lying has become so normalized within Trump’s circle that it’s kind of shocking when they accidentally tell the truth occasionally. Unlike Kaine, however, Kamala Harris has the demeanor and discipline of a professional prosecutor, which is exactly what she used to be. She will be considerably more aggressive than Kaine was about tearing Pence’s lies to shreds. Will it work? We’re about to find out.

My usual Wednesday crash came early today and I just woke up from it. Since the news is mostly about the continuing insane weirdness of Donald Trump’s brush with COVID-19 and how it’s energized the anti-mask fervor among his fans, how about if we just take a look at the latest polls? Here’s the Economist aggregate:

For the past week or so Joe Biden has been slowly increasing his lead over Trump. Overall, the Economist now gives Biden a 91 percent chance of winning. That may sound great to Biden supporters, but remember: that still means Trump has a 9 percent chance of winning. It ain’t over til it’s over.

This is a detail of Frank Gehry’s famous Walt Disney Concert Hall. I suppose a million people have taken a million pictures like this, but the great thing is that there’s always another one that’s just a little bit different, depending on light and angle. It really is a gorgeous piece of architecture no matter what time of day you see it.