The Spy's Peerless Political Prognosticator Explains it all to You

Editors' Note: This has been an unusually eventful week in the nation's political life, in the same sense that the Hindenburg's last Atlantic crossing was unusually eventful.  It seemed like a good time to check in with the Spy's long-winded [Surely, long-time? – Ed.] Political Editor, the incomparable David Bloviator, and pass along his profound insights on the political merry-go-round to you, the humble reader.  Normally we interview the Great Man at his listening post in the National Press Club bar.  His listening post is for some reason unavailable, but we were nonetheless fortunate to conduct a virtual discussion with the peerless prognosticator at this critical hour.

TMS:    Mr. Bloviator, thank you for agreeing to talk to us.  How would you describe the political situation?

DB:  It is unprecedented.  The playbook has been tossed away.  The entire 2020 campaign has been thrown.

TMS: Thrown where?

DB:  Into chaos, of course.  Also for a loop, and into uncharted waters.  Speaking of waters, get me another double Chivas-and-water, you millennial whippersnapper.

TMS: Perhaps you have forgotten that we are meeting virtually and that I can't get you a drink.

The Great Man.  Room Rater: 0/10

DB:  [looks around for Scotch bottle; disappears from screen]  Dammit to hell, what is this world coming to?  Has anyone suffered much as I have?

TMS: Well, there have been 7 million cases of COVID-19 and 208,000 deaths so I'd have to say yes.

DB:  [returns to screen dropping ice cubes into a mug marked "WORLD'S GREATEST JOURNALIST."]  Now where were we?

TMS: You were saying that we are in uncharted waters.

DB:  Yes indeed.  As my esteemed colleague Maggie Haberman said yesterday: “In any event, the effect of even seemingly cataclysmic events on the race are hard to predict.” I couldn't have said it better myself.

TMS: I suppose that's right.  So where does the Presidential race go from here?

DB:  I foresee it will go off in directions no one can foresee.  We have never had a campaign in which the leader of the Free World is felled by illness.

TMS:  You mean Angela Merkel is ill, too?  I didn't know that.

DB:   You know damn well what I mean, you impudent pup.  But it could be bad news for the Biden campaign.

TMS:  Why is anything that happens bad news for Biden?

DB: Because it raises the specter of Democrats in Disarray.

TMS: They look pretty arrayed right now.

DB:  But you have to admit is was a stroke of genius for the President to take the attention away from his debate performance.

TMS: You mean replacing discussion of his insane debate performance by putting front and center the worst failing of his Administration?

DB:  No one controls the political agenda better than this President.  First he deflected attention away from his insults to the military through his tax returns.  Then he stopped scrutiny of his tax returns by raving through the first debate.  And now he get us to drop discussion of his debate performance by entering Walter Reed Hospital.  The man is a genius!

TMS: The man could be dead by Monday.  That's not genius, that's pandemic disease.

DB: In which case he will be more popular than ever!  And how will Biden deal with that challenge?

TMS: I'm going to guess by being elected in a landslide.

DB: But then he will face even greater challenges.

TMS: That's generally what happens when you take office in a time of epidemic and economic calamity.

DB: Biden must reach out.

TMS: To whom?

DB: To moderates who have supported the President in the past.  I spoke to patrons of a diner in rural Pennsylvania last week and they still supported the President.

TMS: That's because they're racists.

DB: You don't know they're all racists, as Chuck Todd has sagely noted.

TMS: Find me three that aren't.

DB: You're missing the point, man.  Biden must avoid the perception that he is too far left.

TMS: Why is it that Democrats must avoid the perception that they are too far to the left but Republicans, no matter how extreme, do not have to avoid the perception that they are too far to the right?

DB: Dammit, man, I don't make the rules; I just report them. And Rule #1 is never sit there with a mug of melted ice cubes.  [He pours himself another double]

TMS: How does the last-minute nomination of an anti-abortion rights extremist to the Supreme Court affect this political calculus?

DB: It is another Republican masterstroke because of the base.

TMS: What about the base?

DB: It firms the base.  Also fires up the base.

TMS: What about the three-quarters of Americans who don't want to go back to the days of coat-hanger abortions?  And what about the charge that Republicans who blocked Merrick Garland in 2016 are being hypocrites?

DB:  You forget that Mitch McConnell is a master.

TMS: A master of what?

DB: The Senate, man.  Also politics.  And its arcane rules, practices, and traditions.

TMS:  You mean because his majority blocked Garland in March 2016 on the grounds that the next President should make the appointment and now want to ram through Barrett in October 2020 simply because they have the votes?

The crack White House medical team
shown here preparing to brief the press

DB: Exactly!  He knows how to count.

TMS:  Seems like he knows how to lie his chins off.

DB: That too.

TMS: One last topic.  How will Black America's continuing struggle against inequality, racism, and unbridled police violence affect the election?

DB: It represents a danger to Democrats.

TMS: Why?

DB:  Because most Americans want law and order.

TMS: Isn't the right of a Black person to drive, walk, and live without fear of illegal police violence also a matter of law and order?

DB: Of course not.  

TMS:  Why?

DB: If you don't know why by now there's no use my explaining it to you.  But trust me, I'm white about this.

TMS: Thank you, Mr. Bloviator.