The ghost of 2016, when Donald Trump overcame dismal mid-October polls and eked out a surprise Electoral College victory over Hillary Clinton to become president.
Trump's supporters are hoping it will happen again, that the polls aren't registering the full degree of his support among voters. At the same time, many of Joe Biden's backers are nervously eying his lead in key swing state polls, worried it won't endure for the next nine days.
But it's not 2016 anymore. So much has changed in four years: Trump is no longer the new disrupter, he's a president trailing multiple incendiary controversies as he seeks four more years. And Biden isn't Hillary Clinton: He carries far lower negatives and higher support in the Rust Belt states that put Trump in the White House - whether that's enough to win him the White House remains to be seen.
The biggest difference? They're running in an America surging with Covid-19, where more than 224,000 people have died and millions have lost their jobs.
'I'm immune'
Three weeks ago, Trump announced he had contracted the disease. At Thursday's debate, he said, "I got better very fast or I wouldn't be here tonight. And now they say I'm immune."
The missed opportunity for Trump to speak truth to American voters about the pandemic stood in sharp relief to the op-ed by another Covid-19 survivor, Trump ally Chris Christie, in the Wall Street Journal. Christie, who suffers from asthma, spent a week in the intensive care unit and had plenty of time to reflect.
Barrett on the verge
Republican control of one-and-a-half branches of government - the Presidency and the Senate - is at risk on November 3, but whatever happens, the party is on the verge of cementing a 6-3 conservative majority on the top level of the third branch, the US Supreme Court. At 48, Judge Amy Coney Barrett could spend decades on the highest court if and when she is confirmed this coming week.
After ducking the question of whether he would favor expanding the Supreme Court, Biden said this week that, if elected, he would appoint a bipartisan commission to study potential court changes.
W. Kamau Bell argued that adding more justices is crucial if Democrats win control of the Senate and White House. "Why start with something so impossible sounding with all the crises we have on our plates? Because everything that is essential to our democracy - from protecting voting rights to literally ensuring the survival of this planet by combating climate change - depends on it..."
In her confirmation hearing, Barrett didn't tip her hand on how she might rule in the Trump-backed lawsuit to overturn Obamacare, which comes up for oral arguments a week after the election. But her prior skepticism over the court's backing of the Affordable Care Act strikes fear in those dependent on its guarantee of insurance coverage for those with pre-existing conditions.
'Freedom for peace?'
President Trump's complaints about mail-in ballots and his talk of a "rigged" election have raised fears that he might refuse to surrender power if he loses the election. Joe Lockhart isn't convinced they would play out. It's not because Trump is committed to the fundamentals of democracy, he wrote, but because "the President will put his own interests ahead of the country's, as he always does. And that may actually guarantee a peaceful transition of power."
Trump's company is under investigation by prosecutors, and he has personally guaranteed hundreds of millions in debt coming due in the next few years, according to the New York Times.
For more on the election:
Covid-19 in small-town America
The overall national statistics on Covid-19 don't fully tell the tale of its spread. Infectious disease expert Dr. Kent Sepkowitz pointed out that the "surges across the nation ... are occurring in different areas than the initial spring months of the pandemic, which was most pronounced in large Northern cities, or the summer increase among Southern states." It's "being felt most acutely by small-town America."
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AND...'Contagion' or 'Emily in Paris'?
Are you ready to be frightened?
In the world before the pandemic, the playful spookiness of Halloween came as a welcome diversion for many. And, as Holly Thomas noted, "back in early March, when Covid-19 was still a new concept that hadn't materially affected so many people's lives, many people started obsessively watching the 2011 thriller 'Contagion,' in which Gwyneth Paltrow plays patient zero in a pandemic that ravages the globe. Lists were published of similar disease disaster-themed movies to enjoy, and for some at least, the idea of an actual global pandemic clearly still felt abstract enough to proffer an odd frisson of excitement while watching a fictional one on screen."
"Halloween-as-usual embodies the spirit of both these cultural benchmarks. You get the thrill of a temporary fright, and the silly, sugary kick of all the trimmings that go alongside it. But put them together in the new world we're living in, and the whole thing feels out of sync."
Don't cancel this year's Halloween for kids, Thomas wrote. But maybe for adults, it's time for a rethink.
