Stormy Weather

By Sniffles

A hurricane hit the US today — Louisiana's third named storm, in fact — and there was hardly any coverage of it, outside of The Weather Channel. That's 2020 for you. But what little we saw of Zeta reminded us of something we cats learned when we lived in Florida: Every hurricane is different. Andrew wasn't David, and David wasn't Floyd, and Floyd wasn't Wilma, and Wilma wasn't... you get the idea.

They all behaved differently. Presidential elections do, too. We Democrats need to concentrate on that even though the trauma we endured four years ago has made us hyper-vigilant and ever-nervous. Here are a few reasons 2020 isn't 2016.

First, whatever the pollsters were doing wrong last time around, they've corrected. Actually, we're willing to go one step farther and speculate that they may have over-corrected. It could be possible that they're over-sampling Trump supporters. We don't know this, we're just saying.

(On that note, have you noticed how when talking heads say "Biden's lead is within the margin of error," they always assume that the MOE goes in Trump's direction? Why? If Biden has a three-point lead and the MOE is four points, why couldn't Biden really have, for example, a six-point lead? We wish somebody would point this out.)

Second, the race has been stable for months now. If you look up the word "stability" in the dictionary, you'll see a graph of Biden's lead since he wrapped up the nomination.

Third, Benedict Donald was lucky in 2016. He's been spectacularly unlucky this year. On top of the COVID epidemic (which of course he could have mitigated had he taken it seriously), smaller misfortunes keep piling up — from tweeting "I just won" about a debate before it happens, to freezing temperatures in Omaha, to a rained-out rally today in North Carolina (thanks, Hurricane Zeta).

Fourth, those district-level polls that the Cook Political Report's Dave Wasserman has been eyeballing for months now are ringing alarm bells for the Republican side this year, not the Democratic one.

Finally, we have a pandemic. It's affected everyone in the country, and not in a good way. Especially Benedict Donald.

Obviously, it's going to take us years to recover from the shock of 2016. But the best medicine for that would be a Biden-Harris victory next week. If you do one thing between now and then (aside from going to the polls yourself), encourage everyone you know who's filled out an absentee ballot to drop it off, not mail it in. And then let's sit back and watch Hurricane Voter roll in. We cats are looking to PURR.