Not since the beginning of time has anyone ever made greater use of superlatives than Donald Trump. He has constantly been "the most" this, "the least" that and always the "best ever."
Superlatives and exaggerations are a common indulgence to which we all succumb. Journalists are, well, just the worst. Take the first line of this story (see above). Or take Politico's summary Saturday morning: "It's been the most unconventional and contentious election season of our lifetime."
We know what we mean when we say such things. We also know what Trump means when he says things like "you're going to see things you've never thought about seeing" or "they will get hit like no one's ever been hit before." We have long since become inured to him saying he is "the greatest jobs producer God has ever created" or, on the other hand, "the least racist person you will ever interview" or "the least anti-Semitic person that you've ever seen in your entire life."
To some degree, all this rhetorical excess makes it difficult to take what the president says seriously when he says serious things. Moreover, it becomes difficult to be taken seriously when reporting things that really do happen and really are unprecedented or truly record setting.
Trump campaign surrogates have been told to keep their diaries clear after November 3, reported the outlet. It cited two campaign officials and a surrogate who said it was a real possibility that the president would continue to hold rallies in key states even as election officials tallied up ballots.
The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.
Trump's raucous rallies, where the president rails against enemies, boasts of his achievements and basks in the adulation of his core supporters, have long been the centerpiece of his campaigns.
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That cynicism doesn’t seem to be motivating them to sit on the sidelines during elections. Instead, younger people are much more likely than older people to report that they or members of their household have experienced barriers to voting, which suggests that they may genuinely find it more difficult to cast a ballot. And that problem could be compounded this year given the extraordinary challenges of voting during a pandemic.
American presidential elections are a strange beast. As the world was reminded in 2016, the candidate who wins the most votes overall won’t necessarily win the White House. For that, you can blame and/or thank the Electoral College.
More than 150 million people are expected to vote in the 2020 U.S. presidential election, but none of them will be casting a straightforward ballot for Donald Trump or Joe Biden. Both those candidates’ names will be on the ballot, of course. But when Americans go to vote for their preferred presidential candidate, they are actually voting for the state electors who have pledged to support that candidate in the Electoral College. Only in December do the 538 members of the Electoral College cast their votes for president, officially deciding who will take the oath of office in January.
The Empire State is on course to move even more to the political left just two years after Democrats won control of both houses of the state Legislature for the first time in a decade. The 40-member Democratic conference only needs to flip two Republican-held seats in the 63-member state Senate to achieve a two-thirds supermajority to accompany their existing one in the Assembly. No party has done that for at least a century. If it happens in 2020, New York could join California, Rhode Island and Hawaii as one of the states where Democrats have a governor in office and two-thirds of the seats in both houses of the state Legislature.
A state Senate supermajority for Democrats would certainly change the political landscape of Albany. Republicans would be more irrelevant in state politics than ever if they lose key races this year in Western New York, Long Island and the Hudson Valley. There would also be implications for the balance of power between the state Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo, since a supermajority can override a governor’s veto. Democrats would also control legislative redistricting because the current system allows a two-thirds majority of the state Legislature to have final approval of any redistricting plans created by a 10-person bipartisan commission.οΏ½