THE SCARY 2020 ELECTION.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: MIDDLE AMERICA

Joe Biden's growing lead over Donald Trump in national polls ahead of the 2020 presidential election makes sense if you think most Americans would prefer a leader who is willing and able to do something about an out-of-control pandemic and a crashing economy.

Day by day, Trump seems to be unraveling. His meandering, narcissistic Rose Garden campaign speech; his insistence that schools fully open in the fall, whatever the consequences; and his helpless, scattered appearance before a half-empty stadium in Tulsa, Oklahoma, all add up to a long downhill slide. And that's leaving aside the racist attacks on protesters of police violence, who a majority of Americans support, and all the crazy talk about China.

The man has cracked. He's un-presidential. His administration is an unmitigated disaster. Why do we keep rediscovering these facts?

Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, was able to rack up a double-digit lead that has held through most of the summer just by staying in his basement and letting Trump run to the end of his rope.

Nationally, Biden is about ten percentage points ahead of Trump, on average. But don't forget that in the mid-summer of 2016, Hillary Clinton held a seven-point lead over the same bloviating orange imposter.

In fact, the current state of the 2020 election is scarily similar to where things were in 2016. A majority of Americans are hoping that Trump can't really win, because it seems incredible that he could. (Let's be honest, many of us are still incredulous that he won the last time.)

Progressives disappointed by the outcome of the Democratic primary are being urged to unify, lest the feckless unreliables the party depends on to vote show themselves to be feckless and unreliable once again. At least Biden, in his meetings with his more progressive rivals and other progressive organizations, seems to be making an effort to appeal to younger voters instead of the usual eat-your-vegetables approach.

That's progress.

I don't question the wisdom of doing everything possible to get out the vote against Donald Trump. I personally would vote for a rock in my backyard over Trump. But I am kind of amazed that this is where we are, with a lackluster candidate running a stay-at-home campaign during a time of unprecedented national and global crisis.

Will young, idealistic voters who were energized by Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders get up off the couch for Biden? This is the same question I asked about Clinton--and was...