Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast.

Today is Monday, October 26th, 2028 days until the election.

I am John Puthwarts, the editor of Commentary Magazine with me is always associate editor

Noah Rothman, high nela, senior writer Christine Rosen, high Christine, and executive editor

Abe Greenwald, high Abe.

So, I'm wondering whether we are going to spend a week talking about whether or not the

polls are tightening and the race is closing or whether the story is going to be that that

isn't happening.

Obviously, you can't anticipate the news, but there seem to be these diametrically opposed

desires, I would say largely among the mainstream media and the Biden campaign, to on the

one hand pretend that the election is over, and on the other hand, to not want to pretend

the election is over because they need people to turn out and not to get over overconfident.

But anything and everything Trump does or says or Pence does or says is criticized for

somehow being an example of electioneering and we should really be beyond that sort of thing

even though we're a week away from the election.

I note that enormous amounts of fun were being made at the idea that Vice President Pence's

campaigning for the re-election of Donald Trump.

National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien said that Pence was an essential worker and

thus needed to continue to go out on the campaign trail despite the fact that some of his

aides had tested positive for the virus and that there was immense amounts of fun being

made of this as though the act of running for president and the re-election of the president

or the election of the new president is not the most essential thing that we face.

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