On this week’s Al Franken podcast, his guests are debate prep veterans James Carville and Philippe Reines, as they game out (as Al puts it) the Most Important Event in the History of the World. Plus Al shares some thoughts on the great Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  This is a wonderful episode – Carville is Carville and always lively and interesting to listen to about his perspective on debates.  (Made all the more fun as he keeps getting interrupted by phone calls he has to take and a vacuum cleaner.)  But the segment with Philippe Reines is highly-recommended, even if you’ve never listened to these podcasts before.  Reines played Trump in debate prep with Hillary Clinton in 2016.  And the stories he tells of the preparation he himself took to study Trump and learn how to get in his head and know what to expect from him is absolutely fascinating, as are his tales of dealing with Secretary Clinton in their prep.  And then he and Franken do a mock-debate of sorts.  If you only want to hear the part with Reinnes (again, highly recommend), you can just to the 28-minute mark.
 

The Mystery Guest on this segment of What's My Line? is Allan Sherman.  Long before Randy Rainbow (though without the production value), Allan Sherman didn't just have a successful career in the 1960s with his song parodies, but at the early part of that he was a true phenomenon.  When I was a kid, I went with my mother and saw him perform in concert at this height.  In fact, he even references that concert in his autobiography, A Gift of Laughter.  He's goofy and having fun here, interacting with the panel more than most guests.

But his appearance is special for another reason most people aren't aware of.  After the very long success of What's My Line?, another somewhat similar quiz show came along and had a solid, successful run, I've Got a Secret?  And why that's notable is that it was co-created by a young man starting out in the entertainment business on the production end -- Allan Sherman.

You can jump to his segment at around the 16-minute mark.

​In my article here yesterday, I wrote how as many well-deserved fire alarm bells were going off in the news over Trump's horrific statement on transition, I thought it would backfire on him and in a big way, because at heart almost all Americans, whatever their party and political beliefs, want a peaceful transfer of power. Some cultists may not mind since it’s Trump, but even most Republicans do want a peaceful transition, and I was sure that nearly all (if not all) undecided independents do.  And now comes this from a pollster who does a regular focus group of undecided women voters and says things took a major turn this week.

“Multiple people immediately jump in to say that they’re leaning more towards Joe Biden,” Sarah Longwell said. “Then it was revealed that the big thing impacting their thinking had nothing to do with the courts — it was Donald Trump’s refusal to state that he would accommodate a peaceful transition of power.”

You can read the full story here.

​The first month of his time in office, Trump said that he would have a great new healthcare plan that would be so wonderful it would have more in it that the Affordable Care Act and cost less.  He also said that "No one knew that healthcare was so hard," so, you know there's that.  (And yes, pretty much everyone knew that healthcare was really incredibly hard.)

Over the past 3-1/2 years, Trump kept talking about his wonderful new healthcare plan that would be better and cheaper and nowhere in sight.  And in July, he told Chris Wallace on "Fox News" that his big, beautiful, new healthcare plan would be announced in two weeks.  

For the record, "two weeks" was August 2, which as the calendar flies was 53 days ago.  But what's two months when we're quibbling over...well, never.

But...but...Good News!  Yesterday, Trump finally released his big, beautiful, new healthcare plan!!.  Honest.  And it was really cool, as long as you're only into the environment and conserving paper.  And not actual providing healthcare to anyone.

Trump's plan does the following (sort of, bear with me, don't jump to any conclusions) --

It gets rid of "surprise billing," where people go into the hospital under their insurance plan, and work is farmed out to third parties who aren't covered by the plan, and the patient gets a big bill that they have to pay.

It also protects coverage of pre-existing conditions.

And in addition, it's important to note that if you were expect more, no, that's pretty much it.  Like I said, it's great if you're into saving paper.  There's also a "However...", which I would imagine most people were expecting, even with something this dismal.

The first "However" is that it doesn't actually get rid of surprise billing.  It's just a non-binding executive order.  He directs Congress to work with him to get rid of surprise billing.

And the second "However" is that Trump's Justice Department is currently in the Supreme Court working with 28 Republican states to argue on behalf of eliminating the entire Affordable Care Act which would mean getting rid of protections of pre-existing conditions.

So, that's it.  Pretty much two bullet points, and two "However's..." to go with them.

Trump's big, beautiful, new healthcare plan.  In the middle of a pandemic.  Where 207,516 Americans have died, so far.

Personally, I think Trump would have been much better served to do what he always does, promise and do nothing, just keep putting it off.  He could have said that his big, beautiful new healthcare plan was still on its way, and you'll love it because it will be so amazing.  Few people would believe him, but he couldn't be criticized for the details.  But this -- releasing this as his big, beautiful new health care plan -- this is nuts.  This shows he's got nothing.  This is reaching into your pockets and pulling them out, showing that you have a gum wrapper and a torn, used tissue.

Given that Joe Biden was on the team that passed the Affordable Care Act, I suspect that the topic will come up in the debates.  And that he will have a whole lot more to say about healthcare than Trump.  Especially since we're in the middle of a pandemic where healthcare is really quite important.

And make no mistake, this isn't just Trump's big, beautiful new healthcare plan.  This is the new healthcare "plan" of the Republican Party.

Because, yes, this isn't about Trump, we know who he is.  This is about the elected members of the Republican Party who enable him, support this "plan" and are complicit.

At any other time, so many other stories would be the five-bell headline -- from the Breonna Taylor decision to charge no one in her killing, despite having settled a civil suit with the family for $12 million...to reports of former Secretary of Agriculture Rick Perry in an apparently-corrupt deal with a Ukrainian oil company to sit on its board... to the story of how the current nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security (after having lead it illegally for months as "acting head") oversaw a $6 million contract to a firm where his wife worked.  And more.

But they pale to Trump's comments not guaranteeing a peaceful transfer of power should he lose the election, and suggesting ballots be ignored -- on  the heels of a hair-raising article in The Atlantic that described Trump plans to subvert the Electoral College by having Republican legislatures in battleground states take back the power to appoint Electors.

As much as I was repulsed by Trump’s response at the press conference, I loved that he was asked – and that the reporter followed up.  So, perhaps we'll start to get journalists challenging him more, not in "debate," but to get his words on serious, uncommon matters like this on the record.  And in that regard, I also think that answers like he gave will repulse most voters, including some Republicans who aren’t cultists, but most-importantly undecided Independents.  I say that because I don’t think almost any American voter wants a contested election or wants a president to not commit to peaceful transfer of power.  Cultists may be okay with their beloved Trump refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power, but as a principle of Constitutional American life, I don’t think a president not committing to a peaceful transfer of power is something that comes across well to Americans.  And it will hurt him even more in the polls, for which yesterday there were two new ones that show him 10 points behind.
 
And ultimately, that will be the biggest protection against Trump's attempt to manipulate and challenge the results  – having, hopefully as big a landslide victory as possible.  It may not be that, it may not even be a victory at all.  But as all major polls show in the popular vote and by Electoral vote, it appears headed in that direction.  There was a major election analyst this week (I forget who, sorry), who said there is a much greater chance of Biden getting 350 Electoral votes (40%) than of Trump just winning (25%).  And I think every public action like this on Wednesday that Trump makes hurts him with those in the middle all the more.  And it's not that it changes people's minds on a wide, massive scale, but just stripping away 1% is significant.
 
And no, I don’t know.  But that’s what I think.

I also think there's a big hurdle in Trump trying to challenge the validity vote-by-mail and taking it to court.  And that hurdle is that voting-by-mail is not only legal in every state, and in operation in every state, but has been for many generations, so the precedent is very long established.

All that aside, there are two other issues related to this, in particular to the article in The Atlantic, that I believe offset some of the hair-on-fire horror that the author reported on Trump and GOP plans. 

The first is when I heard Barton Gellman, the author of The Atlantic article, state as legal fact something that supports the foundation of his article, which was a plan by Team Trump to challenge Electors being decided by popular vote, so that the Republican state legislatures can pick their own Electors, which was long-time past how things were handled before tradition changed all that.  What Mr. Gellman said was that Bush v. Gore set down the principle that states can take back the power of votes to determine Electoral votes.  The thing is...my understanding of Bush v. Gore is that it very clearly said that its ruling should not be taken as precedent, and that it solely pertained to this one specific election in Florida in 2000.
 
Now, maybe there’s another argument that supports states taking back the power.  Or maybe the Supreme Court could rule that way on its own.  But using Bush v. Gore as the precedent to substantiate your article is (as far as I can tell) without any foundation.  At the very least, I’m surprised that I didn't hear any analysts bring this up.

And there was one other thing The Atlantic article seems to ignore as a critical hurdle to its Worst Case Scenario -- a major thing.
 
Even if everything ends up happening exactly like article says Team Trump is in the early stages of tenatively maneuvering, the Electoral College doesn’t work like that.  It doesn't just meet, tabulate in their votes, and it’s all done.  Those votes actually have to be certified by the House and the Senate!  And…it’s not the current House and the Senate, but the Congress which meets in January, after the results of this election have taken place.  The new Congress.  Which means very possibly a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate.
 
I think that if Trump and Republicans actually pull off this outlandish plan, it is near impossible for me to imagine a Democratic House, let alone also a Democratic House and a Democratic Senate (if they take control) certifying such an unprecedented power-grab end run around the popular vote. 

Yes, if it all transpired this way and came down to that, it would certainly be a political mess.  But the point is that it's not the simplistic matter of just manipulating state legislatures and counting the Electoral votes.  There is another layer of protection built in.

But for all of this -- for all the hideous ghastliness of Trump's statement and The Atlantic reporting of GOP plans, the one statement that stands out just as loudly, if not more so now, that all the times before.  And the mantra can be repeated by everyone here in their sleep --

This is not about Trump, we know who he is.  This is about the elected members of the Republican Party who enable him and are complicit in it all.  This only happens if the Republican members of Congress support and allow it.  And they do support it.  And do allow it.  And at its core it is pure, book-definition fascism. Attempting to undermine trust in government institutions, and undermining what the truth and reality are, so that those in power are free to define it.

​This isn't about Trump.  It's about today's Republican Party which has gone full fascist.