Note: This post is about two things: The latest shocking poll results, and my very memorable day on steroids about one third as strong as the ones the President is taking.

Watching President Trump zip around the White House in the last few days like Wiley E. Coyote, I recalled my own only experience with steroids, some years ago when I was the editor of a daily newspaper.

I thought it might be helpful to the President. Lots of people read my blog, you know.

I had severe bronchitis one day (I was a heavy smoker then), and I was a choking, hacking wreck.

When I woke up from my haze in the hospital, the doctor came in and offered me a cigarette, and we both had a smoke together and a good talk about how I needed to stop smoking since I had a young daughter and was coming down with chronic bronchitis too often.

I quit, but not before the doctor prescribed steroids to help me breathe and reduce the swelling he thought was in my lungs. I was very short of breath and dizzy.

I had a high fever. When I learned this week that Donald Trump was given the steroid Dexamethasone, usually given when the coronavirus is severe, I started remembering that day.

Dexamethasone is used to treat arthritis, blood, hormone, immune system disorders,  allergic reactions, certain skin and eye conditions, breathing, certain bowel disorders, and certain cancers. It is also used as a test for an adrenal gland disorder (Cushing’s Syndrome).

This stuff is not for people with a common cold.

Among the side effects are grandiosity, irritability, delusional grandeur, depression, and memory loss.

Plus (e.g., fever, persistent sore throat), bone and joint pain,  increased thirst/urination, fast, slow, and irregular heartbeat, eye pain and pressure, vision problems, heartburn, puffy face, swelling of the ankles and feet, symptoms of a stomach or intestinal bleeding (such as stomach abdominal pain,  black and tarry stools, vomit that looks like coffee grounds), pain, redness the swelling of arms and legs, tiredness, mental mood changes and fluctuations (e.g., depression mood swings, agitation), unusual hair and skin growth, muscle pain, leg and arm weakness, easy bruising and bleeding, slow wound healing, thinning skin, and strokes and seizures.

(I wouldn’t want to be Trump’s secretary today, or the person who feeds that thing on his head.)

It is tough to imagine Donald Trump with enhanced delusional grandeur, but if you are watching his behavior this week, you’ll see it.

Nashville songwriter Andrew Leahey was given dexamethasone to prepare for major brain surgery. He said it made him feel great, but he also lost touch with reality.

At one point, he thought he was Jesus.

This could also explain Trump’s stranger than usual behavior in the past couple of days: his cruise around the hospital to say hello to 20 fans, his pulling his mask off on the White House balcony,  his saluting a departing helicopter when it was way up in the sky, his erratic tweets that destroyed any chances of a stimulus package, perhaps the stupidest thing any president has ever done weeks before an election.

This move was about the closest thing he could have done weeks before the election to throwing himself off a bridge and into the Potomac. Some people on steroids say they feel invincible. The next morning he took it right back.

From what I’ve read about this Dexamethasone, it was almost surely the steroids talking; they are running the country at the moment. Never mind the election.  Pray for all of us.

It’s probably a good thing that Donald Trump s feeling more juiced up than usual. If he read any of the new polls, he’d really be depressed, or maybe invade China.

I called my doctor today and asked if it was likely that I was given steroids as powerful as Dexamethasone when I was in the hospital, and he said no, they didn’t make steroids that powerful then and give them to humans.

Mine was probably one third as powerful; he knew an animal vet who gave some to bulls once.

Trump must have been in a lot of trouble to get medication like that, he said.

I sympathize. And I have my own steroid story to share.

When I was on steroids, my high fever disappeared immediately once I took them.

Also, I saw things in triplicate, I had an erection for three days, I couldn’t remember my mother’s name, and I thought I was Ben Bradlee running the Watergate coverage of the Washington Post.

I insisted on leaving the hospital over the doctor’s strong objections and went right to the newsroom,  which even the nurses said was a bad idea. My office was only a few blocks away. I remember running all of the way – fast.

It might be the only time I ever ran in my adult life.

The first thing I did was run smack into two reporters who were lounging by the water cooler flirting with one another.

I looked at my watch and saw we were only minutes from our deadline, and I fired both of them, convinced they were conspiring to destroy the paper.

Since almost everyone on the staff flirted with almost everyone else by the water cooler all the time, this was shocking. I was in a rage, convinced no one was listening to me or working hard. I was also 12 hours away from the deadline.

Then I left the terrified reporters behind and went into my office and slammed the door, fuming and stewing.

If I were a lion, I would have roared.  I think I did roar.

My publisher, a genial but incompetent and pompous newspaper executive forced upon us by the chain that owned the paper (his daughter had married the President of the company, and I hated him for that alone), knocked on my door and came in to see if I was okay.

He heard, he said, that I was in the hospital. But you look great, he said, plenty of color. Your face is red as a beet. I bet.

In the course of our brief conversation – we weren’t close – he said we needed to talk about the news budget; there had to be some cuts.

“F— You!” I bellowed in a voice that could be heard on the street. “Not on my watch!”

While he looked at me with his jaw open, what went through my mind that I was an extraordinarily brave and heroic newspaper editor, one day, they would make a movie about me, I was braver even than Bradlee.

The newspaper chain would be so impressed with my courageous stand and so afraid of me they would surely fire this idiot publisher and turn the paper over to me.

“I quit,” I said and stormed out of my office. My secretary, visibly alarmed, rushed over to me and asked me what was wrong. “Ask him!” I shouted and walked towards the newsroom.

The financial reporter, a tough woman who had become my friend, walked over to me and slapped me along the side of the head.

“What did you do that for?” I asked, shocked, suddenly aware that something might not be right.

“We’re going home,” she said, “you drank some devil juice or something,” and my secretary handed her my coat, and each woman took and arm and walked me to the elevator and out into the street over to my friend’s car.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “You’re going home and getting into bed. We called your wife, and she  understands that you are not leaving the house or making any phone calls for two days.”

“Then,” added my friend, “you’re going to call the publisher and apologize. ‘What the fuck are you on?” she asked. “Oh, steroids,” I said, they are wonderful. I feel like I’m top of the world.”

My secretary, who was always blunt but courteous, couldn’t help but chime in.”You’re  not on top of the world,” she said, “you just fell into a big shithole.”

That night, I called the publisher and the two reporters and apologized. I said they were not fired at all. (Three weeks later, the publisher laid them off. I’ve not heard from them since.)

I didn’t know exactly what was wrong, but I did know something was wrong. My head was buzzing with sexual fantasies that can’t describe and rage and grievance. Now that I think of it, I was just like Donald Trump before he took the steroids.”

My wife was not happy with me. We had just finished unpacking our things in our new house. “What have you done?” she said, not sympathetically at all.

A man is no hero to his wife or valet.

I got into bed and crashed right through the floor, it felt like. I didn’t move until morning, and I remembered very little of what had happened. It turns out I still had a job, the publisher was a notorious alcoholic, and I’m not sure he remembered what happened either.

Our relationship was strained after that, he always looked at me as if I was a bomb about to explode.

Mr. President, with all those advisers, you don’t need advice from me. But if you should  happen to need any, and come across my blog, I would strongly suggest you don’t make any more big decisions for a day or two and get back into bed.”

And oh yes, I have to be candid. “Stay away from those Hollywood starlets you love to kiss for a week or so.”

____

Now, the new polls: Just out from the most careful, cautious, and respected polling operation in the country (they did not get it wrong in 2016):

After Democrats’ great midterm election, the 2020 election could be a second consecutive Democratic wave. According to FiveThirtyEight’s forecasts, Joe Biden has an 84 in 100 chance of winning the presidential election, Democrats have a 68 in 100 chance of flipping the Senate, and the party has a 94 in 100 chance of keeping the House. Altogether, there’s a 65 in 100 chance that Democrats will have full control of the federal government next year.

Democrats’ hopes — and Republicans’ fears — for another blue wave grew this week with the release of several polls that were among Biden’s best of the entire year. It’s hard to tell exactly why this is happening given all the news of the past couple weeks, but no matter how you slice it, it’s not good for President Trump. For instance, a national poll from CNN/SSRS gave Biden an eye-popping 16-point lead among likely voters. Monmouth University also gave Biden an 11-point lead in Pennsylvania in a high-turnout scenario and an 8-point lead in a low-turnout scenario. Quinnipiac University backed that up with its own Pennsylvania poll showing Biden up by 13 points and added a Biden+11 Florida poll and a Biden+5 Iowa poll for good measure.

You can read more here.

(Please don’t message me that you hope this is true; it gives me a headache. Pain is inevitable; suffering is a choice.)