I’ve shifted gears in my political writing.

The final debate was the last event in the election worth paying much attention to until Election Day, and the debate was pretty thin in terms of meaning.

I’m glad that Donald Trump can be persuaded and pummeled to stop acting like Hannibal Lecter and be polite to people for an hour or so (unless you discount making up vicious lies about people.)

The Washington Post said President Trump “broke the fact-check meter” at the last debate, they listed 25 major claims that were false, including when a vaccine is coming, that Joe Biden took more than 3 million dollars from the mayor of Moscow, that the President caused the deficit with China to go down (it is up), claimed that Dr. Fauci is a Democrat, boated that he created the greatest economy in the history of the world and that he saved 2.2 million people from dying from the coronavirus.

Oh yes, he added that next to Abraham Lincoln, he was the greatest advocate ever for African-Americans.

Still, the President impressed the media and his Republican conspirators by showing he can actually control himself for a while (he was back in form the next day at his rallies, demanding that Barack Obama, Biden, and poor Hillary Clinton (words rarely spoken) all be tossed in jail immediately).

In America in 2020, lying continuously doesn’t really matter as long as you show some improvement in anger control.

We are a strange people right now; I guess the winner of the next presidential debate will be the candidate who lies the most often and who doesn’t bullwhip his or her opponent or shoot them outright on stage.

The odd thing is that I can almost see it happening.

This is the strangest time yet in this long and weird year. The pandemic is roaring back across the Midwest and heartland, and we are just a few days from voting.

Everyone in politics that I know of and trust believes Trump will lose the election, and the Democrats are likely to take control of the Senate. That’s where I am, and I’m pretty secure about it.

Here’s what caught my eye today:

The Electoral College Map Is Very Strange Right now. Something very big is happening.

Solid polls show Biden with a strong lead in Pennsylvania. Why should you care?

For one thing, Pennsylvania is probably the single most important state in the election. Joe Biden has a clear lead in states carried by Hillary Clinton and Michigan and Wisconson, putting him essentially one Trump state away from a clear victory.

If Biden has a significant lead in Pennsylvania, then he has a big lead in the race for the presidency. If he doesn’t have a clear lead in Pennsylvania, he doesn’t have as clear a lead.

You might not be surprised to learn that according to a poll released Friday by the New York Times and Sienna Collge, President Trump leads Joe Biden in Montana, part of the iron wall of Republican states that drape over the western Plains and the Rocky Mountains. But the closeness of the race is stunning.

If that holds until election day it would represent a 13 point swing away from Trump relative to his 2016 support.

Trump is losing all kinds of voters, even a few non-college-educated white men.

A Pennsylvania Supreme Court Court Ruling directs the county boards of elections not to reject absentee or mail-in ballots for counting, computing, and tallying based on signature comparisons conducted by county election officials or employees, or as the result of third party challenges based on such comparisons.

That is good and significant news for the Democrats.

And here is the most interesting poll of the day, according to FiveThirtyEight, my election bible. The state in the United States, closest of all 50, according to fresh and high-quality polling, is Texas.

Yes, Texas. No one would have or could have believed that possible just a month ago.

Texas is a possible win for Biden now.

And it gets stranger: Georgia, Iowa, and Ohio – which Trump won in 2016 by five, nine and eight points respectively – are the next closest states. And Biden leads in the first two.

At the debate, Biden gave vague and exploitable answers about how he would handle the oil and gas industry if elected.  He allowed himself to suggest he would get rid of both of them. These industries are strong in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Texas.

He took it back quickly, saying he cut off subsidies to the oil and gas industry, but would not seek to eliminate them (nor does he have the power to do so.)

Since the Hunter Biden fraud hasn’t taken hold, Trump and the Republicans have pounced on this, suggesting it would cost Biden the loss of Pennsylvania,  Texas, and Ohio, at least.

I don’t see it as especially momentous. I understand that Trump is desperate to draw attention away from the pandemic, but the pandemic, as usual, is not co-operating.

Friday saw the highest number of recorded infections yet, more than 80,000. We are assured that a lot more deaths are soon to follow as election day looms.

According to every poll taken, the pandemic is the story Americans most care about by far, not Hunter Biden’s laptop and Biden’s short and long-range plans for dealing with fossil fuel.

Over the years, Biden has been a good friend to big corporations. He just doesn’t work as a socialist radical. Most voters are pretty dead by now to Trump’s conspiracy theories and wild accusations.

This is another major mistake Trump has made again and again.

He has taken too many wild and unprovable shots at too many targets. Even the people who love him don’t believe a word he says. And still, many love to say they love him for his honesty,  that he does what he says.

It is a time of conundrums. It calls for patience and hope and faith.

Biden really isn’t anything like a socialist, as Bernie Sanders knows well.  And it’s true, he doesn’t have a fastball anymore, but he is far from senile.

Wall Street has always loved him and loves him still.

Trump can’t explain how he would conquer the virus or show compassion for the people suffering from it. That was his biggest challenge, and he blew it and is blowing it still.

The oil and gas flap seems to me like just more dust and fog.  It has a desperate aura about it.

Everyone but Trump and his party is getting more and more concerned about climate change; this is the first year it has even been mentioned in a presidential debate. Officials of the oil and gas industries are talking seriously and openly about how they will convert to other energy forms.

I don’t see the country freaking out about Biden’s plans for 2050, not while a million acres are burning in the West, and the Southeast is buried under floodwater. He and I will both be long gone.

The GOP has its feet planted firmly on the wrong side of history.

Pennsylvania has a fracking industry, but it’s not Oklahoma. It has a huge number of suburbs and urban areas, and people are lining up in droves to vote for Biden.

So stay tuned and stay calm.

I plan to shoot for daily updates so long as there is something new or important to report. I’ll skip the panic and fear-mongering and hysteria if it’s all the same to you.