Some polls now have Joe Biden running ahead of Donald Trump by 10 points and sweeping the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. This vindicates the strategy Biden's advisers have adopted:
Confine Joe to his basement, no press conferences. Trot him out to recite carefully scripted messages for the cameras. Then lead him back to his stall.
The left's war on America's past crossed several new frontiers last week.
Portland's statue of George Washington, the Father of his Country and the first president of the United States, the greatest man of his age, was toppled and desecrated.
Wednesday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met for seven hours at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii with the chief architect of China's foreign policy, Yang Jiechi.
The two had much to talk about.
"Can we all just get along?"
That was the plea of Rodney King after a Simi Valley jury failed to convict any of the four cops who beat him into submission after a 100-mile-an-hour chase on an LA freeway.
On Gen. George Washington's orders, the Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia, was read aloud to his army. On hearing it, the troops marched to Bowling Green, decapitated and pulled down the statue of George III, and sent the remnants to be melted down into musket balls.
It was a revolutionary act, a symbolic statement. These once-loyal American subjects were now rebels and no longer owed allegiance to the king. They would fight to end his rule in America.
Newly painted in huge yellow letters on 16th Street, just north of the White House, is the slogan: "Defund the Police."
That new message sits beside the "Black Lives Matter" slogan, also in huge letters, painted there at the direction of D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
In his statement to The Atlantic magazine, former Defense Secretary General James Mattis says of the events of the last 10 days that have shaken the nation as it has not been shaken since 1968:
"We must not be distracted by a small number of lawbreakers."
On the fifth night of rioting, looting and arson in Minneapolis, the criminal elements were driven from the streets.
By whom? By the same cops who had been the constant objects of media derision and mob hatred.
In his half-century in national politics, Joe Biden has committed more than his fair share of gaffes. Wednesday, he confused Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7, 1941, with D-Day, June 6, 1944.
The more serious recent gaffe, a beaut, came at the close of a recent contentious interview with black activist Charlamagne tha God.
Is the U.S. up for a second Cold War -- this time with China?
What makes the question newly relevant is that Xi Jinping's China suddenly appears eager for a showdown with the United States for long-term supremacy in the Asia-Pacific and the world.
When a Wall Street Journal editorial warned this week against any precipitous U.S. withdrawal that might imperil our gains in Afghanistan, an exasperated President Trump shot back:
"Could someone please explain to them that we have been there for 19 years. ... and except at the beginning, we never really fought to win."
On March 24, President Donald Trump said he wanted the country and the economy "opened up and just raring to go by Easter."
Easter came and went. And Trump was mocked for being aspirational and unrealistic. Yet, with Ascension Thursday at hand, 40 days after Easter, the president seems to have been ahead of his time.
"We have met the moment and we have prevailed," said President Donald Trump Monday, as he supported the opening of the U.S. economy before the shutdown plunges us into a deep and lasting depression.
Tuesday, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation's leading expert on infectious diseases, made clear to a Senate committee his contradictory views.
Under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, President Donald Trump, his campaign and his party are moving to lay blame for the 80,000 U.S. dead at the feet of the Communist Party of China and, by extension, its longtime General Secretary, President Xi Jinping.
After Pearl Harbor, FDR declared that his role of "Dr. New Deal" had been superseded, replaced by his new role, "Dr. Win the War."
Tuesday, President Donald Trump signaled that, in the war on the coronavirus pandemic, he, too, is executing a strategic pivot.
Where Barack Obama achieved notoriety for "leading from behind," Joe Biden, these last two months, has been leading from the basement.
And, one must add, doing so quite successfully.
As of April 30, the coronavirus pandemic has killed 61,500 Americans in two months and induced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
And if history is our guide, the economic crisis, which has produced 30 million unemployed Americans in six weeks, may prove more enduring, ruinous and historic than the still-rising and tragic death toll.
Is America, in lockdown, with 26 million unemployed and entering a new depression, up for a confrontation and Cold War with China?
For that appears to be where the GOP wishes to lead us.
"War is the health of the state," wrote the progressive Randolph Bourne during the First World War, after which he succumbed to the Spanish flu.
America's war on the coronavirus pandemic promises to be no exception to the axiom. However long this war requires, the gargantuan state will almost surely emerge triumphant.
After the Great Pandemic has passed and we emerge from Great Depression II, what will be America's mission in the world?
What will be America's cause?
