New Yorker: “On October 18, 2016, the New York Times gave Hillary Clinton a ninety-one-per-cent chance of beating Donald Trump. Five days later, ABC News released a tracking poll showing her ahead of Trump by twelve points. Buoyed by the polls, Democrats—especially Democratic women—approached November 8th with a joyful sense of inevitability. The collective disbelief when Clinton lost was tinged with confusion: How could the pollsters have been so wrong? Now, with Joe Biden leading Trump by double digits in the lead-up to Election Day, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist survey, the question has to be asked: Are voters hoping for a Biden victory about to fall in the same trap?”

“Polls are not predictive. They are snapshots taken at a particular moment in time. By the time the public sees a poll, that moment will have passed. Andrew Weissert, who runs a Republican polling firm outside of Chicago, told me, ‘I remember, in 2012, when Mitt Romney had a stellar debate performance, and, all of a sudden, people were writing President Obama’s political obituary. Then the next debate happened. Obama had a strong debate. And suddenly the polls were showing something completely different.’ Polls are sensitive to the news because people are sensitive to the news. They are inconsistent because people are inconsistent. According to Andrew Mercer, a senior research methodologist at the Pew Research Center, polls also tend to vary because ‘there are a lot of subjective decisions about how to go about things that different pollsters do differently for a variety of reasons.'”

“Typically, debates present an opportunity for political candidates who are losing their races to make up ground on the frontrunner. President Donald Trump, however, is not your typical come-from-behind candidate. That’s why in the lead-up to Thursday’s second and final debate between Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Trump has preemptively attacked moderator Kristen Welker of NBC almost every day. That’s why his campaign has made such a big fuss over the debate topics and the addition of a mute button designed at making the debate more watchable than the first one was thanks to Trump’s antics. And that’s why they’ve seemed to be spinning a bad showing before the debate has even happened.”

“With the national polls showing Biden’s lead over Trump holding steady at 9 percentage points or more (though battleground polling is tighter), Thursday’s debate is the last chance Trump will have to try and make his case before a large, nationwide TV audience. But the campaign itself doesn’t seem to be projecting much confidence it’ll go better for him than his widely panned performance in the first debate, when he incessantly interrupted Biden and went on rants that required full immersion in Hannityworld to understand” – Vox.

“Negotiations between the Republican-led legislature and Gov. Tom Wolf to let counties begin opening mail ballots in Pennsylvania before Election Day appeared to collapse Wednesday, setting up a potential nightmare scenario that some fear could leave the state counting millions of ballots for days after Nov. 3. The Democratic governor and legislative leaders had been negotiating behind closed doors as recently as Tuesday to change the election code after months of inaction.”

“But the General Assembly adjourned Wednesday and is not scheduled to reconvene until Nov. 10, a week after the election. Without a deal, the days-long process of counting mail ballots can’t begin until 7 a.m. on Election Day, potentially leaving the results unclear for days and opening room for candidates to falsely declare victory” – Philadelphia Inquirer.

Harry Enten: “Former Vice President Joe Biden has held a steadfast lead in high quality nonpartisan public polling. Still, some conservatives and President Donald Trump claim the polls are off. Trump himself has said he is up in key swing states. There’s no reason to believe Trump. An examination of publicly released internal Republican and conservative group polling reveals they’re also showing Trump clearly underperforming his 2016 showing.”

“I looked at more than a dozen of these partisan polls released to the public from House and Senate races since the major party conventions in August. These partisan polls are notoriously unreliable, and none of them meet CNN standards for reporting. The reason is simple: Partisans don’t want to release polls that are bad for their side. That means the polls sponsored by a party, candidate or partisan organization tend to be biased in favor of the side releasing the poll. That’s why it was amazing to find that on average, Trump was doing 5 points worse than he did in 2016 in the states and districts in released Republican and conservative polls. If Trump actually did 5 points worse than he did in 2016 in the swing states, it would mean he’d lose Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Those states, plus the ones Hillary Clinton won in 2016, would be more than enough for Biden to get over 270 electoral votes. But remember: These are only the polls conservatives and Republicans were willing to put into the public sphere. There’s good reason to believe it’s worse for Trump in the numbers they’re not releasing.”

“The Pinellas County Sheriff’s Office is investigating a report of possible armed voter intimidation at a downtown St. Petersburg voting location, the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections said. According to the Pinellas SOE Julie Marcus, two people suspected of voter intimidation were wearing security uniforms at the downtown St. Petersburg early voting location at 501 First Ave N. According to Marcus, the pair told a responding law enforcement officer that they are with a private security company. She says a concerned staff member reported at least one of them was armed.”

“The pair set up a tent and claimed to be working for the Trump campaign, Marcus said. ‘These persons claimed or said that they were hired by the Trump campaign, again I’m not going to speculate to that. This was a licensed security company and they were licensed security officers,’ Marcus said. The Deputy National Press Secretary for the Trump campaign issued a statement to ABC Action News denying the campaign hired the pair” – WFTS.

Franklin Foer: “After 18 months of flogging the Hunter Biden story, what does President Donald Trump have to show for his efforts? His opposition research on former Vice President Joe Biden’s son culminated in his own impeachment. Despite railing against the scion’s alleged swampiness at nearly every rally, Trump’s convoluted narrative about Biden family corruption has taken root only on Fox News. At the very least, the accusation that Hunter leveraged his father’s high office to enrich himself has failed to measurably move the polls.”

“Even Trump’s ardent supporters are now encouraging him to change the subject. Yet he remains obstinate in his obsession. Without a coherent message or an affirmative vision for a second term, Trump has clearly been betting his reelection on what military planners would call a ‘psyop,’ or a psychological operation. That is, he hopes to use gamesmanship to destabilize the mind of his adversary, forcing him into a moment of anger or incoherence that illustrates his lack of fitness for the office. His attacks on Hunter Biden should be understood as the pillar of this strategy… Spare a moment for Hunter Biden—a man who is recovering from addiction, a brother whose misery is the apparent shame of having survived his siblings, a son who is now the bludgeon that enemies hope will destroy his father. He is being sacrificed to a president who views the sadistic exploitation of a family’s tragedy as his own best hope of salvation. In its grotesqueness, this is a near-perfect closing argument, a presidency distilled.”

A new report from the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at the Earth Institute of Columbia University found that 130,000 to 210,000 US fatalities from the coronavirus were avoidable if the federal government acted sooner to address the pandemic.

“Through comparative analysis and applying proportional mortality rates, we estimate that at least 130,000 deaths and perhaps as many as 210,000 could have been avoided with earlier policy interventions and more robust federal coordination and leadership,” the report declares.

Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden said that he would appoint a bipartisan committee of legal, constitutional and judicial scholars to study a complete overhaul of the US judicial system, including how judges get appointed and the length of their terms.

In a 60 Minutes interview that will air Sunday, reported by the New York Times, Biden said he would ask the commission to spend six months to review the system and come back to him with recommendations on improving the system.

“The way in which it’s being handled, and it’s not about court packing, there’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated and I’ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make,” Biden said.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, absent of any of its Democratic members, passed the recommendation for Amy Coney Barrett to fill the Supreme Court seat opened with the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Committee rules require that any vote on a nominee must have at least two members of the minority party in attendance.  Chairman republican Lindsey Graham decided to ignore the rule and call for the vote.  The rule is in place to ensure members of the majority party do not simply call an impromptu meeting to ram through partisan nominations.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said last night that Democrats will appeal the vote to the Senate Parliamentarian, who will decide if the rule was violated, forcing a series of new procedural vote.

“TO ALL TENANTS: Please understand IF Joe Biden is elected as our next President, everything you do and have to pay for will change completely. Everything will be increased. Like paying ALOT (sic) more in taxes, utilities, gasoline, groceries, new permits, fees and regulations…everything! This also means YOUR RENT will be increased to cover these expenses. Most likely, rent would DOUBLE in price! IF the current President is re-elected, WE WILL NOT RAISE THE RENT FOR AT LEAST 2 YEARS! Voting is your choice and we are not telling you how to vote. We are just informing our tenants what WE will do according to the election results. If Trump wins, we all win. If Biden wins, we all lose. VOTE on November 3, 2020” – Letter from Bernie Pagel, owner of Pagel’s trailer park in Fort Morgan, Colorado, via KUSA.

First time unemployment claims for the week ending October 17th came in at 787,000, the first time under 800,000 since mid-March, the Department of Labor reported.  The number fell 55,000 from the previous week’s number, which was revised down 56,000 from 898,000 to 842,000.

The weekly unemployment claims were still four times higher than they were one year ago, when they were at 187,000.  Currently, more than 23 million Americans are receiving unemployment benefits nationally; one year ago, 1.3 million Americans were getting unemployment benefits.

Speaking on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Democratic Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said she believe a coronavirus relief package could be negotiated between Democrats and the White House before Election Day.

Addressing the partisan divide in Washington that is preventing aid from moving forward, Pelosi noted that in the last few days of negotiations, the White House has agreed to adopt a “science-based approach to take on the virus, not based in politics, but based in science.”

Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend Ghisliane Maxwell lost her appeal on Monday to keep her deposition in a 2016 lawsuit brought against her by one of Epstein’s victims, Virginia Giuffre, sealed – and the documents were ordered by a court to be unsealed Thursday morning EDT (Read here). Maxwell had contended that the documents would bias a jury against her in her criminal trial. National Zero will update this story as the media reports the best parts.

“A number of world leaders have a personal stake in the outcome, with their fortunes depending heavily on the success – or failure – of President Donald Trump. Perhaps none has so much riding on a Trump victory as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The Israeli leader, who had a rocky relationship with President Barack Obama, has praised Trump as ‘the greatest friend’ Israel ever had in the White House. Trump has delivered a series of diplomatic gifts to Netanyahu, recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, withdrawing from Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and offering a Mideast plan that heavily favors Israel over the Palestinians. The White House brokered the establishment of diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.”

“But Netanyahu’s close relationship with Trump — and more broadly the Republican party and its evangelical Christian base — has come with a price. It has undercut Israel’s traditional bipartisan support in Washington and alienated many Democrats, especially the rising progressive wing, and the largely liberal Jewish American community. ‘For Netanyahu, a Biden victory would be a disaster,’ said Eytan Gilboa, an expert on U.S.-Israel relations at Israel’s Bar Ilan University. He noted that Biden has already promised a different approach to Iran and the Palestinians. Sidelined and humiliated by Trump, the Palestinians have made no secret about their hopes for a Biden victory. ‘If we are going to live another four years with President Trump, God help us,’ the Palestinian prime minister, Mohammad Shtayyeh, said last week” – AP.

Wall Street Journal: “Senior advisers to Joe Biden are preparing for the possibility that the Trump administration will throw up roadblocks to Mr. Biden’s transition to the presidency if he wins the election, according to people familiar with the internal discussions. ld commit to a peaceful transfer of power—refuses to comply with requirements that a president-elect’s team be allowed into federal agencies ahead of Inauguration Day. The team is also planning for a scenario in which the Trump administration declines to share resources or provide briefings seen as crucial for a smooth transition of power, the people said. So far, these worst-case scenarios haven’t come to pass, people close to the Biden campaign and transition said, adding that the former vice president has received classified briefings and lower-level Trump administration officials have been professional in initial interactions with the team.”

Arizona: Kelly 48 – McSally 44
Colorago: Hickenlooper 50 – Gardner 42
Georgia: Perdue 46 – Ossoff 44
Michigan: Peters 48 – James 42
North Carolina: Cunningham 48 – Tillis 42
South Carolina: Harrison 47 – Graham 45
Texas: Cornyn 46 – Hegar 41
Read more at Morning Consult.

“Steve Bannon had a message for his podcast listeners on Tuesday, and for adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory it wasn’t very subtle. ‘It’s gonna be a storm,’ Bannon said. He was speaking of the closing weeks of the election but using the very same imagery QAnon believers use to describe their dream of Trump arresting and executing his political foes. ‘The storm clouds are around the Biden camp. The storm clouds are around the Biden camp. A gathering storm.'”

“For those who may have thought it was just a slip of the tongue, Bannon dispelled any doubt the next day. Speaking once more on his podcast, he claimed that at least parts of QAnon, which posits that Satanic cannibal-pedophile elites in the Democratic Party who drink children’s blood will soon be executed at Trump’s orders, are true. ‘How are they not at least, at least an aspect of their argument, at least appears, directionally to be correct?’ Bannon asked, while pushing unverified claims that a laptop that supposedly belonged to Hunter Biden was filled with illegal images. The tenets of QAnon, he posited, were ‘the elephant in the room'” – Daily Beast.