The waiting is the hardest part

I want to write about the passing of Jerry Jeff Walker, whose album ¡Viva Terlingua! Is perhaps my favorite country music album (it was recorded in Luckenbach, Texas using hay bales for sound baffles). I could say a lot about Jerry Jeff Walker and country music. But my desire to do that is preempted by my obsessive compulsive behavior around the election, so here it goes:

Over the next few days, you will see a giant avalanche of polls and predictions on voter turnout and vote-by-mail. It is a data nerd’s paradise of especially dubious value in a year like 2020. I’m following it, even though it has wreaked havoc on my mood: one report has me confident of victory, the next one of defeat. All of that takes us back to where we started this newsletter: ignore the polls — and especially the predictions.

Among the political consulting and punditry class, there are two views of the state of the election. The first was best summarized by Matt Stoller in a short tweet: “This race was over in March when Trump refused to do anything meaningful about COVID.” For a detailed argument on this front, lose yourself in Peter Hamby’s excellent Vanity Fair piece. The alternative point of view is that it’s going to be very, very close — and given the state of American politics, including an unpredictable President and the GOP-dominance of the courts and state legislatures, anything could happen. This point of view is best summarized here with these two notable quotes, the first from Tom Bonier (a noted Democratic pollster): “There are more known…