No difference between nominees? Get serious.
If ever there was a presidential contest that did not need an extra week, this is it.
In case you haven't heard, an unusual quirk in the calendar and election laws has resulted in America's latest election since 1988. The nation votes on the Tuesday after the first Monday in November. Because the first Monday is not until Nov. 7 this year, we have almost an extra week of what has been, according to various reports, one of the most angry and anxiety-inducing campaigns in history.
Add to that the events of the past few days that have given many folks electoral whiplash. First there was FBI Director James Comey and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton's email server, then there was yet another report of questionable tax loophole usage by GOP nominee Donald Trump.
I was as shaken as everyone else by Comey's announcement less than two weeks before Election Day that the FBI has resumed its investigation of Clinton's private email server. This was based on emails that, it turned out, he and his agents had not read.
Immediately Comey was attacked by lawmakers and former attorneys general from both parties for defying Department of Justice guidelines that bar public comments on ongoing investigations and for possibly using his office to exert partisan influence.
I agree with former Attorney General Eric Holder that Comey's a good man who made a big mistake. He's been under pressure from Republicans, in particular, angered by his announcement in July that Clinton had been “extremely careless” in handling classified material on her personal server but not enough to be prosecuted.
After learning that FBI investigators had found a new trove of possibly related emails on a laptop belonging to former New York Democratic Rep. Anthony Weiner, estranged husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, what was he to do?
He could have withheld the information, which would have been proper procedure, to find out if the new emails contained classified information or came from Clinton's server — or had anything to do with the Clinton investigation. But, if he had withheld it until after Election Day, he might find himself facing impeachment hearings led by angry Republicans.
Either way, the revelation put the brakes on Clinton's momentum and gave a megaton-sized power boost to the Trump campaign's morale.
Of course, in the seesaw way that both campaigns have wrestled with scandals off and on, the Clinton revelations were followed on Halloween night by a new horror on the Trump side.
Citing newly obtained documents, The New York Times reported that Trump used a tax avoidance maneuver in the 1990s to avoid reporting hundreds of millions of dollars in taxable income. He was advised at the time that the loophole might not be legal, and it since has been banned.
But, alas, in the contest by each candidate to make the other into the issue-of-the-day, this pair of dueling scandals apparently put Clinton at a disadvantage. It's hard to draw people's attention to a story about numbers and tax regulations when you have a sleaze-magnet like Weiner, accused of sexting a 15-year-old girl, in the other story.
Early polling indicated little change in Clinton's lead, but the polls can't tell you much about another factor: turnout.
If this campaign has shown us anything, it is just how different these candidates are. The current presidential race has become for many of us less of a question about picking the best candidate as it is about picking the least-flawed candidate.
To me, Clinton has been a flawed candidate after years of scandals. Some were legitimate, even if most were heated exaggerations. But Trump's election in my view would be, to use one of his favorite words, a disaster. Make up your own mind, but don't think your vote doesn't matter.
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