Mark Shields:
Well, it does, Judy.
I mean, I’m not saying politics has been — science has been politics-free. It hasn’t. But it’s been partisan politics-free in this country, and especially in the institutions that you have mentioned, whether NIH and CDC.
And it’s a pattern. But I cannot think of a single public institution that is strengthened, embellished, enhanced by this administration, where public trust, public confidence has been increased. It’s a terrible, terrible indictment.
Just in a crass political sense, it’s a disaster for Donald Trump. I mean, he’s — just on the matter of expectations, he’s set unrealistic expectations on this. The debates are coming up. Joe Biden has led in every poll for every month since January over Donald Trump.
The debates are his best chance. So, what do they do? And George Bush people in 2000 going into the debate against Al Gore laid out the predicate that Al Gore was a world-class debater, and, boy, they were just a poor boy from Texas.
So, when George Bush showed up and did pretty well, he did better than expected, it was a victory.
Instead — running against Joe Biden, Donald Trump, instead of saying, gee, Joe Biden twice, voters — debated as the vice president. He crushed Paul Ryan, who was the golden boy of the Republican Party intellectually, what do they say? He can’t put two sentences together, sleepy Joe, dumb Joe.
So, they have lowered the expectations. So, when Biden shows up, as he did last night in the town hall on CNN, and is coherent and lucid and empathetic, it’s a victory for him.
I do not understand what Donald Trump is doing. He’s making himself the issue, a referendum on him, is trying not to make it a choice election, which is the only chance he has to win.