The 2024 race is still close.

But then so was the 1980 Carter-Reagan race at this same juncture.

Indeed, incumbent president Carter was then comfortably up in the last two October Gallup polls—before utterly and suddenly evaporating on Election Day.

But in the last seven days, there seems a sense of panic in the Harris campaign.

How do we know that?

Why are Democratic pundits—from Axelrod to Carville—blasting the Harris campaign and otherwise warning of bad things to come?

Why are some of the once Democrat sure-thing senate races—e.g., in Ohio, Wisconsin, and even Michigan—tightening up?

Pundit poll-watchers are suggesting that Trump is close, even, or slightly ahead in the swing-state polls, suggesting that he is nearing a margin that could cancel out anticipated “ballot irregularities.”

The expected October Harris-Biden surprises—the opportune Fed interest rate cut, the transparently desperate Jack Smith beefed-up re-indictment, the current new Hollywood Trump-hit movie, the desperate Zelensky fly-in to Pennsylvania, the election-cycle customary Bob Woodward unsourced gossip book—seemed so far to have had no effect.

I first heard it, very faintly, in 2017.

At the time, President Donald Trump was accused of spying for Russia. If true, this would have been the biggest act of treason in American history, bigger than Aldrich Ames, bigger than the Rosenbergs, bigger than Benedict Arnold.

The New York Times and Washington Post published long articles that detailed Trump’s treachery, for which they shared a Pulitzer Prize.

Adam Schiff, head of the intelligence committee, stood up night after night on cable news, claiming he had secret “bombshell” information proving that Trump was a traitor.

The charges were investigated and ultimately dismissed.

Trump was not a Russian agent. He was not working for Putin.

The greatest security threat in the history of the country was -- a hoax.

And then I heard it:  nothing.

Very few outlets reported that Trump was innocent, that the attempt to rout him from office had failed.

Schiff disappeared from view.

There were no corrections, no apologies, no firings.

The Times and the Post did not return their Pulitzer Prizes.

“Kamala Harris plagiarized at least a dozen sections of her criminal-justice book, Smart on Crime, according to a new investigation,” reports Christopher Rufo. “

The current vice president even lifted material from Wikipedia.” You might say she was “unburdened by what has been” written by other people. Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, has exposed plagiarists before — most famously former Harvard University President Claudine Gay last year.

There’s little reason to doubt his reporting on Harris, especially given “the receipts,” as he calls the proof in his X thread. He further lays out the case in a Substack column [Samples shown in full article.]

Nationalism has become the great bugaboo of global talking heads today. It is discussed in the marbled halls of Western capitals as a scourge that must be eliminated just as swiftly as its equally detested cousin, populism.

Policies that are popular with the people and nation-states that reflect the self-determination of the people cannot be permitted!

Who says? Some very important people who belong to august bodies such as the European Commission, the United Nations, the Bank for International Settlements, the World Economic Forum, and the World Health Organization.

International groups with lofty reputations have no time to trifle with the beliefs and needs of discrete peoples. The globalists are here to save democracy by ridiculing and rejecting whatever the people might want!

Today’s “elites” have global domination on their minds. The concerns of individual nation-states are too petty for those who covet the whole planet.

We used to have a pretty good word to describe an arrangement in which many separate countries are forced to bend the knee and pay tribute to a superior power: empire.

[Note from Jack Wheeler: Skye is seriously under the weather today.  Let’s all wish him a speedy recovery so he’ll be back in the Skye’s Links saddle next week.]

We all expected a tumultuous presidential campaign.

But I was not prepared to see a Kennedy endorse a Republican, nor the Cheneys endorse a far-Left Democrat.

I was equally unprepared for the embrace of Trumpian policies by the very Democrats who hate him with the fire of a thousand suns.

The coup that toppled Joe Biden caught me by surprise, as did the coronation of an unelected nominee, Kamala Harris.

Not to mention two foiled assassinations buried by the media. And we still have a month to go.

Is there any way to make sense of this?

Political parties change.

Talk about a softball.

Indeed, it was a beach ball.

Kids, when you sit for that first job interview and your prospective employer asks you about your work history, you’ll almost certainly be asked if you’d have done anything differently during your time there.

Sure enough, as Kamala Harris continued her tour yesterday of unserious “media” interviews with Trump-hating pro-Harris cupcakes, “The View’s” Sunny Hostin asked her precisely that question: “Would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”

Harris, of course, has had difficulty separating herself from the man who made her the first DEI hire in American presidential politics: Joe Biden. Hostin undoubtedly saw this as an opportunity to tee up a differentiating response from Harris.

But no.

In fiscal year 2023, Congress allocated $29.5 billion to FEMA. You’d think that’s a lot of money, and you’d be right.

However, even as FEMA has been granted massive amounts of funds for illegal aliens through Customs and Border Patrol, it’s managed to run out of money for ordinary Americans facing terrible disasters.

Now, we’re learning that FEMA employees are doing more allocations, this time based on what I can only call “genital equity.” (I scorn the phrase “gender equity.”)

That is, FEMA employees aren’t concerned with the greatest good for the greatest number during an emergency. They’re concerned with the LGBTQ+ crowd.