Sudden and Total Clarity About the 2020 Election

The past few days have offered the most clarifying hours of American politics since the night of Nov. 8, 2016. Four years ago, President Donald Trump’s unlikely victory put the world on notice that the U.S. was slamming the brakes on the 21st century. Last weekend, the White House and Congress defined the 2020 election in the starkest terms yet.

White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows told CNN on Sunday that the White House has given up trying to prevaricate the coronavirus into submission. With new cases spiking across the country, the president’s oft-repeated fairy tale about “rounding the turn” against the virus was murdered and dumped in an unmarked grave. “We’re not going to control the pandemic,” Meadows said. “We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigations.”