A woman shot while in a vehicle Tuesday evening was "gravely injured," a Berkeley city councilman said. 

"My heart goes out to the victim and and her family. I pray she survives," Councilman Ben Bartlett said on his Facebook page. 

Bartlett said he went to the shooting scene on Prince Street to lend his support. 

The victim, described by police as in her 20s, was found by officers responding to reports of a shooting shortly before 7 p.m. 

The Berkeley Fire Department took the woman to an area hospital. 

Police said Prince Street would remain closed between King Street and Harper Street while officers investigate. The closed portion is near Malcolm X Elementary School, west of Martin Luther King Jr. Way. The public is advised to avoid the area. 

Anyone with information about the case is asked to contact the Berkeley police Homicide Unit at (510) 981-5741.

Here’s a really radical idea. How ‘bout the Dems just give up agitating about Amy Coney Barrett, who’s almost certainly a done deal, and concentrate on winning back the Senate in the next couple of weeks? The airwaves, both virtual and otherwise, are full of misplaced denunciations of Senator Feinstein for going easy on the little lady judge. But a self-described conservative in an NPR person-on-the-street interview said that Barrett's nomination finally relieved her of the need to vote for Trump--someone she, like the rest of us, finds disgusting, apart from principles. So let's just move on to taking back the country. 

; Control of the Supreme Court became the one issue that united all the confused souls who have historically found their home in the Republican party. Not clear is the question of why they want the Court so badly.  

The easy answer is that they want to be able to limit abortion as much as possible. What that will mean to the justices, all of whom have expressed some level of adherence to the legal doctrine of stare decisis, is unclear. 

Prior court decisions on access to abortion have conflicted with traditional Catholic religious doctrine, even though Catholics and former Catholics now dominate the Supreme Court. Barrett herself, another Catholic, has tested the doctrinal waters with an early law review article on the topic of the death penalty, which is equally condemned by the Church these days. At that time (she was just 26) she suggested that a Catholic judge might need to recuse herself in death penalty cases, though in her brief career on the bench she didn’t do that in cases which came before her. 

It’s not hard to partition off abortion as more of a deeply felt emotional controversy than a simple political question. That old “both sides” trap obscures the fact that there are many shades of grey between black and white. How a justice feels about abortion will not necessarily predict her other votes over a lifetime. 

How about health care, for example? Watching Amy Barrett before the judicial committee and researching her three-year judicial record just a bit, I’m not sure we can predict how she’ll vote on health care, let alone on other legal topics, for the rest of her term. 

The Supreme Court with the addition of Barrett might be able to poke holes in ObamaCare for a while longer, but a strong legislature will be able to backfill those holes and supplement the gaps in the law as passed. Americans have gotten used to some kind of government-sponsored health care—Socialized Medicine to its detractors—and they’re not about to let it go, regardless of legal quibbles. 

The tip-off was her reaction to Senator Sheldon Whitehouse’s brilliantly presented expose of the role of Dark Money in getting conservatives into the courts. 

My take is that he was playing to an audience of one, Judge Barrett herself. Her eyes above her mask had a deer-in-the-headlights quality, or perhaps a scared rabbit. (Her family birth name of Coney, as it happens, means rabbit.) She knew what he was talking about. 

Watch this: 

Can Amy Barrett become the agent of the Koch Brothers financial empire in their quest to destroy environmental regulations? Because that goal is the third leg of the trio of special interests which are now seeking to dominate the court. I strongly doubt that the Kochs and their ilk care a lot about abortion, or even about health care, but they are deeply interested in money and the power needed to get it. 

A mad rush to weaken all kinds of federal regulations before Trump can be removed is now underway, and control of the judicial branch is essential if they hope to get away with questionable actions. Does the dark money gang plan to use this Nice Catholic Girl who has genuinely strong emotional opposition to abortion to tear down the regulatory system which impedes their smash-and-grab methodology? 

It’s generally conceded in the media that Amy Barrett is very smart, but in fact she’s had very limited education and life experience. She grew up in the kind of Catholic ghetto that I did all through high school, but she never really left it. Being the smartest girl in the class only takes you so far if the class is limited. 

I do want to give a shout out to the kind of all-girls high schools we both attended, as did Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein (yes, even Dianne went to the Convent of the Sacred Heart in San Francisco.) In our day almost all of the teachers were women, mostly nuns, and there was no question that women could run any show, no men required. Being a nun was an interesting career path for the right person. I don’t know if there were any nuns left when Amy was at Dominican High in New Orleans, but I imagine she was indeed the smartest girl there. 

The school should be given credit for her ambition and achievement. Ironic note: its motto was veritas (truth), a quality in short supply in the current administration. 

Amy didn’t go far to college, just a few hundred miles upriver to a little liberal arts college, Rhodes, formerly Southwestern. It was smaller than Berkeley High was when my daughters, just a couple of years older than Amy, went there. I expect she was an outstanding student there too. A petition denouncing her appointment is currently circulating among its alumni. 

She went on to Notre Dame Law School. Notre Dame is a good enough school, ranked #22 among law schools on the USNews website for 2021. All of the sitting justices attended schools in the predictable one-two-three on that list, but #22 is quite respectable. If you need a Catholic school, only Georgetown (#14) is ranked higher. 

After law school she clerked for Justice Scalia, worked for a bit with a Republican law firm (her father was a Shell Oil corporate lawyer) and did a stint on the Bush v. Gore team that expropriated Florida in the 2000 election. Eventually she went back to Notre Dame Law to teach. 

Like all identifiable sub-cultures, Catholic academe in the United States has its own caste system. The Jesuit-run high schools and universities have traditionally had the most prestige for males. Notre Dame is not one of them, though it's big and rich. Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh went to the Jesuits' Georgetown Prep. Antonin Scalia went to Georgetown University. 

Now that girls are admitted these schools might have changed. But the ideas explored in such institutions in many academic fields are inevitably constrained. 

It might be a plus that Amy Barrett did not go to elite schools. But as a self-described prototypical English major who is weak in Math, what can she know about the water flow in wetlands? Biotechnology? Epidemiology? The economics of antitrust? How, as a college graduate who is almost 50 years old, can she not be aware that human-caused climate change is no longer “just a theory”? But the good news is that she’ll have a long time to learn, and she just might. 

Case in point: Max Boot, whom I spotted as an undergraduate conservative columnist on the Daily Cal many years ago and wondered why such a smart guy was so stupid. He went on to become a conservative pundit, but now has been born again as a prominent anti-Trumper, and there are many like him who improved with age. 

Will Judge Amy Coney Barrett, who is only 48, choose to go on aiding and abetting the Dark Money gang who have paid so handsomely to groom her for this opportunity? Maybe instead she’ll be moved by current ideas in church thinking, as expressed by Pope Francis: climate change is real, the death penalty is wrong, market capitalism has failed to provide for the poor. 

People do change, and she’ll have thirty years to think about it. The other women on the court should start working on her as soon as possible. She might continue being horrified by abortion, but there's a chance for improvement on other topics. 

Oh, and one more thing. Since the Democrats were hornswoggled by Mitch McConnell in the matter of appointments near an election, it would be only right for a new president and congress to even things up by adding a couple of justices in the new year. Let's not call it packing, let's just say we will return the court to being fair and balanced. Knock on wood. 

Although Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) had many imperfections, our Democratic and Republican leaders have much to learn from FDR. As you know, the 1930s depression cost millions of workers their jobs. By 1932, twelve million workers were unemployed. One out of every four American families no longer had an income.

Nevertheless, FDR wasted little time in developing a very impressive jobs program. He hired Harry Hoplins, who was a social worker and also a past president of the National Association of Social Workers. The jobs program, which was named the Civil Works Administration, created under Hopkins four million jobs. So Hopkins provided jobs in the depth of the depression for one third of the unemployed! 

These workers performed mainly manual labor. Among the program’s accomplishments it laid 12 million feet of sewer pipes, built or improved 255,000 miles of road, built 3,400 playgrounds, nearly 1,000 airports, and thousands of schools. 

Unfortunately, the program was short lived. Its lifespan began in November 1933 and ended March 31 1934. The program ended only because some advisors complained that it was not accomplishing enough. Accepting bad advice was an occasional weakness of the president. On the other hand, FDR established the WPA by executive order one year later in 1935. The WPA provided about 8 ½ million jobs, which was more than twice as many as the previous program. This very popular program lasted eight years. It was terminated because World War 2 substantially reduced unemployment. 

The WPA not only did construction work such as providing a building for the Library of Congress. The program provided work for 5,300 artists, and also added to the payroll many musicians, actors, and writers. The WPA produced for Americans 225,000 works of art. In fact, the famous artist, Jackson Pollock, prior to his career, was among the WPA artists. Also, trees, which improve air and water quality, mattered to the WPA. The workforce planted 24 million trees. 

But what about the employment of minority workers? On this vital issue our current public officials have much to learn. Black workers did okay. WPA employed 350,000 African Americans. This constituted 15 percent of the workforce, although blacks made up only about 10 percent of the workers. 

Many women also needed jobs but they did not do well, They averaged only about 7 percent of the WPA workforce. Generally speaking, FDR had much to be proud of. However , he made some very serious mistakes. Clearly, one way of increasing employment is by reducing the number of hours for full time work. So one of the senators, Hugo Black from Alabama, drafted a law to limit full time jobs to a 30 hour week. This idealistic senator, incidentally, was a former member of the Ku Klux Klan. 

He estimated that reducing full time work to 30 hours would create 6 million jobs. An employer would have to pay time-and-a-half to any worker who exceeds 30 hours. The Senate voted overwhelmingly in favor of the bill, which passed by 53 to 30. 

FDR initially did not oppose the bill. But in response to tremendous opposition from the business community, he changed his mind. The House of Representatives was likely to support the legislation. But FDR intervened by persuading some key committees to not allow a vote on this bill not only then but for five years! So FDR succeeded by violating the democratic process by preventing a vote. Several years later, in 1938, FDR supported and obtained the Fair Labor Standards Act which established overtime pay for more than 44 hours and over 40 hours beginning in 1940. 

In 1937-38 the economy experienced a very severe recession because FDR played a major role in precipitating the downturn. FDR wanted to balance the budget, which he was convinced that it was safe to do. So he reduced spending by almost 14 billion dollars in two years. As a result the economy again crashed and unemployment increased substantially. . 

How would we characterize the president during these years? Despite his mistakes, he very much cared about improving the economy and providing jobs to the unemployed. However, the problem was not only his occasional poor judgment. He worked in a very difficult and imperfect economic environment. Historically speaking, FDR was the nation’s most popular president. In February 1936 an unknown person sent him these lines of admiration. “I think that we shall never see A president like unto thee Poems are made by fools like me, But God, I think made Franklyn D”

Why does trump deny the efficacy of masks, when doctors agree this simple measure could prevent hundreds of thousands of deaths? Is he intentionally ignorant, or so selfish that the inconvenience of mask wearing to preserve other peoples' health is beyond his moral character? 

Why does he actively thwart cooperative efforts to reverse global warming before the climate crisis becomes irreversible? Is he scientifically stupid, or selfishly willing to sacrifice the well-being of our planet to grab short-term petro-profit? 

Why does he work to remove health insurance from millions, before coming up with a workable replacement? Does he actually believe his slap-dash slogans are a replacement, or is he unconcerned with the lives and health of people unlike him? 

Why does he foment restriction and distrust of our election system? Is he simply willing to destroy our democracy to remain in power, or is he viciously eager to do so?

In the initial brouhaha surrounding the leak of Trump’s tax returns fading, including finger pointing at the IRS and talk of criminal charges, has anyone stopped to consider whether someone other than the IRS leaked the documents? There seem to be two criteria to consider in identifying the leaker. First, who had “access” to Trump’s tax returns? This limits the pool of candidates to a relatively small number. Second, who has the greatest “incentive” to leak those tax returns at this time?

These questions came up on a hike with a friend on my last day of vacation. My friend asked who I thought leaked them? I hadn’t really considered it because I had been hiking the Sawtooth mountains when the story broke. By the time I did hear about Trump’s tax troubles, the tax news was overtaken by the debate shit-show and Trump’s positive test for COVID. So when he asked me, I responded that I had no idea. My friend then said he thought it was obvious. Who had access to Trump’s tax returns going back decades, and who among them had the most to gain from leaking those returns to derail his re-election? When framed in that way the answer is obvious – the banks - and in particular Deutsche Bank. 

Last February The New York Times Magazine reported: “At ­Deutsche Bank, he [Mike Offit] had lined up huge loans to finance Trump’s construction and renovation of landmark Manhattan skyscrapers, at a time when the default-­prone real estate developer and casino magnate was no longer able to get loans from most mainstream financial institutions. … The roughly $425 million that Offit helped arrange for Trump back in 1998 was the start of a very long, very complicated relationship between ­Deutsche Bank and the future president. Over the course of two decades, the bank lent him more than $2 billion — so much that by the time he was elected, ­Deutsche Bank was by far his biggest creditor.” [1]  

In order to secure loans, banks require financial information including tax returns. Those financial documents go back decades for Deutsche Bank. Deutsche Bank meets the first criterion – “access.” The New York Times also claims: “All of the information The Times obtained was provided by sources with legal access to it” [2], which would also apply to Deutsche Bank. 

The list of candidate leakers with “access” is short. The IRS could also have decades of Trump’s tax records, however the IRS generally destroys records after 10 years. The exception is when they suspect fraud or cheating – which very well may be the case with Trump. Others with access include Trump’s lawyers and accountants, but they lack the motivation unless Trump chiseled them - as he apparently often does with business associates. Still, it seems unlikely that anyone could gain that kind of access to the inner workings of Trump’s criminal enterprises without some kind of loyalty test or non-disclosure agreement. So it appears that “access” probably comes down to either the IRS or the banks – most likely Deutsche Bank. 

The IRS as a prime suspect seems unlikely. The IRS is patient. They have allowed their investigation of Trump’s questionable $72.9 million federal income tax refund in 2010 to drag on for a decade. They don’t seem to be in a hurry. IRS tax agents are generally sticklers for rules and the law, and not necessarily motivated by partisan politics. Of course, a lone wolf IRS agent could be behind the leak, but that person would be taking a huge career and prosecution risk, with a high likelihood of being caught. This seems unlikely for personal partisan gain, especially when both halves of the political duopoly are in lock-step on most issues. 

Trump’s statement to Hannity on Fox News: “They treat me horribly, the I.R.S., horribly”, seems designed to create a scapegoat to draw sympathy from Trump’s base who generally hate big government – and especially its most potent symbol that touches all our lives – the IRS. In contrast, Trump might be reluctant to publicly attack Deutsche Bank, his biggest creditor, even if he suspected them of the leak. His base would be less sympathetic to a dead-beat debtor unmasked by his creditor.  

In addition, the creditor banks are highly motivated to derail a second Trump term. The New York Times article states: “Mr. Trump has an established track record of stiffing his lenders. But the tax returns reveal that he has failed to pay back far more money than previously known: a total of $287 million since 2010.” [2] If Trump is re-elected, the banks will not be able to go after him in court. 

The article goes on to say: “The picture that perhaps emerges most starkly from the mountain of figures and tax schedules prepared by Mr. Trump’s accountants is of a businessman-president in a tightening financial vise. Most of Mr. Trump’s core enterprises — from his constellation of golf courses to his conservative-magnet hotel in Washington — report losing millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars year after year.… And within the next four years, more than $300 million in loans — obligations for which he is personally responsible — will come due.” [2] If Trump is re-elected, he can continue to run these assets into the ground and Deutsche Bank, and any other lenders, will lose their chance to recover any of their loans.  

The banks also know they are in line behind the IRS. An "adverse ruling could cost him [Trump] more than $100 million" [2] on the audit of his $72.9 million tax refund claim in 2010. This is on top of a pandemic where his resort properties, like Trump’s Doral resort, are struggling. “The Doral resort asked Deutsche Bank to allow a delay on its loan payments. Analysts have predicted that the hotel business will not fully recover until late 2023.” [2] With Deutsche Bank close to bankruptcy [3] in our crumbling global economy, it seems unlikely the bank can afford a huge loss to Trump.  

Trump’s financial problems are compounded by his personal guarantee of the loans: “This time around, he is personally responsible for loans and other debts totaling $421 million, with most of it coming due within four years. Should he win re-election, his lenders could be placed in the unprecedented position of weighing whether to foreclose on a sitting president.” [2] And that is unlikely to happen with a Republican Party in charge of the Senate and a conservative Supreme Court. So, should Trump be re-elected, Deutsche Bank will be forced to sit back and watch the Trump family continue to run his businesses into the ground until there is nothing left to recover. $421 million is a lot of incentive to derail Trump’s re-election effort. When looking for a motive, follow the money. Of course this is speculation, but when the shoe fits.… 

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/04/magazine/deutsche-bank-trump.html 

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/09/27/us/donald-trump-taxes.html 

[3] https://www.globalresearch.ca/deutsche-bank-bankruptcy 

Alex Sharenko, who is challenging incumbent Cheryl Davila for the District 2 seat on Berkeley City Council, has announced on his campaign website an endorsement from Eric Mason, founder of the Mason Investigative Group (MIG), and resident of District 2. 

Given the alarming accusations made by the Ecuadorian government against serial polluter Chevron and specifically its “investigative” contractor, Eric Mason, this seemed a curious endorsement for a self-proclaimed environmentalist candidate such as Sharenko to have accepted and publicized. 

And this unusual endorsement comes at a time when Chevron’s extreme harassment of environmental attorney Steven Donziger (harassment allegedly conducted via a quartet of investigative groups, including Eric Mason’s MIG) is garnering increasing protest and media attention. 

Steven Donziger is the attorney who successfully sued Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorians whose land had been poisoned by the oil giant, in what was considered the worst oil-related environmental disaster in history, often referred to as “Amazon’s Chernobyl.” Although Chevron has admitted that it was responsible for the willful poisoning of ancestral, indigenous lands that resulted in mass deaths and cancers among Ecuadorian farmers and indigenous peoples, it has spent literally billions in legal fees to evade the judgment. It has good reason to try - Donziger’s historic, decades-long legal battle, set a precedent for other indigenous groups to sue multinational corporations that poison their land and water. 

But Chevron didn’t stop there. Chevron’s lawyers began a bizarre harassment of Donziger and, under the highly suspicious oversight of Judge Lewis A. Kaplan, Mr. Donziger has been placed under house arrest, an unprecedented step against an environmental attorney. In April, twenty-nine Nobel laureates signed a letter condemning what they described as “judicial harassment” of Donziger, but Kaplan has refused to release Donziger from house arrest.  

Beyond Chevron’s armies of lawyers, the energy behemoth commenced a series of dirty tricks worthy of the blundering right-wing hucksters at Project Veritas. And that appears to be where Mason Investigative Group entered the scene. 

In 2009, Ecuador’s government accused Eric Mason’s MIG of assisting “American Businessman” Wayne Hansen to escape prosecution by Ecuador. Contrary to Chevron’s assertion of stolid business credentials, Hansen was in reality a convicted felon hired by Chevron to manufacture evidence that the judge involved in the case was corrupt. (How Chevron came to employ Mr. Hansen is a question Eric Mason might answer, as the available email correspondence from Mr. Hansen to Eric implies a cozy familiarity.) 

Helping a client’s ex-con employee flee the country isn’t your usual “investigative” service. When Eric Mason advertised MIG’s “discreet services”, what he might have meant is occasionally illegal services for the right price and the right client. 

Despite the ensuing court battle between Chevron and the Ecuadorian government over Eric Mason’s emails and other communications, Chevron allegedly continued to pay “investigators”, including Eric Mason’s group, to harass Steven Donziger and other legal counsel for the Ecuadorian victims of Chevron’s record-shattering environmental disaster. 

If that is true, what specific role did Eric Mason play in the targeted harassment of Steven Donziger? Is Eric Mason’s MIG still under contract with Chevron? 

Eric Mason wasn’t always accused of such unusual activities. He got his first big break as an investigator in the early 1990’s, digging up compromising information about the families of Michael Jackson’s sexual abuse victims. This “dirty work” won Eric valuable mentions in the Los Angeles Times and helped him build his own business. 

The investigative work of discrediting the victims of rape and sexual abuse is entirely legal, and highly profitable. But when the cash and power differential is so vast between the defense team, which can hire costly investigators like Eric Mason, and the accuser, who often has no resources, it is clearly unethical. This reality is all the more clear in the wake of the recent documentaries about the Michael Jackson abuse victims. 

Much of the secretive activity of Eric’s “investigative” group has been fiercely protected by powerful law firms which contract him, and by Chevron, the multi-billion dollar corporation which hired MIG to “investigate” and allegedly to act as a fixer. It would be grossly unfair to Eric Mason to assume that anyone would behave more ethically when they have the “protection” of a corporation like Chevron, which has paid Mason’s legal fees. On September 25, 2012, the Amazon Defense Coalition reported on Chevron’s protection of MIG’s correspondence: 

“A US federal judge in San Francisco is inexplicably delaying the release of documents that would shed light on Chevron’s extensive misconduct in judicial proceedings in Ecuador where it recently was hit with a $19 billion judgment for dumping toxic waste into the Amazon rainforest. More than a year has passed since Federal Magistrate Judge Nathanael Cousins was asked by rainforest villagers in Ecuador’s rainforest to force Chevron and the Mason Investigative Group to releases hundreds of pages of material related to a scheme to bribe an Ecuadorian judge and undermine the court process there, said Karen Hinton, the US spokesperson for the Ecuadorians.” 

I reached out to Eric Mason, with whom I had a long if not particularly close friendship, prior to writing this, but have not heard back. I am aware that Eric is likely bound by an NDA with Chevron and other parties, so I have tried to be as generous as possible - both to Eric Mason and to the seriousness of the accusations and the damage to innocent Ecuadorian farmers and indigenous groups - in what I relate. 

But the available record about Chevron and MIG should raise questions about Sharenko’s willingness to accept an endorsement from Eric Mason. 

Why does Sharenko covet the endorsement of an investigator with a history as Chevron’s fixer in the Ecuadorian suit? And what does Eric Mason, an individual who doesn’t shirk at “dirty deeds” for powerful people and even more powerful corporations, hope to gain from his endorsement of Sharenko? 

An April 2019 bid by MIG to the Oakland Police Commission for investigative work suggests Eric may be hoping to be rewarded with a future contract with a similar agency within the City of Berkeley. (Unsurprisingly, in the Oakland bid, he does not list Chevron or Michael Jackson among his past clients.) 

Beyond that, we need to examine the nature of “investigative” groups such as MIG, and why they are permitted to function as apparatchiks for behemoth corporations at the expense of innocent people. What role have “investigative groups” played in thwarting justice - whether environmental justice (as in MIG’s work for Chevron) or justice for the victims of sexual abuse (e.g., MIG’s work for Michael Jackson)? 

Why are City Council members like Rashi Kesarwani, Lori Droste and Susan Wengraf - three individuals who stake a claim to progressivism and environmentalism - willing to remain endorsers alongside “investigators” like Eric Mason? If they don’t ask Eric Mason to rescind his endorsement, or if they don’t decline their own, what does that say about their own lack of judgment or ethics? 

I understand that there’s been friction between Cheryl Davila and some other Council members. It’s sometimes felt almost as uncomfortable as it has been necessary, a fact made more clear in this season of protest and pandemic. But if we had honest representatives at all levels of government, people who were as unafraid as Cheryl Davila has been to do and say the right thing, maybe “investigative” groups like MIG wouldn’t be allowed to bully environmental attorneys and the victims of sexual assault. Maybe MIG would never have been in the position to help Wayne Hansen evade justice in Ecuador. Maybe MIG wouldn’t be given room to do in Berkeley what it did in Ecuador. 

But until then, if you have a controversial past as a rape “investigator” for celebrity legal defense teams, and as alleged fixer on Chevron’s Ecuadorian pollution case, and as alleged harasser of the Ecuadorian victims’ attorney, as Eric Mason does, your endorsement reflects the ethics of the campaign that accepts it. It is difficult to imagine that Alex Sharenko doesn’t understand that.

Less than 19 days from election day, Democrats are running scared; they remember four years ago when most of them believed that Hillary Clinton would defeat Donald Trump. (Clinton lost despite having 2.9 million (2.1%) more votes than Trump.) Relax Dems; this time Trump is going down.

The Popular Vote: According to the 538 website, Biden's lead over Trump is 10.7 percentage points. (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/) After an extended period where his lead average 8 points, Biden surged after the September 29th presidential debate and the revelation Trump contracted COVID-19. 

The latest Washington Post-ABC News Poll (https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/poll-post-abc-presidential/2020/10/10/303b2230-0b1d-11eb-859b-f9c27abe638d_story.html ) shows Biden with a 12 point lead over Trump. This poll is rated "A+" by the 538 website. 

The Washington Post-ABC News Poll shines light on a number of important issues. For example, there is the issue of Trump's approval rating. It's consistently been a couple of points better than his polling numbers. (https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ ) This has led some observers to claim there are "shy" Trump voters, who will suddenly appear on November 3rd and propel Trump to victory. The Post-ABC poll notes: "Trump’s overall approval rating among registered voters stands at 45 percent positive and 54 percent negative... Among those who approve of his job performance, 90 percent favor him for reelection." So, there are poll respondents who approve of Trump's job performance but aren't going to vote for him. Who are they going to vote for? Perhaps the Libertarian Party nominee Jo Jorgensen who receives 2 percent support in Post-ABC poll. 

Therefore, the Post-ABC poll suggests that Trump's voter support has a ceiling of around 42 percent. 

While Trump's best issue is the economy, this no longer gives him an edge over Biden. According to the Post-ABC poll: "Trump and Biden are trusted about equally to handle the economy, while Biden has a 17-point advantage (55 percent to 38 percent) on dealing with the virus." "Trump is judged harshly both for his handling of the pandemic and for failing to take what people regard as adequate protections to avoid contracting the virus." 

The Post-ABC poll indicates that basic demographics have shifted in favor of Biden: "Biden holds a 23-point advantage among female likely voters (59 percent to 36 percent), while Trump and Biden split men, 48 percent each. If those figures hold, both would represent a shift from 2016, when men backed Trump by 11 points and women favored Hillary Clinton by 13 points." 

Alaska: (3 electoral votes, Cook rates likely Republican). Real Clear Politics indicates there's not much polling in Alaska. The Senate race (Gross vs Sullivan ) seems to be a tossup; as does the congressional race (Galvin versus Young). Too close to call. 

Arizona: (11 electoral votes, Cook rates lean Democrat.) Real Clear Politics shows Biden leading by 4 percent; Biden has been leading for several months. (Trump has pulled his TV ads in Arizona (https://www.abc15.com/news/election-2020/president-trump-campaign-goes-dark-on-local-tv-but-for-how-long ).) 

Prediction: Biden will win. 227+11=238 electoral votes. 

Florida: (29 electoral votes, Cook rates tossup.) Real Clear Politics shows Biden leading by 1.7 percent; race is too close to call. 

Georgia: (16 electoral votes, Cook rates tossup.) Real Clear Politics shows Biden leading by .4 percent; race is too close to call. 

Michigan: (16 electoral votes, Cook rates lean Democrat.) Real Clear Politics shows Biden leading by 7.2 percent; Biden has been leading for several months. (Trump has pulled his TV ads in Michigan (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-09-14/trump-campaign-slashes-ad-spending-in-key-states-in-cash-crunch ).) 

Prediction: Biden will win. 238+16=254. 

North Carolina: (15 electoral votes, Cook rates tossup.) Real Clear Politics shows Biden up by 2.7 percent. race is too close to call. 

Pennsylvania: (20 electoral votes, Cook rates lean Democrat.) Real Clear Politics shows Biden up by 6.4 percent; Biden has been leading for several months. 

Prediction: Biden will win. 254+20=274 (enough to win presidential election). 

Texas: (38 electoral votes, Cook rates lean Republican.) Real Clear Politics shows Trump up by 4.4 points; race is too close to call. 

Wisconsin: (10 electoral votes, Cook rates lean Democrat.) Real Clear Politics shows Biden up by 6.3 points. 

Prediction: Biden will win. 274+10=284. 

Summary: Biden will easily win the popular vote -- by more than 12 points. He will also win the electoral college.