We are two weeks from election day eve. The headlines are all what they have been — the race is a toss-up. Undecided voters are still deciding. This is like waiting for biopsy results.

The early votes in Georgia and North Carolina are breaking records, I understand, and polls say the early voters are going for Harris, 2-1.  That should mean there are more votes for Harris in the bank already, so to speak. Whether the dude bros Trump is courting to vote for him manage to get to the polls remains to be seen. They tend to be an unreliable group.

Josh Marshall has a post up about the effects of “junk” polls that push up numbers for Republicans. In brief: Yes, this is a real thing. But the better reporting organizations have gotten wise to this and factor it into their aggregate results. And the tightening in the polls is showing up everywhere, he says. Fivethirtyeight is saying Trump and Harris have about an even chance to win. So let’s hope the polls are all missing something, and it isn’t that close.

Given Trump’s behavior in recent days, it’s beyond understanding why he would actually be moving up in the polls now. But apparently he is. And yes, I know Elon Musk is doing all manner of underhanded and possibly illegal things to get people to vote for Trump, and maybe that’s what we’re seeing. I honestly believe Harris is doing everything right. She’s run a smart campaign.

See also The Very Real Scenario Where Trump Loses and Takes Power Anyway at Politico. This explains what Trump is doing, and likely to do, to grab the presidency if he loses the votes. Among other things, he’s going to lean on county and state officials to stop them from certifying election results. If he can deny Harris a clear Electoral College majority, all bets are off.

This is all terrifying. And it also points to something, probably a lot of things, deeply wrong with our political culture that needs addressing. I suspect that the dominance of social media has made it way too easy to misinform people who are not tuned in to traditional news sources. But there may be more to it.

If you can find any signs of good news out there, please add them to comments.

Update: Okay, maybe there are things going on that I don’t understand. This weekend Trump pulled one of his signature stupid stunts and handed people fries from a McDonalds take-out window in Pennsylvania somewhere. Trump allegedly also operated the frying machine.

For some reason Trump is obsessed with Kamala Harris’s having worked at a McDonalds during a college summer break. He insists she is lying about this, although why anyone would lie about working at McDonalds is beyond me. It would have been 41 years ago, so there are no records of this employment stored anywhere except possibly at the IRS. It’s not something anyone can prove one way or another. And no, McDonalds did not confirm she didn’t work for them, as Trump has claimed.

Trump is suspicious because Harris has rarely mentioned this summer job over the years and never put her time on the flrying machine on her professional resumes, but nobody puts stuff like that on professional resumes. Trump has never had to apply for a job, so he wouldn’t know you don’t put college summer jobs on your resume unless the job was in your chosen industry.. At least one old friend has confirmed that she remembers Harris working at a McDonalds, though.

So the franchise owner of the Pennsylvania McDonalds closed the store temporarily and let Trump and some of his people take over to play at running a McDonalds. And this inspired Piers Morgan to write Trump’s genius McDonald’s stunt will fry Kamala at the ballot box at the New York Post. And some guy at the Arizona Republic wrote Trump went to McDonald’s and fried Kamala Harris’ campaign to a crisp.

I honestly don’t get the thing with McDonalds. I understand what Trump was trying to pull with the Bible Stunt and mosf ot his other stunts, but this one seems to have no point to it. Is he making fun of working at McDonalds? Some McDonalds employees are taking it that way. The guy who owns the franchise is probably sorry, because now it’s being reported around the world that his store failed its health inspection. And McDonalds executives are going to great lengths to let the world know the company isn’t endorsing Trump. Otherwise I’m not seeing much reaction to the McDonalds stunt, but Trump’s people are strutting about like they just won a prize fight.

Update on the McDonald’s Stunt: I had to laugh. Here’s a photo of Trump and the french fryer:

He didn’t roll up his sleeves. Obviously, he has no experience with what grease does to fabric. But there are no photos of him actually operating the fryer, just scooping up the fries and putting them into the paper containers. That’s probably all he did.

Another update: Yesterday I wrote about the Republican “ground game,” the GOTV effort that puts canvassers and other activists into communities to get people to the polls for their candidates. Josh Marshall has an update that’s worth reading. I remember reading that the whole idea to outsource GOTV, and not use the RNC’s own organization, came from Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA. But lately I’ve just read about Elon Musk’s people doing GOTV, not Kirk’s. Josh Marshall explains this. Kirk got $100 million to put his GOTV organization together, and he failed. He and his organization simply lacked the experience/ability to do the job. So Musk got called in to take over. Kirk’s Turning Point is now only doing GOTV in Arizona, where they are headquartered. And as I wrote yesterday, according to several sources Musk’s canvassing efforts are a mess.