Boobies on duty
I don't think Donald Trump will lose the presidential election until he actually does lose it.
Whether he will accept a possible defeat is another, unfortunately very legitimate, question.
What makes me most skeptical is my memory of 2016. At that time I followed the US election campaign closely and almost everyone in the know was certain (until election day) that Trump would not stand a chance.
With this backlog in the polls!
And now Trump is even less far behind in the polls than four years ago.
On Tuesday, Trump and his challenger Joe Biden will meet for the first time in a TV duel.
Unfortunately, the democrat Biden has the fatal tendency to make mistakes on the open stage.
He once called himself a "gaffe machine", an expression that can best be translated as "boobies on duty".
My colleague René Pfister has watched 77-year-old Biden again and again over the past few months.
He describes a candidate who knows how to reach the hearts of Americans - and at the same time manages to trip over his own feet again and again.
Biden watching, as Pfister writes in the new SPIEGEL cover story, always has a slightly morbid appeal, "similar to a morning at the Hahnenkamm race in Kitzbühel, where the hero can break his neck at any time".
Trump challenger Biden: harmless versus shameless
A dodgy lunch
In July 2013, then President Barack Obama invited Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg to a discreet lunch in his private dining room in the White House.
The then 80-year-old was already the oldest judge at the US Supreme Court.
She was also struck twice by cancer.
As the "New York Times" now reports, Obama apparently had a clear goal for this lunch appointment, even if he did not dare to state it clearly.
He did not urge Bader Ginsburg to voluntarily give up her judicial office.
But he pointed out, according to the report, that the majority of Democrats in the US Senate would soon be playful and that he would no longer be able to appoint a young, liberal judge.
The US Supreme Court justices are appointed for life.
But Bader Ginsburg did not think of withdrawing from these strategic motives.
Last week she died of cancer at the age of 87.
And Donald Trump is determined to quickly get a young, arch-conservative successor to the liberal icon Bader Ginsburg into office - and thus consolidate the conservative character of the highest court for a long time.
Today, Saturday, he wants to officially announce his candidate.
Supreme Court: US President will apparently nominate Judge Barrett
Unity thanks to Corona
In a week from today, the Germans will celebrate an anniversary: 30 years of unity.
When 30 years of the fall of the Berlin Wall last year more than celebrated, the mood was lousy.
In three East German state elections it became clear how much frustration had accumulated there: the elections were also indirectly a settlement with the federal government.
However, because of its corona management, it can now enjoy high approval ratings in both western and eastern Germany.
What has happened there?
How is the mood now, shortly before the new anniversary?
For a report in the new SPIEGEL, my colleague Susanne Beyer first traveled through eastern Germany with a sociologist and then with the politician Katrin Göring-Eckardt to find out what has changed as a result of the Corona.
She experienced despair, but also astonishing confidence.
Above all, she got the impression that the East Germans are somehow coping better with the pandemic: because they have already experienced hard times and major upheavals in the first years of unification.
Katrin Göring-Eckardt says: "Nobody likes to go through a crisis twice. But the second time you make fewer mistakes."
Journey through the East after 30 years of unity: Germany's second chance
Winner of the day ...
... is Christian Lindner.
After its brief heyday in early autumn 2017, it has rightly received a lot of criticism since late autumn 2017.
After his sexist joke when he said goodbye to General Secretary Linda Teuteberg, whom he personally shot, he was seen by many as the incarnation of a 130-year-old white man who must have had his best time in the 1950s.
Lindner took active countermeasures yesterday.
"Respect to #FridaysForFuture!" He tweeted.
"Children and young people demonstrated today with mask and distance. A role model for some adults who have recently protested in Berlin ..." That really didn't sound like a man's joke.
But beware!
This briefly progressive impression can already be yesterday's tomorrow.
Because of Lindner.
Or because of Twitter.
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I wish you a good start to the day.
Your Markus Feldenkirchen
