Two Weeks is an Eternity in Politics

Two weeks out from the election, President Trump returned to the campaign trail in key battleground states. Even as poll numbers show the President lagging Democratic nominee Joe Biden in states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, nobody is ready to call the race, and two weeks can change everything.

“Two weeks is an eternity in politics,” former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell told The Cats Roundtable. “And no one should feel the slightest bit secure in their lead in the polls—that’s for sure.”

And Rendell doesn’t have to look far back to remember why. In 2016, he was one of the few Democrats who felt an unspoken swell of support for Trump that the pre-election polls had simply missed.

“I thought there was a hidden Trump vote,” Rendell explained. The former Democratic National Committee chairman also believed that that unspoken support was “still in existence now,” but he was beginning to believe Biden’s lead was starting to be “too much to be wrong.”

But Rendell’s comments on the presidential election go beyond the candidates. Rendell framed this November as a more widespread moment to look at the careerism and deadlock in American politics, and why he believed term-limits could be a solution.

“They say it’s partisanship that keeps things from getting done in Washington,” Rendell told The Cats Roundtable. “Well, it’s the partisanship, but it’s also the fact that people are scared—they’re scared to vote what they understand is the right way.”

With some of the politicians he criticizes up for reelection this November, Rendell told The Cats Roundtable that legislators had little “guts to support” changing the current deadlock, adding many were “totally out of touch with the American people.”

Rendell added that term limits would help spur lawmakers and give them “the courage to do the right thing.”

“When the founders wrote our constitution, they always believed we’d have citizen-legislators,” he said, not politicians who saw their work “like a career.”

As the election reaches its final stretch, Rendell took the time to address an October report by the New York Post on Hunter Biden. The New York Post claimed it received emails that proved Hunter Biden had curried favor with Vice President Joe Biden with a Ukrainian businessman, with the President calling the news a “smoking gun.”

Rendell told The Cats Roundtable that while the news might hit Biden personally, he doubted the veracity of the claims and the influence on the shape of the Democratic campaign as a whole.

“I think politically, there’s no evidence of any wrongdoing, whatsoever,” Rendell said.

While he said that Hunter Biden didn’t break the law if he’d gotten his position at a Ukrainian company “because he was the Vice President’s son,” Rendell told The Cats Roundtable “the key” was whether Hunter Biden had acted “against the interest of the United States of America.”

“There’s no shred of evidence to indicate that happened,” Rendell said.

In the end, Rendell called on Americans of every political background to “get out and vote.” He encouraged early-voting, which has already seen record numbers this year but was confident that polls would handle election day without a hitch.

“A lot of people have died for the privilege of keeping this democracy free and open, and we all need to vote,” Rendell said. “Get out there on election day—the polls will be lined up, socially distant. Wear your mask and get out and exercise the single most important thing we can do as a citizen.”