As you may have heard, Sen. Kamala Harris would be a historic vice president. Most attention has rightly been focused on the barriers she’ll break as the first woman, the first African American, and the first Indian American to hold that office. There is, however, another barrier of importance—one that before the Civil Rights era would have been just as unthinkable—relating to Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, who is the potential first Second Gentleman.

As the November election approaches, the American media still haven’t wrapped their heads around an essential fact that maybe, just possibly, might inform their thinking a little; namely, that when the last polls close on the evening of November 3, 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic will come to an abrupt halt, as far as Donald Trump is concerned.

The impeached president does and says so many absurdly horrific, devastatingly harmful things that even just addressing one each day feels impossible. But taking a step back and looking at the big picture every once in a while can help. Comparing the Trump campaign’s tactics to those of Joe Biden, one overarching difference stands out in the way each addresses the other.

Teachers in some areas have said they might go on strike rather than going back to in-person teaching if they felt it would be unsafe—and a majority of Americans would support them, a new HuffPost/YouGov poll found. A third of people said they would strongly support teachers, and another 22% said they would somewhat support teachers.

Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week

At Responsible Statecraft, Matthew Petti writes—Progressives urge House Dems to help Biden save the Iran nuclear deal that Donald Trump has done everything he can to destroy:

Sixteen progressive groups have signed a letter urging the next House Foreign Affairs Committee chair to help a “potential Biden administration” save the nuclear deal with Iran.

Further revelations from the whistleblower complaint alleging a top Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official wanted to downplay white supremacy terror threats confirm there was also an active effort to lie about the number of known or suspected terrorists encountered at the southern border in order to back support for impeached president Donald Trump’s wall.

It has been almost eight months since the first COVID-19 cases hit the United States and there has been a national shift in how essential workers are viewed. Once heroic headlines—uplifting the workers who kept the country running and fed—are now bleak. Essential workers are being treated as “sacrificial lambs,” New York Magazine recently reported, and thrust “into positions they were never meant to fill.