The 2020 election is shaping up to be the most consequential in decades. In a Pew Research poll released this week, 83% of registered voters said it matters a great deal whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden is the victor in the November election. Contrast that to 2000, when only 50% said the choice of George W. Bush or Al Gore would really matter. All signs were pointing to enormous interest in the campaign as Democrats prepared this week to stage their most unusual convention in memory, a four-night virtual gathering featuring speeches by Joe Biden, his VP pick Kamala Harris, Barack and Michelle Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton. Democrats seem energized by the choice of Harris and by Biden's edge in the polls. But they are also nervous about whether they can prevail in an election held in the middle of a pandemic and with an incumbent trying to undermine mail-in voting. Pew also found that nearly half of voters polled think casting their ballot this year will be difficult. President Trump, whose ally and major GOP donor Louis DeJoy has been installed as Postmaster General, has opposed new funding for the Postal Service. "On Thursday, Trump effectively admitted that he was doing his best to fix the election by keeping the Postal Service from sourcing the funds it needs to facilitate the scale of mail-in ballots likely needed for this election," wrote David Andelman. DeJoy has suggested that the service may no longer expedite election mail, which typically goes at a bulk rate of 20 cents. "There's a way to utterly frustrate DeJoy's suggestion," Andelman pointed out. "Every voter should put a 55-cent stamp on his or her return envelope, no matter if it is already pre-printed with bulk postage by their election board." Geraldine Lampert argued that another way to get creative about the voting challenge is to draw private carriers such as FedEx and UPS into the process. "Over the past few months," wrote CNN legal analyst Elie Honig, "Trump has made his stance clear, launching increasingly frantic -- and wildly inaccurate, almost hallucinogenic -- pre-emptive attacks on mail-in voting." But since elections are controlled by the states, Trump can only indirectly affect them, Honig noted. Trump's campaign and the Republican National Committee have gone to court in an effort to get states to limit access to voting by mail. The two parties are "braced for war," hiring "teams of election law specialists" and setting aside "tens of millions of dollars to finance legal battles unfolding around the country." Kamala Harris Joe Biden kept it a secret till the last minute but his choice of a running mate turned out to be the candidate most people considered the favorite: Sen. Kamala Harris. What was a surprise, Frida Ghitis observed, was that the Trump campaign seemed unprepared for the news. It threw "Trump visibly off balance, and sent his campaign flailing just as badly. Even his chorus of cheerleaders at Fox News is having trouble deciding what t
