A palate cleanser to take the pre-debate edge off via Liam Donovan, who rightly notes that the light comic touch is key to this ad’s success. It comes from an outside group called No To Joe PAC but it’s the sort of thing you can imagine the Trump campaign doing, not that different from the weird memes of him bodyslamming CNN or whatever that he occasionally tweets out. An ad like this that had come from Team Trump would have made big waves. I’m surprised in hindsight that they didn’t think of it.

On the other hand, this ad’s also an inadvertent reminder that the “Sleepy Joe is demented” attack line never really went anywhere. Righties kept it up for months, Biden kept on leading in the polls, and then he did well enough at the first debate seemingly to put the doubts about his fitness to rest. (That’s an underrated reason for why his polling ticked up afterwards. The conventional wisdom is that voters recoiled from how Trump comported himself, but maybe it was a simpler matter of some fencesitters concluding that Biden seemed mentally up to the job of the presidency after all.) Tonight Trump gets one more crack at exposing Biden’s senescence in a big spot. If it doesn’t happen, the Democrat can probably call a lid until Election Day without suffering for it among voters.

The point of the ad isn’t just that Sleepy Joe is out on his feet, of course, it’s that his “death” means he’ll be a pushover from lefties. Is that true? Maybe it is.

Sen. Bernie Sanders is hoping to be a part of Joe Biden’s potential administration and has expressed a particular interest in becoming Labor secretary, two people familiar with the conversations tell POLITICO.

“I can confirm he’s trying to figure out how to land that role or something like it,” said one person close to the Vermont senator. “He, personally, does have an interest in it.”…

The official added that joining a Biden administration could help the 79-year-old Sanders craft a legacy — “being able to help rebuild the economy in a way that works for working Americans after this pandemic.”

One person close to Sanders agreed that Sanders sees an opportunity to achieve long-held policy goals for the working class under Biden, adding: “He really does believe Biden wants to be a Roosevelt-like president.”

Biden has to put some hard leftists in the cabinet to appease progressives. Elizabeth Warren has been touted as a potential Treasury secretary, but maybe Biden figures that if he installs socialists’ favorite politician at Labor, he could get away with going a bit more moderate at Treasury. Adding Sanders to the cabinet would also give him some cover to appoint a Republican or two to some less important cabinet positions, as he’s reportedly considering.

As for what Trump will be doing next year, hmmmm:

Kushner has floated the idea throughout the year with Republicans and media types, GOP sources said. But the chatter kicked up recently, with Trump appearing headed for a loss.

— Tom LoBianco (@tomlobianco) October 22, 2020

"There's no doubt in my mind that Jared's future is in building a media empire of some kind," said one of the Republicans familiar with the nascent talks. "He believes that controlling the media means controlling the policy, controlling the people."

— Tom LoBianco (@tomlobianco) October 22, 2020

The list of scapegoats for an electoral defeat will be endless. Maybe his ultimate revenge will come at the expense of Fox News for being only 99 percent loyal to him instead of the full 100. How much of their audience would they lose to Trump TV?

Here’s the ad.