It’s possible that after November 3, pundits will be talking about how President Donald Trump won reelection and bounced back from all the polls that, in June and July, showed him losing to former Vice President Joe Biden. But at the moment, the president really is in dire straits. Attorney Richard North Patterson, former chairman of Common Cause and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, doubts that Trump’s reelection campaign will recover — and in a new article for The Bulwark, he explains why he believes that Trump is "cornered" and why his negative poll numbers have “hardened.”

When Attorney General Bill Barr tried to force out Geoffrey Berman, who had been the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, he created a mess he clearly didn't foresee. He claimed Berman had stepped down, but Berman quickly refuted that claim. Berman's opposition foiled Barr's attempt to replace him with an outsider to the office, and eventually, Berman left on the understanding that his deputy, Audrey Strauss, would take over.

The tumultuous and dramatic series of events left a question that has yet to be answered: Why did Barr want to replace Berman so badly? Given the SDNY's centrality to several cases that directly or indirectly implicate President Donald Trump, the hamfisted effort to oust Berman has raised suspicions of potential misconduct and improper influence.