This week in the saga

Forty-seven papers, the densest week of the chapter. It opens with the machine grading itself — a hundred and twenty wins to two in 2020, eleven to nothing this cycle, published as a score. On the twenty-ninth a second of the ten Republicans who voted to impeach him announces he will not run again, and the office marks it in four words: 2 down, 8 to go! Neither of the two was beaten at a ballot box; both simply stopped. On the thirtieth he is at the World Series in Atlanta while forty thousand people make the same gesture at once. On the first of November, the eve of Virginia, he campaigns for a candidate down a telephone line, because the candidate has not asked him to come.