ONCE-SLOW GOLDBERG SHOWS HE'S GOT PLENTY OF GAS IN THE TANK.

I have noticed that the Trump takeover of the GOP has left Jonah Goldberg a bit adrift and demoralized, so it is with pleasure that I announce he's returned to form with a column worthy of his alicublog tagline: the stupidest thing ever written until Goldberg writes something else.

First, recall all the recent news stories of hours-long lines of early voters and Republican voter suppression and voter harassment. OK, now catch Goldberg's headline:

How early voting endangers democracy

Not even kidding. In his lede, Goldberg suggests that the recent blockbuster (and bullshit) Comey email drop is vital voter information that would have gotten early Clinton voters to change their minds, then follows with a classic Goldberg tic: trying to make this look bipartisan-like by adding,

...a couple weeks before that, NBC News released a tape of Donald Trump describing how he likes to sexually assault women. Since then, nearly a dozen women have come forward describing treatment that closely tracks the behavior Trump himself described...

Early-voting start times vary by state and often by county. In Minnesota, people started casting ballots in September. In Ohio, voting began just five days after the “Access Hollywood” tape surfaced...

Someone who voted in early October might have missed that Trump was a scumbag! Acknowledging that "early-voting supporters concede the point and then say it just doesn’t matter" -- i.e., everyone knows this is a phony argument made up by Republicans who typically get creamed in early voting -- Goldberg tries this:

They note that the people most likely to cast early votes are committed partisans, immune to new facts and information. There’s surely some truth to that --

Which is why the Comey drop would have made them vote for Trump, I guess.

-- but as the scale of early voting increases with each year, it must also be less and less true every year.

It must be, because the longer the line for something, the less likely it is that all the people on that line really want what's on the other end, that is I mean  farrrrt did you hear that? Who did that? Why are you looking at me, I say that's grounds for ending this argument with me winning --

Unfortunately all around Goldberg still has a word count to fulfill, so we come to this:

Also, one might wonder why people who decry the rise of ideological polarization and partisanship are so eager to make it easier for hardcore partisans to vote... 

Every day we hear pious actors, activists and politicians talk about the solemn and sacred duty to vote, and yet everyone wants to make voting easier and more convenient.

[Blink. Blink.]

Many dream of the most cockamamie idea of all: online voting, so we can make choosing presidents as easy as buying socks on Amazon.

This gets human nature exactly backward. Nothing truly important, never mind sacred and solemn, should be treated as a trivial convenience. Churches that ask more of the faithful do better at attracting and retaining congregants. The Marines get the best and most committed recruits because they have higher standards...

Drop and give me twenty, then you can vote! That's how we did it when America was strong -- well, sort of, actually we used poll taxes and literacy tests. And, because we wanted to motivate black people to be all they could be -- like the Marines, and the Church! -- we used it mostly on them.

I predict that whoever wins Tuesday, we're in for a golden age of Goldberg. Keep a gas mask handy!