[C]ontext continues to show Biden's in one of the best positions for any challenger since scientific polling began in the 1930s.

There were more than 40 national public polls taken at least partially in the month of May that asked about the Biden-Trump matchup. Biden led in every single one of them. He's the first challenger to be ahead of the incumbent in every May poll since Jimmy Carter did so in 1976. Carter, of course, won the 1976 election. Biden's the only challenger to have the advantage in every May poll over an elected incumbent in the polling era.

Biden remains the lone challenger to be up in the average of polls in every single month of the election year. His average lead in a monthly average of polls has never dipped below 4 points and has usually been above it.

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Biden hasn't trailed Trump this entire year in a single telephone poll in which at least some voters were reached via their cell phones -- historically the most accurate. The ABC News/Washington Post poll is the latest example of these polls. In fact, Biden's never been behind in any of these polls since at least January 2019. No other challenger has come close to that mark.

Indeed, the stability of Biden's edge has been what is most impressive. The May polls had Biden up by 6 points on average. That is right where the average of polls taken since the beginning of this year has been. It's where the average of polls conducted since the beginning of 2019 has been as well.

If we limit ourselves to just the telephone polls that call cell phones, Biden's edge might even be slightly larger. This month those polls have Biden up 7 points on average. Estimating Biden's advantage from state polls of this type shows a similar lead for Biden.

A look at the fundamentals shows why Trump continues to trail. Simply put, he remains unpopular.

It is striking that among the handful of soundless or near-soundless moments in the season are when Bosch is ruminating over a murder investigation at the Hollywood Division. Bosch approaches the Murder Book the way a monk will approach Sacred Scripture through Lectio Divina, viz. meditation, silence, and contemplation. Bosch's seemingly only interest outside the job is jazz (which he listens to at home on vinyl) and he doesn't even let jazz intrude as he silently prays the Lectio Divina on Daisy's Murder Book.

Bosch's reading of the Murder Book is interrupted; there is the "fresh" murder of Dr. Stanley Kent (a medical physicist) that sets the season's central plot into motion. As Bosch approaches the body of Kent, first by car and then by foot, the imposing block letters of the Hollywood Sign loom above. And again, the Sign is there when Bosch meets the FBI agents that are involved in the case due to the fact Kent stole radioactive material (cesium) from his work in exchange for his wife's life. The murderers are unknown and the cesium is lost. The law enforcement bureaucracies agree that the LAPD will investigate the murder of Kent, and the FBI will focus on finding the cesium before it is turned into a dirty bomb that could turn the City of Angels into a City of Ashes. This armistice between the LAPD and the Feds is not without its conflicts, for example, when a Special Agent tells Bosch to stay in his lane and not to interfere with the anti-terrorism investigation into the missing cesium. Bosch's laconic response to the agent, which exemplifies who he is qua detective: "And my lane has no lines." For Bosch, then, a murder investigation is the highest calling for a law enforcement officer, and thus there are no lines when one is pursuing justice for the murdered. [...]

Twice in the season, Edgar refers to Bosch as a monk, both times the latter responds with jokes. Being jovial is rare for Bosch and he only seems to make them when someone close to him such as Edgar or Maddie say something that hits home. Otherwise, he remains in monkish silence; he turns the other cheek, for example, when Bosch is told that he doesn't understand what it is like in the foster care system, even though he is a product of it himself. But Edgar is right about Bosch being a monastic. Other than Bosch's touching and centering relationship with Maddie, all Bosch has is what he calls "my murders." Both his waking and sleeping moments are haunted by the victims whose murders have not been solved. Bosch is Gatsby reaching for that green light, but even if he solves one murder and grasps the light, there will be another; and so Bosch and the other detectives beat on, against the current, to give some sort of justice to those that have been murdered under the unwavering gaze of the Hollywood Sign.

One of the big questions Alesina tackled was why the U.S. doesn't have the generous welfare benefits of advanced countries in Europe. His answer, along with co-authors Edward Glaeser and Bruce Sacerdote, was twofold. First, U.S. institutions -- the Senate, the electoral system, the legal system -- were designed much earlier than their modern European equivalents, and are thus more oriented toward protecting private property above all else. But in addition, the economists found evidence that racial animosity was a source of American exceptionalism:

Opponents of redistribution in the United States have regularly used race-based rhetoric to resist left-wing policies...Within the United States, race is the single most important predictor of support for welfare. America's troubled race relations are clearly a major reason for the absence of an American welfare state.

Listening to conservative talk-show hosts such as Rush Limbaugh, who derided Obamacare and other Obama administration social programs as "reparations," it's hard to argue with Alesina's conclusion.

Alesina also believed that racial and ethnic divisions could inhibit a country's economic growth. With co-authors Reza Baqir and William Easterly, he found that U.S. cities with more ethnic fragmentation were less effective at building roads, picking up trash and spending money on education -- all things that contribute to economic growth. And with Easterly and Janina Matuszeski, he found that post-colonial states with boundaries that cut across ethnic groups tended to do worse economically than those with more natural borders like rivers and mountains.

To some, this might seem like a confirmation of right-wing ideas that diversity is bad for a country. But although it might help explain the success of homogenous countries such as Sweden and South Korea, Alesina's theory is much more subtle than it might appear. As he explained in a 2003 paper, the key isn't how similar the inhabitants of a country might appear on paper, but how much they see themselves as one people; fractionalization is in the mind, rather than in the genes. That implies that the way forward for the U.S. and other diverse countries, to become more equal and prosperous, is to de-emphasize racial and ethnic divisions and promote a shared identity.