As this is written, Election Day is 12 weeks away. As you, dear reader, peruse this, that time horizon will be closer to 11 weeks.

It would be cliche to observe that those weeks will fly by. But has anything about 2020, the interminable year, moved at anything beyond a snail’s pace?

Yet the electoral finish line is now in distant sight. Let’s take stock of where the campaigns stand and what may well be in store.

The coming two weeks were put aside for the two nominating conventions. COVID-19 has done us precious few favors. But if the virus leads to a permanent alteration of this tradition which long ago passed its relevance, that will be small, very small, recompense.

These affairs long ago became lavish, corporate-funded, stage-managed, made-for-TV productions with nary a moment of genuine spontaneity.

The virtual, Zoom-based “conventions” over these two weeks at least will eliminate all pretense of these being anything other than fully rehearsed, theatrical fabrications. Dropping the sham is worth something. The only thing lacking will be the cardboard-cutout “fans” populating far too many baseball stadiums.

The addition of Kamala Harris to the Democratic ticket was logical and predictable. From the moment Biden clinched the nomination, Harris was the obvious choice. Other names advanced and receded, but she never lost her pole position. As with most vice presidential candidates, her impact on this fall’s race is likely to be negligible. If this ticket is successful, time will tell what kind of governing partner she will be. One can only hope that consideration was uppermost in Biden’s calculation.

That said, there is every prospect that we have, at last, learned the identity of the nation’s first female president.

While Democrats, as naturally neurotic sorts, still suffer an excess of PTSD from their unrealized expectations of 2016, their ticket enters the fall campaign with the wind briskly at their back. Donald Trump defied the odds four years ago by being the outsider candidate and the middle-finger choice of most late-deciding voters.

But how does that work when he sits in the White House, the ultimate establishment symbol, amidst a pandemic that has disproportionately decimated this country along with the attendant economic freefall? Do most undecided voters, a withering element in any event, again break his way? Color me dubious.

In politics, as in sports, you are either on offense or you are playing defense. Look at the battleground map of where this presidential race is now being contested. Trump is spending valuable resources defending typically red states that should have been safely in his column long ago. To go along with his obsession of playing to his already hardened base at every chance. On the flip side, there is not a blue state that appears at all in play affording Biden the luxury of focusing all his efforts on those decisive swing states along with a foray here and there into reddish states where Trump is struggling.

Let’s get specific. If states such as Arizona, Iowa, Georgia, Ohio and Texas remain in any significant question come Labor Day, you know that the map is heavily tilted in Biden’s direction. These states should be safe Trump turf and all went comfortably his way last time out. Even if Trump eventually prevails in all five, the very fact that they are competitive indicates that he is swimming distinctly upstream in the five states that will prove decisive — Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

If Trump loses any of those first five states, his re-election odds are hugely compromised. But even if he holds serve in all but continues to come up short in the five largest swing states, Biden will triumph with over 320 electoral votes.

In 2016, Trump threaded the needle, winning Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania by a combined 77,000 votes. That needle eye is even tinier this year and Trump’s dexterity in threading it is in further question.

Simply put, Biden does not present the ripe target of Hillary Clinton. Trump has tried this tack and that to draw blood from Biden, but so far almost totally without results. The notion of Joe Biden as some sort of leftie radical just doesn’t fit. Attacks on his verbal gaffes or even his handsiness around women ring rather hollow given Trump’s record and persona.

Of course, the onslaught will intensify. Some volleys will take a toll; and Biden will surely stumble a time or two. But in Biden, Trump has found an opponent not easy to caricature and with built-in political immunities to much of the Trump barrage.

The freshness of Trump’s irreverence is long gone and less suited to a pervasive public health crisis. What was four years ago new and unique and enticing to some who just wanted to take a flier on something different is now tried and tired and largely failed. The Trump reality show has quite possibly played itself out.

The remaining uncertainty is a product of the long weeks still ahead of Nov. 3 and the entire context of the election. Never before has the United States conducted such a mass scale, full throttle election amidst a crippling epidemic. The very act of voting changes when trekking to the neighborhood polling place involves such virulent risk. Coloradans are long comfortable and confident with voting by mail from the safety of home. But this is a new variable for the largest swath of the country.

Which brings us to the final irony — at least one worth considering. What if Trump’s concerted efforts to stir suspicion as to voting by mail serves only to suppress turnout among those voters he most needs, often older and living in an enhanced state of fear? Some in Trump’s circle are voicing concern as to this eventuality. Says here that worry is well-founded. It could happen.