Trump leads the polls. It means absolutely nothing.

Plus: OpenAI drama, Dutch discontent and more. [Bloomberg]( This is Bloomberg Opinion Today, a 501(c)(3) public charity for Bloomberg Opinion’s opinions. [Sign up here](. Today’s Agenda - [Democracy]( is on the ballot in [2024](. - OpenAI isn’t the [nonprofit]( next door. - “[Immaculate disinflation](” is econ lore. - [Dutch discontent]( is starting to soar. Trump 2.0 I’ll never forget the night Trump won. In 2016, I was still a college student in Bloomington, Indiana. Early that evening, my friend Tori and I ventured to the bar in town that offered “$2 Tuesdays.” We ordered some [water longs]( and watched as the TV projected red states that were supposed to be blue. By the time the orange-tinted man had secured Ohio, we were in no mood to be sitting at that bar. I returned home to watch Steve Kornacki and his [Extremely Normal Khakis](, my eyes glued to the screen until Barron Trump [nearly]( fell asleep during his dad’s big speech. You know how the next four years went. Will 2024 give us [déjà vu](? As of last week, Trump was leading in six of seven swing states. It seems obvious that President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign has a tough road ahead, if his [turkey pardon ceremony]( is any indication. But is he doomed? [According to]( Jonathan Bernstein, “Until 300 days before the election, polls have no predictive value at all.” In case you don’t have a calculator on hand, there’s still 350 days until Election Day: A second term for Trump would no doubt be ugly, and not just because Melania’s [blood-red Christmas trees]( would be back in the White House. Trump was elected in 2016 as an outsider aiming to disrupt democracy. But if he secures the presidency in 2024, he’ll be in full-on revenge mode, willing to purge any and all “[vermin](” who get in his way. “The country should be terrified by this looming absurdity, as well as deeply perplexed,” Clive Crook [writes](. The very foundation of Trump’s campaign — of his [entire ethos](, really — is built on a [potentially criminal]( lie. By now, Clive says, “he either knows or ought to know” that the 2020 election was *not* stolen. But that hasn’t stopped a lot of Americans from losing faith in the integrity of elections. “Trust in the system is broken,” he writes, and “many of Trump’s critics in politics and the media have taken sides in a way that calls their credibility into question.” “As always with Trump, there’s a method to his madness,” Tim O’Brien [says]( on the latest episode of [Crash Course](, where he spoke to historian Heather Cox Richardson. (She’s also the brains behind one of the best — if not the best — Substacks of all time, [Letters from an American](.) “Trump is a salesman,” Heather tells Tim on the podcast. “He held up a mirror to those people and said, listen, I can fix the economic stuff that you don't like. People forget in 2016, he was the most moderate Republican in terms of economics on the debate stages. He called for fixing tax loopholes. He called for better and cheaper health care. He called for infrastructure. He called for bringing back manufacturing.” Trump won the first time around because he successfully took a disaffected population and welded them into an ironclad MAGA movement. Now, Heather says, “his followers are willing to destroy America in order to recreate their own version of a new kind of America in which they are better than everybody else.” Let’s just hope some of those fans have fallen off the Border Wall Bandwagon since 2016. Otherwise, I’m gonna need [a drink]( — anything but a glass of [Trump Rose]( will do. OpenAI, Full Hearts, Can't Lose When writing a newsletter — or reading one, for that matter — you need to understand one thing: Time does not stop. Sure, it would be nice if we could all press pause during critical news moments — like when a board suddenly fires its CEO and throws the world into a multiday [sleepless frenzy](. But we have no such magical button! The only thing we do have is disclaimers like [this one]( from Matt Levine’s [Money Stuff](: Another note: This is being published a little before 1 p.m. New York time on Tuesday, Nov. 21. The OpenAI stuff moves pretty fast, and it is possible that by later this afternoon everything will be different. I mean, sorry? Honestly, you’d do well to get your news on this story from [social media](, where [trusted sources]( like Bloomberg’s Emily Chang are providing [real-time updates](: But if you’re not on X or you’re afraid of misinformation or allergic to Elon Musk’s [memes](, fine, I get it. We can talk about at least part of the saga in your inbox, starting with the fact that OpenAI is technically a nonprofit with a [for-profit arm](. The funny thing is that few people knew this until Sam Altman was fired on Friday! It was but a small, benign detail in a wild success story about tech innovation. Who cares if you’re controlled by a 501(c)(3) [public charity]( when you — with the help of your good pals at Microsoft — are [building]( THE FUTURE OF THE UNIVERSE? Nobody, that’s who. But while you were reading [article]( after [article]( about how ChatGPT is beating your mom at [CAPTCHA](, OpenAI’s staff members were answering to the board, and the board was answering to … no one, except their own consciences. “There are no shareholders; the board’s main duties are to the mission,” Matt writes. But OpenAI isn’t some hunky-dory philanthropy full of do-gooders who allocate grant money to homeless shelters. It’s a billion-dollar operation that’s attempting to build “safe and beneficial artificial general intelligence” for all humans. “It is easy to see how the board’s view of the mission could conflict with the staff’s views of their jobs,” Matt writes. The people who applied to work at OpenAI are absolutely *not* the same people who applied up to work for the Ben & Jerry's Foundation. These are cutting-edge AI researchers with degrees from Stanford and MIT working at a firm that’s backed by Satya Nadella, one of the most powerful people in tech. Of course they’re going to want to race ahead and make [millions of dollars]( with all their cutting-edge innovations! And they’re not going to be happy when a board that’s chock-full of Luddites shows up and — in Matt’s words — is like, “hey this edge is too cutting, we worry it’s going to kill us all, slow it down there tiger.” Obviously they’re going to fight back with an [open letter to the board](. It’s not rocket science; it’s capitalism, which is really why OpenAI’s nonprofit governance is so intrinsically strange. For investors, Matt says the lesson here is relatively straightforward: Don’t invest in nonprofits at an obscene valuation! “As far as I can tell no one in human history has ever purchased shares in a nonprofit at an $86 billion valuation? Because purchasing shares in a nonprofit, at any valuation, is not a coherent thing to do? But then OpenAI made it happen, for the first time, and probably also the last,” he writes. Read [the whole thing](. Immaculate Telltale Charts It is my utmost displeasure to inform you that the Fed-obsessed beige book brethren of Macroland have apparently come up with a new slang word. “Immaculate disinflation” is, in Tracy Alloway’s [words](, “the possibility that the Federal Reserve can erase its original sin of allowing price pressures to build to the highest in more than four decades, by zapping inflation without engineering a massive rise in unemployment.” Put another way: Inflation goes bye-bye and we avoid a recession! It’d be a nice theory, if it weren’t completely delulu. Allison Schrager says [the inflation situation]( is still pretty unstable, thanks to human nature. “When people are not confident in their expectations, it does not take much for fear of inflation to return,” she writes. “An oil price shock, a single bad inflation report, even [high turkey prices]( — any of them could cause people to lose confidence in the economy.” Pour one out for the Dutch political system! By this time tomorrow, snap [parliamentary elections]( will have marked the end of Prime Minister Mark Rutte’s 13-year [tenure](. “The cost of living in the Netherlands will be top of mind when voters cast their ballot for the 150-seat ‘Tweede kamer,’ after house prices [rose]( 65% in five years and fueled anger over an affordability crisis,” Lionel Laurent [writes](. Further Reading Some 13,000 civilian deaths in, Israel risks winning the battle but [losing the war](. — Marc Champion We’re raising [a generation of prudes](. That’s not a bad thing. — Amanda Little Madame vice president? Taiwan’s [Hsiao Bi-Khim]( is shaking up the polls. — Karishma Vaswani Kick [trans kids out]( of school musicals? That makes no sense. — Annie Sansonetti The developed world is about to face [a tsunami]( of government debt. — Marcus Ashworth Alibaba cannot let itself fall short on [the computing power]( needed to run an AI business. — Tim Culpan Tokenization will pose [many challenges]( for banks and asset managers. — Andy Mukherjee ICYMI Israel is meeting to vote on [a hostage deal]( with Hamas. X is [suing]( Media Matters over its ad report. American [gun ownership]( is at a record high. Sex toys can cause [diabetes](. Kickers Joe Biden’s birthday cake was [a fire hazard](. A [single stamp]( sold for $2 million at auction. The “[Thanksgiving myth](” is a lesson in memory. Get your [snarky tea towel]( while supplies last. (h/t Dave Lee) Area man with no car [leaves his town millions]( after death. Notes: Please send personalized dish towels and feedback to Jessica Karl at jkarl9@bloomberg.net. [Sign up here]( and follow us on [Threads](, [TikTok](, [Twitter](, [Instagram]( and [Facebook](. 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