Playbook:

IT MAY BE EASY TO FORGET amid this pandemic that has killed 100,000 of our fellow Americans, but there’s a big, complicated country that needs to be run. Critical programs expire. Funding runs dry. Policies need reconsideration. Votes need casting.

AND FOR EIGHT OF THE LAST 10 years, the United States has voted for an uneasy power-sharing agreement in which Republicans and Democrats both had roughly equal claim to a governing mandate.

And the result? Programs have expired. Funding has run dry. Policies that need reconsideration have not gotten their due attention. Politics has turned so virulent and acidic -- so caked in mud -- that doing one’s job is a career liability instead of a prerequisite for reelection

FOR THE LAST THREE YEARS, we’ve had a president who changes his mind more frequently than some work-from-home employees change their clothes.

AND NOW, as if steering a nation weren't challenging enough, the governing gods decided our elected officials need to do all of this in an era where breathing the wrong particle of air could quite literally be lethal.

AND THAT’S WHAT LEADS US TO TODAY, this Thursday morning, May 28, 2020, 159 days before Election Day.

TWO NIGHTS AGO, PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP said that he didn’t like a key surveillance law that officials have said is crucial to keeping Americans safe. Yes, that one -- FISA -- a renewal of which lawmakers in both parties had been molding into shape for some weeks.

SO, HE TWEETED IT on Tuesday night. Kill it, he said. And his party quickly fell in line. The White House started telling its allies to build opposition. The House Republican leadership began whipping against it. The Trump machinery started to hum.

BY WEDNESDAY MORNING, PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS -- long skeptical of the law -- got in on the fun, and said they’d vote against it too. And a right-left coalition against the FISA renewal was born.

SURE, CALL IT A WIN FOR THE WHITE HOUSE if you want. But a “win” means you scored more points than the other team and have the opportunity to advance to a subsequent round where you have a plan to do it again.

It’s not clear to the White House what their plan is, because TRUMP is looking for some amorphous explanation about spying that he believes occurred in 2016 in exchange for his support for the law.