President Donald Trump rejected calls from New York’s governor that the state needed tens of thousands of new ventilators to treat a mass of patients infected with the novel coronavirus, saying he didn’t believe those numbers were accurate.
Trump has to save them for places where they’ll be really needed, like Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin:
Just like 2016 and 2018, next year’s election is likely to come down not just to the proverbial swing states themselves but the voting blocs that define them and — importantly — whether they show up at the polls.
Those include working class voters outside Detroit and Pittsburgh. Suburban women outside Milwaukee and Philadelphia. Rural voters in northern Florida, or Pennsylvania, or Wisconsin. Hispanic and black voters in South Florida and southeastern Michigan. They all played pivotal roles in the last two elections, one way or another.
And they will do so again in 2020.
“It would be very hard for Trump to win reelection if he loses two of those states,” said J. Miles Coleman, associated editor of Sabato’s Crystal Ball, a political handicapping and analysis website at the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “You can’t take any of them for granted.”
Let’s put it this way: During this catastrophe, Trump and his utterly remorseless henchmen have their priorities straight and are, on many fronts, acting with single-minded, implacable focus.
Do we? Are we?