The WaPo’s Philip Bump goes over all the familiar 2016 Clinton vs Trump ground and then discusses where it looks different this time:
2020 is a different year with a different opponent and a different context. It still seems safe to assume, though, that Trump’s path to reelection is not a particularly broad one, given his static approval ratings, and, therefore, that he will want to do his best to hold his 2016 support as he seeks a second term. With the general election upon us after Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) dropped out of the Democratic primary race on Wednesday, a number of recent polls show Trump’s support in a head-to-head contest against former vice president Joe Biden is lower than it was against Clinton on Election Day four years ago.
Four polls from The Economist-YouGov, CNN-SSRS, Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University — all conducted before Sanders left the race — show Biden with a national lead over Trump. Monmouth has the closest margin, with Biden up four points. CNN’s poll is the widest, with Biden enjoying an 11-point lead. On average, the four polls give Biden an eight-point lead — six points more than the two-point margin by which Trump lost four years ago.
Why that shift? Because a number of demographic groups now show more support for Biden against Trump than they did for Clinton against Trump in the last election.
One of the most notable changes is that eight-point shift toward Biden among women. That overlaps with the huge 25-point shift seen among whites with a college degree; white women with college degrees have shifted dramatically against Trump, helping to power the Democratic takeover of the House in 2018.
Many of the recent polls used different age divisions, making it tricky to average group poll data and then compare it to the 2016 exit polls. But voters over 65 were included in most of the recent polls. In two, Trump is losing to Biden with those voters; in the third, he’s tied. That’s a big shift from 2016, when he beat Clinton by seven points with the oldest voting group.
That last part will surprise people, I’d guess. But it shouldn’t. They were the most likely Americans to be put off by a woman nominee, especially the Independent men. Those people almost surely like Biden better.
Polls now aren’t all that meaningful but this movement almost across all demographics is.
Republican economist Art Laffer, an architect of the Reagan era tax cuts that paved the way for historic budget deficits in the United States, has a plan to rejuvenate today’s pandemic-crippled economy.
Tax non-profits. Cut the pay of public officials and professors. Give businesses and workers who manage to hold on to their jobs a payroll tax holiday to the end of the year.
What about the extra aid funneled to newly jobless workers by the $2.3 trillion fiscal rescue package? Such government spending, Laffer told Reuters in an interview, will only serve to deepen the downturn and slow the recovery.
“If you tax people who work and you pay people who don’t work, you will get less people working,” Laffer said. “If you make it more unattractive to be unemployed, then there’s an incentive to go look for another job faster.”
Laffer’s unconventional plan isn’t just an academic exercise. First of all, he says he has presented it to his contacts at the White House. They include presidential economic advisor Larry Kudlow, who considers Laffer a mentor.
Laffer is also being floated in influential right-wing circles as a good candidate to head a proposed new industry task force aimed at re-opening the U.S. economy as soon as possible. “Bring in the minds like Art Laffer,” Sean Hannity, the Fox News host said April 6 of the proposed task force.
It makes perfect sense that Trump would rely on the man who came up with the most fatuous theory in history — “Supply Side Economics” which held that if you cut taxes, government revenue would go up. The cynical Republicans loved it, of course. They were only interested in the “cut taxes” part, knowing they could use the massive debt it cause in order to force the government to cut all the programs that help people.
That he’s come up with a daft proposal to “incentivize” people to go back to work when the government is telling them to stay home so hundreds of thousands of people don’t die is just his and Larry Kudlow, his acolyte’s, speed. Lunacy.
It would be hard to find anyone less suited to be dispensing economic advice at a time like this. But you can be sure that if such people exist, they are scouring the country looking for them.
By the way, Trump gave Laffer the presidential medal of Freedom last year.
President Trump has lambasted governors whom he views as insufficiently appreciative. He has denigrated — and even dismissed — inspectors general who dared to criticize him or his administration. And he has excoriated reporters who posed questions he did not like.
The coronavirus pandemic has crystallized several long-standing undercurrents of the president’s governing ethos: a refusal to accept criticism, a seemingly insatiable need for praise — and an abiding mistrust of independent entities and individuals.
Those characteristics have had a pervasive effect on the administration’s handling of the crisis, from Trump’s suggestions that he might withhold aid from struggling state governments based on whether he is displeased with a governor to his repeated refusal to take responsibility for shortcomings in the laggard federal response.
John Feehery, a Republican strategist, said that he’s never worked with a politician who enjoys criticism, but what’s unusual about Trump “is that he’s willing to counterprogram. He’s willing to go on the offense on a continuous basis.”
“He’s saying the quiet part out loud,” Feehery said.
On Monday, for instance, Trump was asked about a new report by Christi Grimm, the top official in the Department of Health and Human Services’s Office of Inspector General, which found hospitals faced significant testing and medical supplies shortages. The president first demanded the inspector general’s name and when she was appointed. He hinted that perhaps “politics” entered into her findings — though the Office of Inspector General is an independent entity specifically designed to ferret out waste, fraud and abuse in government, with minimal partisanship.
Informed that Grimm was appointed to her current role in January but is a career bureaucrat who previously served in the Obama administration, Trump lashed out at ABC News’s Jonathan Karl, who had pressed him on the report’s damning findings.“You are a third-rate reporter and what you just said is a disgrace, okay?” Trump said, adding, “You will never make it.”
David Axelrod, a former senior adviser to President Barack Obama, said the president expects nearly everyone around him to do his personal bidding, a view both “childish” and “dangerous.” “Trump demands affirmation and does not tolerate oversight from the media, Congress, even inspectors general who he appointed,” Axelrod said. “He wants to impose his version of events and discredit and disable any arbiters of fact who might disrupt his self-aggrandizing story line. That has been his instinct in business and politics, and we see it on full display in this crisis.”
Throughout his term, Trump has frequently singled out other organizations and individuals whose goal is to be objective — from intelligence and federal law enforcement officials to public health experts and judges. His relationship with the Justice Department’s top law enforcement official is one example. He faulted his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, for not sufficiently protecting him against special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, publicly tormenting him for months before finally firing him.
The media has also been an enduring target of Trump’s ire. At nearly every coronavirus news conference in recent days, the president has clashed with reporters — at times seemingly intentionally — dubbing the press “fake news” and criticizing the tone and content of their questions. Especially amid the deadly pandemic, Trump has upbraided reporters, not just for tough questions but for failing to flatter and publicly praise him.
During his Saturday news conference, for instance, Trump began his remarks by explaining that every decision his administration makes is intended “to save lives.” “It’s therefore critical that certain media outlets stop spreading false rumors and creating fear and even panic with the public,” he continued.
Without naming specific publications, Trump took umbrage with the cascade of stories that have documented his administration’s mishandling of crucial aspects of the coronavirus response. “It’s so bad for — for our country, so bad for the world,” Trump concluded. “You ought to put it together for a little while, get this over with, and then go back to your fake news.”
During the same news conference, he dismissed a question about when people should expect to receive their checks from the recently passed $2 trillion stimulus as being posed “in such a negative way” and described another as “always a nasty one from CNN.”
The day before, during Friday’s news conference, Trump also got into a testy back-and-forth when asked about comments in which his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, declared that the Strategic National Stockpile was for the federal government and not the states.
Trump called the question “a gotcha” before telling the reporter, “You ought to be ashamed.” “Don’t make it sound bad. Don’t make it sound bad,” the president continued, before concluding: “You just asked your question in a very nasty tone.”
Sure he uses it as a form of deflection and distraction. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t sincerely angry at being questioned. He certainly is. It’s Trump’s version of authenticity — he is both an angry spoiled child and a manipulative con man.
As we work to find out the scope and goals of the White House’s seizure of medical goods across the United States, a simpler pattern is coming into view: the White House seizes goods from public officials and hospitals across the country and then doles them out as favors to political allies and favorites, often to great fanfare to boost of the popularity of those allies. The Denver Post today editorialized about one of the most egregious examples.
Were these a subset of the same ventilators? Like money, amidst the COVID-19 Crisis, all ventilators are fungible. It’s hard to know whether President Trump even knew in this case that his pandemic task force had swiped away the other ventilators the day before. Indeed, we still don’t whether this is all a central part of the White House’s crisis strategy – grabbing supplies from blue states to hand out to endangered Republicans or red state allies – or simply a layering of corruption over the general chaos.
New examples of confiscations or rerouted orders crop up almost every day. Here’s one about a shipment of test kit materials bound for the PeaceHealth hospital system in the Pacific Northwest seized and shipped, purportedly, to the East Coast. The supplies would allow hospitals like Bellingham, Washington’s St Joseph’s hospital to do tests on premises and more quickly ascertain who is COVID-positive and who’s not. “Our analyzers remain idle, while we continue to send specimens to outside laboratory testing sites, prioritizing labs based on the shortest turnaround times,” a spokesman for the hospital system told The Bellingham Herald.
What is clear is that the federal government is demanding that states, localities and hospital systems find their own supplies while systematically interdicting those they do purchase and rerouting them in other directions while providing no explanation of what standards are being used to distribute them. At the same time, Republican officeholders keep turning up announcing windfalls of medical supplies courtesy of the President. In many cases, like Gardner, they’re Republicans within blue or purple states.
As The Easthampton Starreported on the 6th, “Representative Lee Zeldin has established himself as a liaison between Suffolk County and the White House by speaking directly to Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of and senior adviser to President Donald J. Trump, about Suffolk’s needs as one of the country’s Covid-19 hot spots.”
We still know too little about what is happening and on what basis the White House is intercepting and distributing these scarce materials. One reason is that those who lose their shipments are afraid to speak out because they fear antagonizing the White House and losing any chance to get their masks and supplies returned.
We need more information, more explanations of what standards the White House is using to distribute these goods. The consistent refusal to explain speaks volumes.
I think this is the tip of the iceberg. There is going to have to be a full pandemic profiteering commissions after this is over. The question is whether or not the Democrats will be willing to “look in the rearview mirror.”
Bill Barr came out from under his rock last night:
Barr says he’s disappointed about partisanship during the pandemic because the President has acted statesmanlike and worked with all the governors while dealing with gotcha questions from the media. He goes on to accuse the media of leading a jihad against Hydroxychloroquine pic.twitter.com/fW2NLDOzB7
And he’s not hiding his intentions anymore. It looks like he’s going to go for it:
Attorney General William P. Barr hasn’t been terribly subtle about where he stands on the appropriateness of the investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. He wrote an unsolicited, extensive memo deriding it in 2017, suggesting that a conspiracy theory involving the Clintons was more worthy of investigation. When an inspector general issued a report in December saying the investigation was properly founded, Barr put out an extraordinary statement disagreeing with that.
And now, Barr has gone quite a bit further. He is explicitly leaning into President Trump’s long-standing allegation that this was a witch hunt intended to bring down a president. Before we even get a report he ordered up from U.S. Attorney John Durham, who is examining the origins of the Russia probe, Barr has declared this to be a historic scandal.
“What happened to him was one of the greatest travesties in American history,” Barr said in a clip played on Fox News on Wednesday night. “Without any basis, they started this investigation of his campaign, and even more concerning actually is what happened after the campaign — a whole pattern of events while he was president … to sabotage the presidency — or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”
Preview of pt 2 Barr interview with Ingraham: “What happened to POTUS was one of the greatest travesties in American history, no basis for this investigation, what’s even more concerning is what happened after the campaign, a whole pattern of events… to sabotage the presidency”
Barr’s comments go further than what he said in December. After Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found that the investigation had an “authorized purpose” and that he found no evidence of political animus, Barr issued a statement.
“The inspector general’s report now makes clear that the FBI launched an intrusive investigation of a U.S. presidential campaign on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken,” Barr said at the time. Horowitz’s report amounted to “malfeasance and misfeasance” and “a clear abuse of the FISA process,” he added, referring to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
Barr added in an interview with ABC News at the time that it was a “travesty” and said that “the greatest danger” to our government is using government assets “to spy on political opponents, but also to use them in a way that could affect the outcome of the election.” He was careful to say, though, that he would await the investigation before determining if that is what happened.AD
“I think that leaves open the possibility for bad faith,” Barr said. “I think it’s premature now to reach a judgment on that, but I think further work has to be done, and that’s what Durham is doing.”
Barr has now apparently reached a judgment on that, even without Durham’s report. While he called it a “travesty” before, he is now calling it “one of the greatest travesties in American history.” While he said that the evidence was “insufficient” before, he’s now saying the probe was “without any basis” whatsoever. While he said that he couldn’t yet say if it was done in “bad faith” before, he now says it was done “to sabotage the presidency — or at least have the effect of sabotaging the presidency.”
That last phrase is conspicuous. Barr alleges that this was indeed a political effort to take Trump down — letting that linger — and then pulls it back a bit by allowing for the possibility that it was not necessarily intended as such. Barr is a very smart lawyer who knows how to choose his words carefully. The idea that he would carelessly toss out such a firm, final judgment about this being an effort to “sabotage” Trump without believing it or wanting to plant that seed seems extremely unlikely.
It remains to be seen if he will actually do anything — such as indict some FBI figures — but he’s going to offer up an alternate history that will be flogged forever by the right wing.
Capt. Brett Crozier wrote in a letter to superiors under two weeks ago, “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die.” The commander of the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt, Crozier requested the Navy’s aid in addressing a COVID-19 outbreak aboard his ship.
With the global pandemic killing thousands of Americans, the man occupying the Oval Office has declared himself a “wartime” president. He wishes. But if we accept the metaphor for a moment, the war against COVID-19 is not the only war in town.
Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court blocked Gov. Tony Evers attempted to postpone the election scheduled on Tuesday amidst stay-at-home orders during the worst week yet of the pandemic in the United States. (Evers declared a public health emergency on March 12, but was slow to support postponement.) The U.S. Supreme Court blocked an effort to extend the deadline for voters to submit absentee ballots thousands had yet to receive.
The election forced on Wisconsin on Tuesday was a crime against the polity. The images of thousands standing in line wearing face masks to vote in the middle of a deadly pandemic are a testament to Americans’ determination to having their voices heard. But the odds are for many it will be the last vote they cast.
Crozier’s letter only cost him his job. These two decisions by Republican-leaning courts will cost Americans their lives.
Citizens need not die for exercising their right to vote, Evers believes. We are not at war. Two Republican-controlled supreme courts and the Republican Party behave as if they are. It is a one-sided war against democracy itself.
The only way for Democrats to secure that policy is to make it non-negotiable bottom line — a condition of voting through any further stimulus bills. This would be a tough political strategy to follow through on, running counter to national Democrats’ institutional timidity and fears about holding up cash and unemployment for those who really need it. They would be attacked ruthlessly by the right and mau-maued endlessly by the centrist pundits whose opinions they so prize.
But it is the right thing to do on the merits, so they should do it, and defend it without apology. This ought to be a messaging war they can win. If not, what good are they?
It might seem obvious to say that free and fair elections are important in a democracy. But this year, they are by no means assured.
Roberts offers more on the advantages of universal vote by mail here. As for making Democrats fight for it, that’s on you. They won’t get another chance beyond the next stimulus bill to enable it before this fall.
Republicans are at war against free and fair elections. We as a country are suffering under this pandemic worse than other countries because Donald Trump refused to treat COVID-19 as the threat it is until it was too late. Democrats in Congress need to stop dithering and treat the Republican war on voting as if they are fighting one.
BBC and John Hopkins University time lapse of how confirmed cases of coronavirus have spread pic.twitter.com/Jkh57xGdG4
For The Win, 3rd Edition is ready for download. Request a copy of my free countywide election mechanics guide at ForTheWin.us. This is what winning looks like. Note: The pandemic will upend standard field tactics in 2020. If enough promising “improvisations” come my way by June, perhaps I can issue a COVID-19 supplement.
I’m really sorry to bother you, it’s just that I’m hosting a virtual Seder this year and I want to make sure everything is kosher. I mean, this night will be different from all other nights, mostly because I’m not even sure what night it is anymore. You too, probably, but for different reasons. You’re busy saving the world on four hours of sleep (Dayenu, am I right?), and I’m busy watching C-SPAN, eating Lucky Charms by the fistful, and not bothering to change from my daytime athleisure wear to my nighttime athleisure wear.
This is all just to say that not only are you our country’s best hope and conveyor of concise medical information, but you’re also America’s zayde, trustworthy and sage.
I’ve checked the CDC website and none of this is on there, so if you have a few minutes to answer these questions, I’d be grateful:
How do I disinfect a Seder plate?
How many extra handwashing steps should I add to the Seder? I mean, there are two already built-in. Should I add more, possibly ratcheting the evening up to seven hours, or should we just hold the whole thing over the sink?
Because this debate will come up (it’s the nature of the beast): Would wandering in the desert be advisable at this time? That is assuming there is manna from heaven and/or Amazon Prime, enough water and shelter, and we keep six feet away from other wanderers.
We’re forbidden from eating things like leavened wheat, barley, rye, oats, or spelt. Unfortunately, the only thing left at Costco yesterday was a 50-pound sack of spelt. I’ll obviously hold off on eating it until after the holiday but need to know what is the LD50 on spelt?
I’d love to be sure I’m coronavirus-free before asking my husband and kids to the table, but the only tests I can get my hands on are an expired ClearBlue Easy and a gently used Cologuard. Which do you think would reassure my family more?
My Uncle Murray insists on tweeting that Manischewitz cures coronavirus. In case the president sees this, please tell him it’s not true. Also that he shouldn’t retweet it, no matter how tempted he is by Uncle Murray’s use of all-caps.
When the Treasury sends everyone some “Corona cash,” would you mind bundling that with a Xanax prescription for parents? You see, we’ve been e-learning these last few eternal days, and if we have to hear one more question — never mind four questions — a great cry will go out over all the land, such as never has been heard before, and never will be heard again.
Can the president use the Defense Production Act to have gefilte fish factories converted to make… literally anything else?
Does opening the door for Elijah violate the “no more than ten people” gathering rule?
Instead of sending the kids on a search for the hidden afikomen, can I send them on a search around town for a megapack of Charmin Ultra, even if it means they miss some of the Seder? Not your area of expertise, but I trust your judgment on these matters.
I’ve been carb-loading ever since we started sheltering in place. Will the charoset act like my own personal digestive mortar? Or will it put me on the express chariot to the hoop?
Where can I find Kosher for Passover matzah? I know this is another question outside your field, but maybe you can ask that fucker Steve Mnuchin. He’s probably got an entire pallet hidden in his basement lair next to a golden calf.
Our local dispensary is an essential business. Can I go there for the requisite “bitter herb?”
I know you’re unable to state for sure, but based on your experience, do you think “Next Year in Jerusalem” — politics aside — is feasible? Or should it be changed to “Next Year via FaceTime”?
Thank you, Dr. Fauci, for leading us through this. When this is all over, please come for dinner. Hope you like spelt.
Eighty percent feel the worst of the outbreak is yet to come, most (55%) feel President Donald Trump could be doing more to fight the outbreak, and 37% say they have grown more concerned about coronavirus in the last few days, far outpacing the 5% who say their fears have eased recently.
About 1 in 5 (22%) say they personally know someone who has been diagnosed with the virus, a figure that is double the share who said so in a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted just two weeks ago.Just under half (46%) say it is at least somewhat likely that they or someone in their family will contract the coronavirus, and there are deep disparities by socio-economic status and partisanship in Americans’ level of confidence that they will be able to get treatment should they become ill with the virus.
A majority, 52%, say they disapprove of the way Trump is handling the coronavirus outbreak, and 45% approve. Both figures have risen since early March, when 41% approved, 48% disapproved and 11% weren’t sure how they felt about the President’s handling of the viral outbreak.Still, just 43% say the President is doing everything he could to fight the outbreak, while 55% say he could be doing more — including 17% among those who approve of his handling of it so far and 18% of Republicans.
The President’s overall approval rating stands at 44% approve to 51% disapprove, little changed from a 43% approve to 53% disapprove reading in each of the previous three CNN polls.
As the number of coronavirus cases spreads throughout the country, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, earns the highest approval rating for his handling of the response to the coronavirus, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll released today. He is closely followed by state governors, but President Trump and Congress don’t fare quite as well on their handling of the response to the coronavirus:
Dr. Anthony Fauci: 78 percent approve, 7 percent disapprove;
When it comes to President Trump’s response to the coronavirus, 55 percent of registered voters say that he has not acted aggressively enough, while 41 percent say his response has been about right and 2 percent say he’s been too aggressive.
“In a country gripped by crisis and divided by partisanship, public opinion is united when it comes to Dr. Anthony Fauci. Nearly 8 in 10 voters give him a resounding thumbs up for the job he’s doing responding to the COVID-19 pandemic. That’s not the case for President Trump. More voters disapprove of his response than approve. Separately, they say he hasn’t acted aggressively enough in his response,” said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Mary Snow.
A plurality of voters gives the president a failing grade on the way he has communicated information about the coronavirus to the American people:
25 percent give Trump an A;
17 percent give him a B;
14 percent give him a C;
12 percent give him a D;
31 percent give him an F.
THE CORONAVIRUS CRISIS
More than 8 out of 10 registered voters, 85 percent, say they are either very (50 percent) or somewhat (35 percent) concerned they or someone they know will be infected with the coronavirus, a spike of 31 percentage points from early March. However, the concern goes beyond infections. Three-quarters of voters say they are either very concerned (39 percent) or somewhat concerned (36 percent) that they or someone in their family will need to be hospitalized because of the coronavirus.
“While overall concerns about coronavirus infections have jumped dramatically in the past month, the level of concern depends on political party. Democrats lead the way in being ‘very concerned,’ almost twice the number of Republicans. Independents are in the middle,” added Snow.
Seven out of ten voters, 70 percent, say that the coronavirus crisis in the United States is getting worse, while 20 percent say it is staying the same and only 8 percent see it getting better. And voters are not expecting the crisis to end any time soon: 63 percent say they expect the coronavirus crisis will be over in a few months, 23 percent say more than a year, and only 10 percent say a few weeks. Almost two thirds of voters, 64 percent, say their daily life has changed in a major way since the coronavirus crisis hit the U.S., while 26 percent say it has changed in a minor way and 10 percent say it hasn’t changed much.
Voters are split on how confident they are that they would be able to get tested for the coronavirus if they wanted to, with 47 percent saying that they are very or somewhat confident that they would be able to get a test, and 50 percent saying that they are not so confident or not confident at all.
While most states have issued their own stay at home orders, 81 percent of voters say they would support a stay at home order on a national level. Voters also say 59 – 35 percent that the federal government should be doing more to address the needs of New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.
Despite approving 79 – 15 percent of the $2 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill that was recently passed, 59 percent of voters say Congress should pass another stimulus bill to address the crisis, while only 26 percent say the current bill does enough to address the crisis. Getting more money to individuals and families should be prioritized in a new bill, say 66 percent of voters, while 19 percent say businesses should be the top priority and 11 percent select state and local governments as the top priority.
THE ECONOMY AND JOBS
More than half of voters, 55 percent, think the United States is now in a recession. Of that number, 54 percent expect it to be worse than the Great Recession that started in 2008, while 26 percent say not as bad and 15 percent believe it will be as bad. When asked about the state of the economy, only 31 percent of voters describe it as excellent or good, while 66 percent of voters say it is not so good or poor. A majority of voters, 60 percent, also say that the economy is getting worse, while 19 percent think it is staying about the same and 16 percent think it is getting better.
TRUMP APPROVAL RATINGS
Despite a dim outlook on the economy, voters still give President Trump a positive approval rating on his handling of the economy, approving 51 – 44 percent.
President Trump also receives his highest job approval rating since taking office, as 45 percent approve of the job he is doing as president, while 51 percent disapprove. One month ago, 41 percent approved, while 54 percent disapproved.
The president gets lower marks on his handling of health care than on his overall job performance or on his handling of the economy, as voters disapprove of his handling of health care 54 – 39 percent. However, this approval rating is the highest mark President Trump has received on his handling of health care since he took office.
In a head to head matchup between President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden, Biden beats Trump 49 – 41 percent. Republicans go to Trump 91 – 7 percent, while Democrats go to Biden 91 – 4 percent and independents favor Biden 44 – 35 percent.
The president’s favorability rating remains underwater, as 41 percent say they have a favorable opinion of him and 52 percent say unfavorable. However, his rating has improved from the March 9th Quinnipiac University poll, in which he had a negative 39 – 58 percent rating. Today, voters have a split opinion on Biden, as 43 percent say they have a favorable opinion and 43 percent say unfavorable, little changed from the March poll in which he had a slightly positive 45 – 40 percent rating.
When asked who would do a better job handling a crisis, voters say 51 – 42 percent that Biden would do a better job than Trump. Biden tops Trump by a similar margin on health care, as voters say 53 – 40 percent that he would do a better job than Trump at handling the issue. However, voters say 49 – 44 percent that the president would do a better job than Biden handling the economy.
I don’t know why anyone would think Trump will do a better job on the economy than well … anyone. But aside from that it doesn’t look as if Trump is moving the dial in a positive way according to either of these polls.
At the beginning of the outbreak people were seeing his performance as a positive. But once he decided to come on TV every day and hold a campaign rally, acting like a jerk and almost entirely in rank political fashion, the numbers have gone down.
Experts say it’s too early to definitively say why California is faring so much better than New York. One factor, though, is that California simply acted more quickly than New York once it became clear that coronavirus was starting to spread in the US. If cases in California remain under control while those in New York soar — still a very big if — the experience could carry important lessons for how to deal with Covid-19, the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus.
California’s experience likely reflects, at least in part, the value of quick, more proactive action — along the lines of what experts say is needed across the US, even in places that might not feel exposed to coronavirus right now. We “need to shift to a proactive mentality rather than reactive,” Krutika Kuppalli, an infectious diseases physician and emerging leader in biosecurity fellow at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, told me. The reactive mentality “has been very much the way this outbreak has been from the beginning.”
It’s also important, experts added, that California remains vigilant. With the huge economic harm caused by the coronavirus lockdowns, it can be tempting to ease off social distancing measures early. But to truly avoid a catastrophe like New York’s, experts say, California likely needs to stay at home as much as possible, at least until coronavirus cases appear to drop and proper testing and surveillance are in place to better track and mitigate new outbreak clusters.
Los Angeles County officials said as much, warning about a potential peak in the next two weeks. “If you have enough supplies in your home, this would be the week to skip shopping altogether,” Los Angeles County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer said on Monday. “Without everyone taking every possible precaution, our numbers can start skyrocketing.”
There are other factors at play in the differences between the two states. One is the density of their largest cities: New York City is the densest city in the US (though San Francisco is second), and a lot of people packed closely together makes it easier for the coronavirus to spread.
New York state has also tested people at more than four times the rate of California, which could partly, though not mostly, explain the difference between both states’ reported cases and deaths.
A big factor — perhaps the biggest — is also chance. “There’s the possibility that there were just more introductions of the virus in the East Coast, in the New York area,” Jeffrey Martin, an epidemiologist at the University of California San Francisco, told me.
But California also acted more quickly than New York once it became clear that coronavirus was starting to spread in the US. The San Francisco Bay Area issued America’s first shelter-in-place order on March 16, and California Gov. Gavin Newsom issued a statewide stay-at-home order three days later.
New York, meanwhile, didn’t issue a statewide stay-at-home order until March 22. (New York City didn’t implement its own order beforehand; Gov. Andrew Cuomo said he didn’t believe it would work if only one city did it.)
And there’s evidence that social distancing was taken more seriously in some parts of California even before it was government-mandated. Restaurant data from OpenTable suggests that seated dining on March 1 was down 2 percent in New York City, but it was down 18 percent in San Francisco. (Though it was only down by 3 percent in Los Angeles, so not every place in California acted the same.)
As March began in New York, officials were encouraging people to go about their business. On March 2, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted he was “encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives” and “get out on the town despite Coronavirus” — offering a movie recommendation for The Traitor. That did come before New York state confirmed a case of community transmission, but it also came after Cuomo, in a press conference with de Blasio, called community transmission “inevitable.”
Since I’m encouraging New Yorkers to go on with your lives + get out on the town despite Coronavirus, I thought I would offer some suggestions. Here’s the first: thru Thurs 3/5 go see “The Traitor” @FilmLinc. If “The Wire” was a true story + set in Italy, it would be this film.— Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) March 3, 2020
The same day, San Francisco Mayor London Breed, who had already declared a local state of emergency on February 25, warned the public to “prepare for possible disruption from an outbreak,” from dealing with school closures to caring for sick family members. California had confirmed a case of community transmission, in nearby Solano County, by then.
New York officials seemed to take the threat more seriously in the coming days and weeks, particularly after community transmission and deaths were confirmed.
The difference of a few weeks or days on public action and orders telling people to stay home may not seem like a huge deal. But it really is significant with the coronavirus, because the number of cases and deaths, especially early on in an outbreak, can double every few days if protective measures aren’t in place.
“With this virus, days, and even hours, matter,” Jen Kates, director of global health and HIV policy at the Kaiser Family Foundation, told me.
By March 23, three weeks after Breed and de Blasio’s tweets, New York state reported around 5,000 new coronavirus cases a day. California reported fewer than 500.
One of the big lessons from California: “Anytime you are dealing with an outbreak, if it appears like you overreacted, then you probably did the right thing,” Kuppalli said.
A lot of people thought the state and local governments were overreacting. But they weren’t.
It’s going to get more hairy here, I have no doubt. They’ve been preparing us for the peak coming in mid-April for a while. But they are not giving any happy talk about opening up prematurely. In fact, Governor Newsom and Mayor Garcetti keep saying June at the earliest and even then they aren’t prepared to just go back to normal. Newsom said he didn’t anticipate allowing the football stadiums to open in August.
The whole article is worth reading because it shows that people who were attuned to the historical precedents, like the 1918 pandemic, understood that initiating and keeping social distancing policies in place earlier enough to flatten the curve and do serious contact tracing was the key. That happened here and in other states. And some of the others like Florida and Georgia did the opposite. When all is said and done there will be a lot of lessons to be learned.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly touted the potential benefits of hydroxychloroquine, which has been approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat malaria, lupus and other autoimmune ailments but hasn’t yet been proven effective and safe in treating the coronavirus.
“What do you have to lose?” Trump asked Saturday at the White House when pressed by reporters about hydroxychloroquine’s effectiveness. And while he’s suggested that patients consult with their physicians about the treatment, he’s also said the drug can “help them, but it’s not going to hurt them.”
On Tuesday, when asked about the drug’s potential side effects, he downplayed them. “The side effects are the least of it,” said Trump. “You’re not gonna die from this pill,” he said. “I say ‘try it’” he said, noting “I’m not a doctor” and to get a physician’s approval.
But the president’s reassurance is raising concerns among experts about the dangers the drug poses to some.
After observing the debate over hydroxychloroquine on TV news and in social media, Dr. Michael Ackerman, a genetic cardiologist who is director of the Mayo Clinic’s Windland Smith Rice Genetic Heart Rhythm Clinic, took the unusual step in late March of issuing guidance for physicians.
“What disturbed me the most was when I was seeing not political officials say these medications are safe but seeing on the news cardiologists and infectious disease specialists say” hydroxychloroquine “is completely safe without even mentioning this rare side effect,” Ackerman said in an interview.
“That’s inexcusable,” he added.
Ackerman and his Mayo Clinic colleagues created a cardiac algorithm, published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, to help physicians more safely prescribe hydroxychloroquine by identifying patients at greatest risk for drug-induced sudden cardiac death.
While hydroxychloroquine is likely to be safe for 90 percent of the population, Ackerman said, it could pose serious and potentially lethal risks to a small number of those susceptible to heart conditions, especially those with other chronic medical problems already on multiple medications.
In fact, a small recent study showed that up to 11 percent of coronavirus patients on hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are in the so-called “red zone” for potential cardiac side effects.
“They’ve entered the danger zone,” Ackerman said. “That is not just my hunch that patients are going to be reacting to this drug — but they are reacting to this drug.”
To tout this drug as Trump and his henchmen (and doctors!) are doing, without any proven benefit, saying “you have nothing to lose” when more than 10% of people who get it could die of cardiac complications because of it, is criminal.
I hope Fox News has set aside a huge pile of money to pay out lawsuit settlements because they are going to need it. Trump will skate, ofcourse. He always does. But I hope there are ads this fall featuring the families of people who died in this pandemic holding him responsible for the deaths. Unlike the trumped up Benghazi crusade the GOP waged against Hillary Clinton, this one is real. His inaction and lies have killed people.
