“Donald Trump is right, people are tired of hearing about the virus,” MSNBC’s Chris Hayes said Monday evening. “People are also tired of seeing their friends and family suffer…They’re tired of worrying about getting sick…tired of watching people they love die alone.”
Aside from the acting president minimizing the mounting coronavirus death count and case counts, and aside from the xenophobia and the “anti-authority, anti-science sentiment” among his followers, what’s striking is the Republican insistence that policymakers put the oxygen mask on the economy before thinking about saving the people who serve it. Because clearly the economy does not serve us. They see us as drones.
Perhaps that reality has not yet reached consciousness among a lot of the acting president’s followers. (Notice how easy it has become to substitute followers for supporters?) But an increasing number of Americans understand what their guts tell them about their standing in the Midas cult’s pecking order. They are turning to a presidential candidate who values people over their utility as economic fuel.
Thus, voters prefer former Vice President Joe Biden over the acting president, the New York Times reports:
Joseph R. Biden Jr. holds a nine-point lead over President Trump amid widespread public alarm about the trajectory of the coronavirus pandemic and demand among voters for large-scale government action to right the economy, according to a national poll of likely voters conducted by The New York Times and Siena College.
With just two weeks left in the campaign, Mr. Trump does not hold an edge on any of the most pressing issues at stake in the election, leaving him with little room for a political recovery absent a calamitous misstep by Mr. Biden, the Democratic nominee, in the coming days. The president has even lost his longstanding advantage on economic matters: Voters are now evenly split on whether they have more trust in him or Mr. Biden to manage the economy.
On all other subjects tested in the poll, voters preferred Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump by modest or wide margins. Mr. Biden, the former vice president, is favored over Mr. Trump to lead on the coronavirus pandemic by 12 points, and voters trust Mr. Biden over Mr. Trump to choose Supreme Court justices and to maintain law and order by six-point margins. Americans see Mr. Biden as more capable of uniting the country by nearly 20 points.
Over all, Mr. Biden is backed by 50 percent of likely voters, the poll showed, compared with 41 percent for Mr. Trump and 3 percent divided among other candidates.
Most of all, the survey makes clear that crucial constituencies are poised to reject Mr. Trump because they cannot abide his conduct, including 56 percent of women and 53 percent of white voters with college degrees who said they had a very unfavorable impression of Mr. Trump — an extraordinary level of antipathy toward an incumbent president.
“People are thinking about what to do with their resumes,” Times Editorial Board member Mara Gay told MSNBC’s “Deadline Whitehouse” on Monday.
Former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele endorsed Biden in a letter posted to NBC News Tuesday morning. His party has failed “to stand up against the arrogance of power and the erosion of our principles” and strayed too far from ideals in which it once believed:
I, of course, disagree with Biden on many issues and policies, sometimes vigorously; and it is my fervent hope that he will pursue policies that will help our country heal. But this election is not about those issues or policies. Rather, it is about the course of a nation and the character of her people reflected in the leader they choose. I am asking my fellow Americans to consider what is in your best interests, and not Donald Trump’s.
Joe Biden, Steele concludes, “is what is best for our country.”
As for Trump’s enablers, “People are going to remember these folks as totally complicit, as people who did not stand up for their state, or stand up for American values,” former North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp told MSNBC’s “All In.”
By their poisoned fruit ye shall know them.
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