Nate Cohn/NY Times:
Big Polling Leads Tend to Erode. Is Biden’s Edge Different?
As his advantage endures well into its second month, it becomes harder to assume that it’s just another fleeting shift.
If Mr. Biden becomes the focal point of the race and the string of bad news for Mr. Trump comes to an end, perhaps the polls might revert to where they were in April or May.
The other possibility is that Mr. Biden’s lead is more like Mr. Obama’s in 2008. If so, it is not the result of the vagaries of the news cycle. Instead, Mr. Biden’s lead might follow from a fundamental change in the underlying dynamics of American politics, much as the financial crisis reshaped the race in 2008. This time, it wouldn’t be the economy, but the coronavirus.
The pandemic changes everything. Anyone not factoring that in, or who expects it to suddenly go away is, frankly, on some other planet than Earth.
NY Times:
High Voter Turnout and Record Fund-Raising Give Democrats Hope for November
Despite a disjointed primary season and the challenges of holding elections during a pandemic, the party is seeing a surge in energy among voters.
...Overall turnout among voters casting ballots for Democratic presidential candidates so far this year has already surpassed primary season levels in 2016, as did fund-raising between April and June. Democrats are nearing the record numbers set in 2008 on both counts, even though the marquee 2020 race, for the Democratic presidential nomination, largely ended in March with Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the presumptive nominee.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
The coronavirus is infecting our entire election
But now, with the coronavirus again surging across different parts of the country, both the seriousness of the crisis and its shifting political geography are ensuring that it is infecting the 2020 election on just about every level.
A new report from the moderate Democratic group Third Way underscores the point: It finds that coronavirus cases are now swelling in the 42 most competitive Democratic-controlled House districts that will determine which party controls the lower chamber next year[...]
The Third Way report breaks down those 42 House districts into lower coronavirus impact districts (with fewer than 600 cases per 100,000 people as of June 30), mid-range impact districts (with between 600 and 1,000 cases per 100,000) and extreme impact districts (with more than 1,000 cases per 100,000).
Some 27 House districts are in those latter two categories — mid-range and extreme impact districts. Mid-range districts have seen “dramatic increases” in cases in the past few weeks, the report notes, which will likely “continue to escalate.” Meanwhile, the extreme range districts “have seen the worst of the pandemic.”
Maggie Koerth/FiveThirtyEight:
Every Decision Is A Risk. Every Risk Is A Decision.
We can’t live like we did before coronavirus. We won’t live like we did immediately after it appeared, either. Instead, we’re in the muddy middle, faced with choices that seem at once crucial and impossible, simple and massively complicated. These choices are an everyday occurrence, but they also carry a moral weight that makes them feel different than picking a pasta sauce or a pair of shoes. In a pandemic that’s been filled with unanswerable questions and unwinnable wars, this is our daily Kobayashi Maru. And no one can tell us exactly what we ought to do.
Not that there haven’t been attempts at providing structure.
Right now, you can go online and find multiple charts that will visually categorize what were once the activities of daily life by risk level. Some of these charts are evidence based, compiled by experts and (in my opinion) genuinely helpful. I particularly liked the one designed by epidemiologist Saskia Popescu and bioethecist Ezekiel Emanuel because it lays out not just the risk levels of various behaviors — getting a haircut, visiting the dentist, buying a new shirt — but also the underlying factors that can make an activity more or less risky. In general, research has shown that indoors is riskier than outside, long visits riskier than short ones, crowds riskier than individuals — and, look, just avoid situations where you’re being sneezed, yelled, coughed or sung at.
WaPo:
Americans support Black Lives Matter but resist shifts of police funds or removal of statues of Confederate generals or presidents who were enslavers
A majority of Americans support the Black Lives Matter movement and a record 69 percent say black people and other minorities are not treated as equal to white people in the criminal justice system. But the public generally opposes calls to shift some police funding to social services or remove statues of Confederate generals or presidents who enslaved people, a Washington Post-ABC News poll finds.
These findings underscore the mixed fallout after the brutal killing of George Floyd while in the custody of Minneapolis police in May. There is increased public scrutiny of police treatment of black Americans, but less unity on broader questions about how to address the country’s treatment of black Americans since its founding.
WSJ:
Poll Shows Most Voters Agree Black, Hispanic Americans Face Discrimination
Perceptions that minorities face racial discrimination hit new highs, WSJ/NBC News poll finds
“Americans are concerned about issues of inequality, and George Floyd’s death helped contribute to that,” said Brenda Lee, a pollster who worked on the survey with Democrat Jeff Horwitt and Republican Bill McInturff. “We’ve moved the needle a great deal in terms of just clearly identifying that we, as Americans, have an issue with racism in this society.”
In its deepest look at race in America in two decades, the Journal/NBC News poll also shows members of the two parties hold sharply different opinions about the extent of racial discrimination.
Bottom line here is Americans finally agree there’s a problem with racism. That they disagree about the solution by party is hardly a surprise.
David Rothkopf is a veteran foreign policy expert, versed in diplomacy. As you can tell.
David A Graham/Atlantic:
America Gets an Interior Ministry
President Trump is cobbling together something the United States has never had before—a national police force, used to quell protests.
The DHS deployment to Portland follows the militarized crackdown on peaceful protesters in Washington’s Lafayette Square in June, and it’s apparently a pilot for a broader deployment. Speaking with reporters in the Oval Office on Monday, Trump said that Portland was only the first step in a planned operation.
Bill Galston/Brookings:
Trump’s campaign is in freefall, with COVID-19 on voters’ minds
The more the 2020 election turns into a referendum on President Trump as crisis manager, the worse the outcome will be for him. As recently as June 7, 47% of Americans thought the coronavirus situation was getting better, compared to just 30% who thought it was getting worse. Just three weeks later, after the massive upsurge in COVID-19 cases, the share of Americans who thought the situation was getting better fell by half to just 23% while the share who thought it was getting worse had more than doubled to 65%. An ABC/Washington Post poll released on July 17 found that approval of the president’s handling of the pandemic fell from 51% in March and 46% in May to just 38% in mid-July, while disapproval rose from 45% in March to 53% in May and 60% today.
Some rare bipartisanship, Fox News, on an issue not covered enough.
Rep. Mike Gallagher demands answers from Apple and NBA over China dealings linked to forced labor of Uighur Muslims
He views the heinous human rights abuses as an opportunity for bipartisanship
Wisconsin Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher wants congressional hearings with Apple CEO Tim Cook and the NBA’s Adam Silver over dealings in China connected to forced labor of Uighur Muslims...
Gallagher went a step further and said that he does not think that companies, like the American microchip company Qualcomm, which supplies the Department of Defense and intelligence community, should be doing business with companies like Huawei and ZTE.