Josh Kraushaar/National Journal:
It feels like 2008 all over again
The odds of a big blue wave sweeping Democrats to power are growing, with even red-state Republicans growing nervous about their political position.
In politics, nothing is ever set in stone. There’s a chance that Trump can turn his fortunes around, even though that’s looking less likely by the day. It’s possible that Biden will stumble his way through the debates and give Republicans a much-needed lifeline. And it’s likely that if the president’s numbers don’t improve by the fall, Republicans will argue that saving the Senate will become a necessary check on a potential Democratic presidency.
But right now, Trump and his Republican party are in dire shape. The history of embattled presidents facing reelection during a worsening crisis doesn’t offer much comfort. Even Trump, always averse to uncomfortable truths, recognizes this.
Yes, Trump could pull off a win but Biden leads, and if the election were held today, Uncle Joe would be the next president. Joe isn’t dropping out, and Trump isn’t changing who he is and suddenly figuring out how to lead. So tailor your analysis accordingly.
Gabriel Debenedetti/New York:
Biden Is Planning an FDR-Size Presidency
He thinks he’ll survive Tara Reade’s accusation. But he knows he can’t be an average-Joe Democrat anymore.
The former vice-president carried the Democratic primary by relying on perceptions that he was an older, whiter, less world-historical (and less inspiring) Barack Obama — a steady hand who seemed more electable against a monstrous president than any of his competitors did. The heart of his pitch, when he delivered it clearly, was status quo ante, back to normal, restore the soul of the nation. But in the space of just a few months, COVID-19 and the disastrous White House response appeared to have dramatically widened Biden’s pathway to the presidency, making the matter of moderation and electability seem, at least for the time being, almost moot. They also changed his perception of what the country would need from a president in January 2021 — after not just four years of Trump but almost a full year of death and suffering. The pandemic is breaking the country much more deeply than the Great Recession did, Biden believes, and will require a much bigger response. No miraculous rebound is coming in the next six months.
Greg Sargent/WaPo:
Trump is badly botching the virus. New polls show Americans know it.
In what should be seen as a rebuke of President Trump, Anthony S. Fauci will tell a Senate panel on Tuesday that reopening the country too quickly risks causing “multiple outbreaks” of coronavirus, resulting in “needless suffering and death.”
Majorities of the American people appear to agree with Trump’s most prominent coronavirus task force member. Indeed, two new polls strongly suggest Trump has lost the argument over how to respond to the virus right now on just about every level.
A new Post-Ipsos poll finds that 56 percent of Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, while only 43 percent approve. By contrast, 71 percent approve of their governor’s handling of the disease.
Nonetheless, a minority position is a losing one. It’s even losing steam in some quarters. Should cases rise, or the public refuse to play the ‘show up and pretend it’s not happening game’, even more so.
Gabe Sherman/Vanity Fair:
“Trump’s Feeling Is, ‘Why Are We Losing Everywhere?’”: With Advisers Feuding and Numbers Plummeting, Trump Eyes Campaign Shake-up
Brad Parscale (and his Ferrari) is in the hot seat. Kushner is pushing for Nick Ayers, and against a Corey Lewandowski return. But whose fault are the disastrous swing state numbers?
With the coronavirus death toll surpassing 80,000 and the unemployment rate at Great Depression-era levels, there is a growing consensus among senior Republicans that Donald Trump’s reelection is slipping away. Recent internal polls show Trump trailing Joe Biden in six swing states, a data point that augurs a landslide loss in November. “The swing state polls are horrific,” a prominent Republican briefed on the numbers told me. The White House’s COVID-19 outbreak is only the latest headline that reinforces the narrative that Trump can’t get control of the pandemic. “This is what should worry the campaign: Biden is in his basement and he’s beating Trump,” a former West Wing staffer told me. “If I were Biden, the lesson I would learn is: Shut the fuck up and let Trump go out there and destroy himself.”
Also, his neighbor really dislikes him.
David Frum/Atlantic:
Trump Has Lost the Plot
The president is talking about things most Americans can’t comprehend, let alone care about.
Trump’s psychology is defined by his terror of rejection. The most stinging insult in his vast vocabulary of disdain is loser. And yet every poll, every powerful Biden TV ad, forces Trump to contemplate that he is headed toward a historic humiliation. He’ll stand with Jimmy Carter and Herbert Hoover, the incumbents rejected because they failed to manage economic crises.
Trump failed to prevent the crisis. Out of envy and spite, he dismantled the pandemic-warning apparatus his predecessors had bequeathed him.
Trump failed to manage the crisis. At every turn, he gave priority to the short-term management of the stock market instead.
Trump failed to message the crisis. He not only lacks empathy; he despises empathy.
Angry, scared, and aggrieved by the lack of praise for his efforts, Trump turns for safety to television, where his two-dimensional friends explain how everything is everybody else’s fault. They tell him that he is right and all his critics are wrong. They promise that miracle drugs will—poof!—make all his troubles vanish without effort. Sean and Tucker and Laura and Jeanine and the Fox & Friends romper room tell him stories that hold the terror at bay.
But those stories have drawn Trump into a twisting ghetto of craziness that is impenetrable to outsiders.
Why is that so important? Because they are reliable voters:
Paul Waldman/WaPo:
Republicans have already decided Trump is going to lose
And as every conservative knows, if you’re worried about deficits, you want a thriving economy. Getting that economy back on its feet as quickly and strongly as possible will not only bring down the deficit over the long term, it’s also the only thing that will avoid a political disaster in November. So spend, spend, spend.
In our fantasy land, that’s what every Republican would want to do right now. But it’s not. And the fact that Republicans don’t want to do this raises the possibility that at least some of them are starting to view Trump as a lost cause.
Politico:
Trump is getting trounced among a crucial constituency: The haters
In 2016, Donald Trump cleaned up among voters who disliked him and Hillary Clinton. This year, Biden is winning big among the comparable group.
Four years later, that same group — including a mix of Bernie Sanders supporters, other Democrats, disaffected Republicans and independents — strongly prefers Biden, the polling shows. The former vice president leads Trump by more than 40 percentage points among that group, which accounts for nearly a quarter of registered voters, according to a Monmouth University poll last week.
Nancy LeTourneau/Washington Monthly:
Why Is Trump So Afraid to Wear a Mask?
He thinks it would make him look weak. That just shows how weak he truly is.
What all of this demonstrates is how easy it is in a patriarchal culture to make ridiculous arguments about what it means to be strong or patriotic. It’s as if they truly believe that a virus plays by the rules of a military conflict in which fearless warriors can defeat the enemy through sheer defiance of the laws of nature. In that world, strong leaders are willing to spread the virus to others, because taking the necessary precautions is the equivalent of cowering behind a mask. The entire notion is completely absurd.
I recently suggested that it is time to rescue the meaning of words like “strong” from their patriarchal associations. In that spirit, let me give you an example of how that’s done.
The Atlantic:
Quarantine Fatigue Is Real
Instead of an all-or-nothing approach to risk prevention, Americans need a manual on how to have a life in a pandemic.
#StayHome had its moment. The United States urgently needed to flatten the curve and buy time to scale up health-care capacity, testing, and contact tracing. But quarantine fatigue is real. I’m not talking about the people who are staging militaristic protests against the supposed coronavirus hoax. I’m talking about those who are experiencing the profound burden of extreme physical and social distancing. In addition to the economic hardship it causes, isolation can severely damage psychological well-being, especially for people who were already depressed or anxious before the crisis started. In a recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, nearly half of Americans said that the coronavirus pandemic has harmed their mental health.
...
What does harm reduction look like for the coronavirus? First, policy makers and health experts can help the public differentiate between lower-risk and higher-risk activities; these authorities can also offer support for the lower-risk ones when sustained abstinence isn’t an option. Scientists still have a lot to learn about this new virus, but early epidemiological studies suggest that not all activities or settings confer an equal risk for coronavirus transmission. Enclosed and crowded settings, especially with prolonged and close contact, have the highest risk of transmission, while casual interaction in outdoor settings seems to be much lower risk. A sustainable anti-coronavirus strategy would still advise against house parties. But it could also involve redesigning outdoor and indoor spaces to reduce crowding, increase ventilation, and promote physical distancing, thereby allowing people to live their lives while mitigating—but not eliminating—risk.
USA Today:
Coronavirus epidemiologist Q&A: ‘We're just in the second inning of a nine-inning game’
On COVID-19, 'my job is not to scare people out of their wits, it's to scare them into their wits,' Dr. Michael Osterholm of CIDRAP tells USA TODAY.
Q. Where are some of the biggest hot spots in America?
A. Nursing homes, long-term care, prisons, homeless shelters, meatpacking plants — these are all areas where, once that virus gets into those locations, it's like a gas can. Suddenly 50% or 60% of the people are infected in those locations. I think we're going to burn through those populations quickly over the course of the next three to four months at most.
Q. Does that mean the worst will be over then?
A. I think you're going to start seeing it move into the rest of the U.S. population. When you look at adults 18 years of age and older, up to 40% of us have some co-morbidity that would put us at increased risk of having a severe infection or dying. We are still going to have lots of deaths. … While the rate of deaths will be much lower in younger individuals, the obesity epidemic in our country is going to take a hell of a toll. I'm convinced of that.