Leana S Wen/WaPo:
Four concepts to assess your personal risk as the U.S. reopens
By the end of this week, all 50 states will be reopening to some degree. I’ve argued that since none of them has met the metrics to safely reopen but are starting to do so anyway, the United States needs to move to the public health strategy of harm reduction. So what does that mean in terms of choices each of us makes — what’s safe to do and what’s not?
Here are four concepts from other harm-reduction strategies that can help to guide our decisions:
Relative risk, Pooled risk, Cumulative risk, Collective risk. Within, they are defined and described. Good read.
Given that we’re on our own, might as well get familiar with risk.
Ronald Brownstein/Atlantic:
The Pandemic Hasn’t Changed Voters’ Minds About Trump
Education remains the most important dividing line in America.
Though that consistency remains the dominant pattern in polling through the crisis, two possible exceptions could tip the 2020 race at a time when the country remains closely divided. Though the outbreak is spreading more broadly into Trump’s rural and small-town base, it has hit hardest in the big-city areas that were most skeptical of him from the outset. That could widen Trump’s deficit in the most populous communities—he already lost America’s 100 largest counties by a combined total of about 15 million votes in 2016—and force him to squeeze even greater margins and higher turnout from smaller places.
The second trend complicates the first for him: As I mentioned before, polling shows that the voting bloc that has most clearly moved away from Trump during the outbreak is older voters, including older whites. Generally, small-town America is not only redder but also grayer. If Trump slips at all with older voters, he will struggle to expand his margins in smaller communities.
It’s remarkable how the outbreak has disrupted every aspect of American life without hugely reconfiguring the landscape for the 2020 presidential race. But to the extent that it has shifted the terrain, it has left Trump facing an even narrower path to a second term. And on that bumpy road, no rock looms before Trump more ominously than the persistent recoil from his values and performance among college-educated white voters of both genders.
Paul Waldman/WaPo:
Republicans are realizing the crisis is pulling them toward disaster
So this is the position of the president and the Republican leadership in Congress: What we really have to worry about now is that Americans are being lazy, and what we need to get them out there reviving the economy is some good old-fashioned deprivation.
ICYMI, this thread is a devastating addition to the Tara Reade story:
Looks to have a history of… well, you decide what it is. But the people pushing this story have a lot to answer for.
Joe Walsh/Courier:
It Didn’t Have To Be This Bad
In 2016, I voted for Trump. Like some of you reading this, I believed his act and thought nothing could be worse than Hillary Clinton. I was wrong, as so many of us were.
Go ahead and point a finger at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC); criticize government bureaucrats, scientists, and experts; blame Congress if it makes you feel better.
But we have one president, and he really has only one job: To defend us from enemies both foreign and domestic. Well, coronavirus is one big-ass enemy.
The guy I voted for last time didn’t do his job. And the evidence against him is extensive.
Michael McDonald/Newsweek:
Trump Will Drive Extraordinary Voter Turnout in 2020—If States Can Get It Together
It is hard to fathom that just six years ago, voter turnout was at a modern low. Turnout in the 2014 midterm election was the lowest since 1942.
The only major change in our politics from 2014 to 2018 is President Donald Trump. Whether you love him or hate him, he inflames passions and divides the country with his antics and policies unlike any political figure.
But then the coronavirus hit, sickening over a million Americans, killing tens of thousands and plunging the economy into a disaster rivaling the Great Depression.
Now, in addition to a referendum on Trump's presidency, our very well-being, both physical and economic, are on the ballot. It's not an exaggeration that the 2020 presidential election will be the most important election in our lifetime.
So the question is whether election officials can meet what will be an extraordinary demand for ballots, particularly mail ballots, in November.
FiveThirtyEight:
Will 2020 Be Another Blue Wave Election Year?
geoffrey.skelley: The polls right now are reasonably meaningful, but because presidential elections are just close by their nature these days, even a marginal shift could alter the outcome — and there would be down-ballot ramifications for such a shift. So yeah, let’s see where things are in the fall.
nrakich: Right. As I recently wrote, a normal polling error for a presidential general election is 4 points. So that 6-point Biden lead could actually be a 2-point Biden lead, which would make Republicans solid favorites in the Senate and would probably make the presidential race a toss-up given Trump’s likely Electoral College advantage.
Of course, it could also be a 10-point Biden lead.