Harry Enten/CNN:
Joe Biden is winning female voters by a historic margin
Biden is earning a historic amount of support from female voters for a presidential nominee when examining polling over the last 70 years.
With less than 5 months to go, the polls are still shaping up as terrible for the incumbent. And as you’ll see below, it’s state polls as well as national polls (which is no surprise, as they would be expected to move together.)
The thing is, they’re not likely to change for a number of reasons and the leading one is that Trump is who he is, and can’t be anyone else. Perhaps the next leading reason after that is that his people think that’s just fine, and keep setting him up to fail.
You know, the ones who thought the St John’s church photo op was a brilliant idea. The ones who thought gassing Americans peacefully protesting was a symbol of strength. The ones who think an indoor rally without masks in coronavirus-plagued America is a good idea.
The ones who are in the WH and running his campaign.
Sure, this doesn’t mean ‘we’ve won ‘ but no one is saying that. So there’s no reason for you to say it either.
OTOH, increasing his lead is as likely as decreasing it, given who Trump is and how things are going.
WaPo:
These are the 9 Senate seats most likely to flip. Things don’t look good for Republicans.
From a 30,000-foot view, this map looks bad for the GOP. Republicans are playing a lot of defense: They’re defending purple seats in Colorado, Maine, Arizona and North Carolina, and they might end up having trouble in red states such as Iowa, Montana, Georgia or even Texas. Democrats, on the other hand, don’t have many weak spots. Doug Jones will very likely lose the Alabama Senate race, and Republicans could try for a win in swing-y Michigan or red-trending Minnesota. But for the most part, the blue team is playing offense this year.
That includes Joni Ernst trailing the Democrat, Theresa Greenfield, in the quality Selzer poll in Iowa.
Here’s a point I can’t emphasize enough: the EC bias toward Republicans kicks in for very close elections. So, “never mind an 8 point lead, whattabout the states?” misses that point entirely. Read this →
Greg Kaufmann/USA Today:
Pandemic and police killings reveal brutal status quo. We can fix this. Why won't we?
We have the money. The challenge lies in overcoming a history of demonizing poor people and racializing poverty to reduce support for good policy.
I’ve covered poverty in America for more than 10 years and, for me, there is a certain kind of madness that comes with the beat.
It stems primarily from witnessing profound and unnecessary human suffering caused by bad policy choices, from food to health care to policing, and a rage towards policymakers who maintain a steady drumbeat of baseless claims such as “we need more data to know what to do,” or worse, blame people for their poverty by portraying them as lazy, scheming, dependent, or anything else to suggest that the system is just fine but these individuals are broken and unworthy of assistance
David Frum/Twitter:
The Trump campaign decision to bump its Tulsa rally from June 19 to June 20 is so fascinatingly revealing ...
1) Those who complained about the June 19 rally date were complaining that there was something inconsistent about a Trump rally on an anniversary of Emancipation. You wouldn't expect Trump to agree to that - but he did!
2) Why would a presidency that never admits error, never accepts responsibility, never apologizes for anything - why would it back down in the face of complaints about a June 19 event?
3) I think you can safely rule out "regard for the feelings of others" as a motive.
…
11) Trump has to worry: what if the protests are huge? What if the police panic and hurt somebody?
He's confronting a responsibility he cannot dodge, at a time when his only political trick has ceased to work for him.
12) The rescheduling of the Tulsa rally is a reveal of weakness by a president who normally values the show of strength above all else.
The rescheduling confirms how fast Trump's strength is ebbing - and that he (or his campaign) knows it.
Resign from SWAT?? Reminds me of Col. Blake:
God dammit, Hot Lips, resign your goddamn commission. ~ M*A*S*H
Brian Resnick/Vox:
“Totally predictable”: State reopenings have backfired
“We managed to disrupt our economy [and] skyrocket unemployment, and we didn’t control the damn virus,” one scientist says.
Well, here we are. It’s June 12, and Covid-19 hospitalizations are rising in Arizona, the Carolinas, Utah, Arkansas, Texas, Tennessee, and perhaps Florida. Those states are also seeing higher numbers of positive Covid-19 tests, as well as increases in the percentage of tests that come back positive. This indicates that the higher case counts aren’t simply due to more widespread testing finding milder cases.
Call it a reopening backfire. But really: No expert thought that reopening this quickly was going to work in the first place.
Donald M Berwick MD/JAMA:
The Moral Determinants of Health
Decades of research on the true causes of ill health, a long series of pedigreed reports, and voices of public health advocacy have not changed this underinvestment in actual human well-being. Two possible sources of funds seem logically possible: either (a) raise taxes to allow governments to improve social determinants, or (b) shift some substantial fraction of health expenditures from an overbuilt, high-priced, wasteful, and frankly confiscatory system of hospitals and specialty care toward addressing social determinants instead. Either is logically possible, but neither is politically possible, at least not so far.
Neither will happen unless and until an attack on racism and other social determinants of health is motivated by an embrace of the moral determinants of health, including, most crucially, a strong sense of social solidarity in the US. “Solidarity” would mean that individuals in the US legitimately and properly can depend on each other for helping to secure the basic circumstances of healthy lives, no less than they depend legitimately on each other to secure the nation’s defense. If that were the moral imperative, government—the primary expression of shared responsibility—would defend and improve health just as energetically as it defends territorial integrity.
Jennifer Gerson/Bustle:
Talking About Racism Must Be A Part Of Health Care, According To A Doctor
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
I only see patients in the exam room, but I know that their lives are affected by everything that goes on beyond those walls. It’s important for us as doctors to acknowledge what’s happening [with the protests]. Sometimes my patients know Chicago’s history of race and police violence and talk about it with me. Other times, you can tell they’re affected by it without even knowing it by name.
I had one patient recently who just wanted to talk. I spent the majority of that visit just listening, and we conducted the medical care they’d come in for at the end. Systemic racism prevents us as doctors from promoting people’s health and well-being in a broad sense, beyond addressing disease. I hear a lot of doctors say, “Well I’m just going to take good care of my patients,” in response to the protests, and leave it at that. But taking good care of your patients means acknowledging racism.
Philip Bump/WaPo:
Americans broadly understand why protesters are in the streets. Does Trump?
The partisan gaps were far wider across the board, with Republicans (and Republican-leading independents) being most likely to identify people taking advantage of the situation to commit crimes as having contributed a great deal to the demonstrations. Less than half of Republicans — the vast majority of whom are white — thought that long-standing concerns about mistreatment of black Americans contributed a great deal.
This is, frankly, an unexpected result. While one might disagree that black people face particular mistreatment in American society (which many Republicans do), it’s clear that such concerns are a primary factor in the demonstrations. The Black Lives Matter movement isn’t only about the relationship between police and black Americans but also about how that relationship reflects broader systemic problems centered on race.
Barry Friedman/WSJ:
Amid Calls to ‘Defund,’ How to Rethink Policing
Cops shouldn’t be sent to deal with social problems—substance abuse, mental illness, homelessness—they aren’t trained to handle
The idea of defunding the police is hardly revolutionary, though, at least as it’s understood in the broader context of criminal justice reform. It ought to make good sense to anyone who cares about effective governance. The problem, simply put, is this: We send police officers to deal with too many social problems—substance abuse, mental illness, homelessness, domestic disputes, even civil unrest—for which they are grossly unprepared.
This mismatch has a range of negative consequences. Not only do the underlying social issues not get addressed, but the police overuse enforcement, including arrests, in dealing with them. This results too often in force and violence against black people, which is what launched the defund movement in the first place. The mismatch also hurts the police, fraying their relationship with the communities they are supposed to serve. Many police would be the first to say they are being asked to do things for which they are not trained.
It doesn’t have to be this way. With some reimagining, we can find ways to address our most pressing social ills instead of trying to enforce our way out of them.
Peter Wehner/NY times:
Trump Has Made Alternative Facts a Way of Life
The president has taken his degradation of the truth to new lengths, but the basic project has been the same from the start.
But this, too, has a cost. What Mr. Trump requires of his supporters is that they enter his world of unreality. For most people it’s too psychologically painful to acknowledge that the person they support is deeply corrupt, pathologically dishonest and brutish. Human beings feel a need to justify their defense of such a person; this can only be achieved by distorting reality, by pretending that Mr. Trump is not who he is and that facts are not what they are.
If Trump is drifting down in Arkansas, it’s happening everywhere. Big “if”, though.
And finally: