This is a political site. We like analyzing polls.
That doesn’t mean the numbers are the only story, so for those of you who get PTSD from looking at the polls, buck up, a therapeutic intervention is on the way.
Here’s a good example. The Quinnipiac poll (the one with a Biden +13 led) says:
JOB APPROVALS
Governor DeSantis receives a negative 41 - 52 percent job approval, a 31-point swing in the net approval from April when he received a positive 53 - 33 percent job approval rating. Today's numbers are the lowest for DeSantis since taking office in 2019.
"Just a few months ago, Florida was a safe harbor for COVID refugees from up North. Now, it registers a startling number of infections and the numbers say the buck stops at Governor DeSantis' desk in Tallahassee," Malloy added.
So how did we get there? Ah, therein lies a tale.
WaPo:
Coronavirus ravaged Florida, as Ron DeSantis sidelined scientists and followed Trump
"I never received information about what happened with my ideas or results," said Thomas Hladish, a University of Florida research scientist whose regular calls with the health department ended June 29. "But I did hear the governor say the models were wrong about everything."
DeSantis (R) this month traveled to Miami to hold a roundtable with South Florida mayors, whose region was struggling as a novel coronavirus hot spot. But the Republican mayor of Hialeah was shut out, weeks after saying the governor "hasn't done much" for a city disproportionately affected by the virus.
As the virus spread out of control in Florida, decision-making became increasingly shaped by politics and divorced from scientific evidence, according to interviews with 64 current and former state and administration officials, health administrators, epidemiologists, political operatives and hospital executives. The crisis in Florida, these observers say, has revealed the shortcomings of a response built on shifting metrics, influenced by a small group of advisers and tethered at every stage to the Trump administration, which has no unified plan for addressing the national health emergency but has pushed for states to reopen.
See, if you assume the virus is a messaging problem, you’re going to get it wrong. Very wrong. And you’re going to keep getting it wrong.
People know this. Again, the Q-poll:
Looking back, 61 percent of voters think Governor Ron DeSantis reopened the economy "too quickly." Thirty-one percent think he reopened "at about the right pace" and 6 percent say he reopened "too slowly."
When it comes, however, to whether voters think the governor should issue a stay-at-home order for the state to slow the spread of the coronavirus, they are split. Forty-nine percent say yes, while 48 percent say no.
And again, the WaPo:
Trump asked DeSantis in a phone call in May whether he would require masks for the convention and whether the virus would be a problem, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation. DeSantis said he would not require masks and the virus would not be a major problem in August in Florida.
People know who to blame, and they know why. Polls? That’s just picking up on the details.
You may have seen this Eric Levitz/New York magazine piece already:
The GOP’s Procrastination on COVID Relief Is Inexcusable
Even the most bullish economic forecasters didn’t rule out the persistence of double-digit unemployment this August as a significant possibility. So why then did McConnell wait until federal unemployment benefits were about to expire to start crafting another stimulus package? And why did Republicans fail to rally behind his outline this week, forcing the majority leader to abandon the bill’s rollout on Thursday morning?
The answer to both questions appears to be this: Many congressional Republicans earnestly believe that the reason unemployment is high — in the middle of an uncontained pandemic that is killing 1,000 Americans a day — is that the excessive generosity of federal benefits has rendered the unemployed unwilling to work. [my bold]
See, when you think the little people are failing you, the only solution is to fail them.
Yeah, that Godwin. But it’s all of a piece. The Republican gentry are really annoyed with the voters.
EpidemioLakshmy/twitter:
Better late than never - my thread on the US public health (PH) system.
This doesn't cover everything, but does provide an outline of how funding & structures work with each other.
We learn in public health school that all public health is local.
We've seen this in how the pandemic has played out. Local factors, local leadership has mattered so so much in this.
Local health jurisdictions (LHJ) are tasked with delivering programs & services to protect the public from infectious (flu, TB, Syphilis) & chronic (cancer, diabetes) disease & environmental (e.g., lead) threats.
Wonder how flu shots are free/low-cost? PH $$ at work!
WaPo:
Held back
As parents realize how badly the U.S. botched the next school year, we’re furious
We were, and are, incredibly lucky: None of us, and no one in our extended family, has gotten the virus. My spouse and I are able to do our jobs from home, though in one case with a significant pay cut. We have broadband access and enough functional devices to do Zoom school and work at the same time. Still, that semester of online schooling was a miserable experience that we would all give anything never to have to repeat.
Nearly five months later, though, it’s become apparent that the Trump administration’s abject negligence means we’re about to repeat it anyway. The implicit bargain of the spring was that if everyone complied with the shutdowns, the isolation, the social distancing, the working-while-parenting disasters and the rest, the government would use that time to build enough testing, tracing and public health infrastructure so that students could safely go back to school in person in the fall.
Instead, having utterly failed to contain the virus, the administration is now employing the crafty tactic of attempting to draw attention away from the pandemic — as if we could be distracted out of noticing that we can no longer safely leave our homes, we have no functioning public institutions (libraries, museums, schools), we have lost more than 139,000 American lives, and we are well on our way into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
If you tell me that there’s a lifetime left in politics, and just ignore the polls, I’ll ask you what’s going to reverse the opinion of voters dealing with pandemics, the economy and school closing?
You think an ad will do that? An appearance on barstool sports? Firing the campaign manager and canceling the Florida convention after canceling the NC convention? Portland cosplay?
I don’t think so. See, it’s one thing to say the polls can change and it’s quite another to think people are going to just shrug and say, oh well, four more years of this (or worse).
Trump supporters aren’t shy at all, tbh.
Axios:
2020 attention tracker: Biden succeeding in making it about Trump
Even after emerging from his Delaware basement, Joe Biden has consumed less and less of the national conversation while his polling lead over President Trump has swelled, according to data from NewsWhip provided exclusively to Axios.
Why it matters: Trump's punches aren't landing. Biden is avoiding heightened scrutiny while Trump absorbs the blowback for his responses to national crises.
Welcome to reality. Trump’s the incumbent. It’s not 2016.
David Rothkopf/USA Today:
America's national greatness myths are shattering. Can they survive? Should they?
Rather than restore some idealized, jingoistic version of who we are, let's use this painful moment of self-doubt to remake the reality of America.
The world is not, we are reminded, as we believed it was. Not only is that unsettling, it forces us to ask, what else about our bedrock beliefs about life may someday turn to quicksand?
These are the reason some howl so loudly when those myths begin to crumble, when truth forces itself into our carefully cultivated perception of history. But it is important to hear those howls as healthy. They are the visceral reactions to the growing pains caused by progress.