Politico:
FDA to authorize plasma treatment over scientists' objections
President Trump supported the authorization; many scientists have opposed it.
It remains unproven therapy. It should not have been pushed for political reasons. This makes it much harder to run real studies, recruit patients, and find out the answer about efficacy and safety.
It is a really, really bad move to do this unnecessary thing with vaccines on the horizon. Who’s going to believe the FDA now?
Here are some of the objections:
Remember, Jared’s in charge, not Fauci. Vote accordingly.
Meanwhile:
ABC:
Biden enjoys post-convention bump in favorability: POLL
Biden's favorability ticked up from 40% just over a week ago to 45%.
The Democratic National Convention, which attracted a smaller audience compared to last cycle, still delivered a favorability boost for Democratic nominee Joe Biden, particularly among the core base of the party, according to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll released Sunday.
Prior to the convention, Biden had a net negative favorability rating, with slightly more Americans having an unfavorable view of the former vice president than a favorable one. In the days after the convention, Biden's favorability ticked up from 40% just over a week ago to 45% in the new poll, which was conducted using Ipsos' KnowledgePanel.
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President Donald Trump's favorability currently stands at 32% -- little change from the last poll -- but his unfavorability reached 60%, a concerning high for the incumbent president and something Republicans will try to turn around with their convention this week. Vice President Mike Pence's ratings barely moved from last week, with 30% giving him favorable marks and 46% viewing him unfavorably.
Look for favorability changes, not head to head changes. People are locked in.
Morning Consult:
Biden Gets No Immediate Convention Bounce, but Still Leads Trump
Democratic nominee earns best favorability ratings yet in post-DNC poll
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In a post-convention poll, former Vice President Joe Biden leads President Donald Trump by 9 points among likely voters, compared with an 8-point margin earlier in the week.
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51% of likely voters said they had a favorable view of Biden on Friday, a single-day record in Morning Consult tracking of the race.
Erin Banco/Daily Beast:
Revealed: Jared Kushner’s Private Channel With Putin’s Money Man
More than a dozen Trump administration officials, current and former, described a clandestine relationship between Jared Kushner and the CEO of a Kremlin sovereign wealth fund.
In an effort to supply New York City hospitals with the medical equipment they needed, Kushner looked in multiple places for the equipment and found a safe bet in Moscow, those officials said. While the State Department had been involved in the logistics of the onboarding and offloading, it was Kushner who helped strike the deal.
The ventilators turned out to be faulty and were cast aside by officials in New York and New Jersey, according to local officials who spoke with The Daily Beast. During that same time period, the city of Los Angeles was told by representatives of the federal government that it had lost a bid for N95 masks to a Russian entity, according to two people familiar with the matter. The L.A. officials were never told the Russian outfit’s name.
Kushner held the details of the New York shipment closely and accelerated the order by leaning on his personal relationship with Dmitriev, a confidant of President Vladimir Putin who’d been dispatched to make inroads with the inexperienced 2016 Trump transition team.
AP:
Democratic plan in rural, swing state counties: Lose by less
Their unorthodox strategy: win by losing by less.
“The general theory of the case goes like this: We’re trying not to lose as bad,” veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said of the rural and small-town counties Trump swung to his side in 2016. “Because when you don’t lose as bad at one thing, you can win everything.”
Carville has helped raise millions of dollars for Democratic super PAC American Bridge 21st Century’s $30 million advertising effort aimed at picking off voters in rural and working-class counties across Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
Trump carried all three states by about 77,000 votes out of 13.5 million cast. But in doing so, he peeled off 37 counties carried in 2012 by Barack Obama.
Trump likely must again win all three of the states, which the Democratic nominee had carried in six consecutive elections before 2016, if he is to get a second term.
Trump is leading Republicans to an unwanted record in the popular vote
American elections tend to swing on a pendulum. No one party usually holds power for too long. Since 1952, for example, only once has a party won the presidency three elections in a row.
Yet, partially through a little bit of bad luck and two electoral college-popular vote splits, the Republican Party looks like it could be on the way to an unpleasant distinction.
If President Donald Trump, in fact, loses the popular vote in 2020, it will be the first time since the founding of the Democratic Party in 1828 that either the Democratic or Republican Party has lost the popular vote this many times in a span of eight elections.
Obviously, we don't know what the November result will be. There's still a little over two months to go and things can change.
Jack Jenkins/RNS:
Joe Biden’s acceptance speech caps off an unusually faith-filled Democratic National Convention
For years, pundits and political analysts have accused Democrats of having a “God problem,” insisting the party does not do enough to highlight the role religion plays in the lives of millions of Americans.
The accuracy of the critique remains a matter of dispute, but few, if any, politicos made that claim Thursday night (Aug. 20) as former Vice President Joe Biden closed out this year’s atypical — and atypically religious — Democratic National Convention.
“I found the best way through pain and loss and grief is to find purpose: As God’s children each of us have a purpose in our lives,” said Biden, a lifelong Catholic. “And we have a great purpose as a nation: To open the doors of opportunity to all Americans. To save our democracy. To be a light to the world once again.”
It was a perhaps small appeal to his Christian faith, one of only a few scattered throughout his closing speech. But while Biden’s faith mentions were uncharacteristically minimal, the convention itself was unusually spiritual. Speakers, organizers and delegates appealed to a conciliatory, inspirational form of religion with a fervency not seen at any party convention in recent memory — Republican or Democratic.
The noticeable focus on faith, though frequently offset by appeals to religiously unaffiliated voters who make up an ever-increasing percentage of the party, was tied to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and oriented partly to moderates and even conservatives, who Democrats hope have will abandon President Donald Trump on Election Day.
Hey, if all of that is too long:
