Harry Enten/CNN:
History shows why the next few weeks are critical for Trump 2020
While debates are often seen as gamechangers, it's often the period after the conventions are in the rearview mirror and before the debates when the political environment becomes clear.
Take a look at all the
election cycles since 1972. Specifically, look at where the national polling averages stood 35 days before the election (i.e. the day of the first 2020 general debate). The polls have been surprisingly predictive.
Herman Cain could not be reached for comment.
WaPo:
They voted for him and now regret it. Why White women are turning away from Trump.
From her home in the Philadelphia suburbs, Nin Bell works for an answering service, taking calls from people trying to reach more than 10,000 funeral homes and end-of-life companies. As the coronavirus began to sweep the country earlier this year, the number of calls related to new deaths tripled.
Caller after caller told her about losing a loved one to covid-19, as well as to suicides and drug overdoses. They provided an overwhelmingly painful window into just how badly the country was suffering.
And then Bell would hear President Trump — whom she voted for in 2016, helping him win Pennsylvania — downplay the severity of the pandemic.
“He was telling everybody it wasn’t a big deal — but I knew it was a big deal because of my job. I’m like: ‘Why am I taking 60 coronavirus deaths in one day, on one shift, when I used to only take 20 death calls a day?’” said Bell, 47, the mother of two teenage boys who lives in Parkside, about 20 miles southwest of Philadelphia. “He made a lot of mistakes. He just runs his mouth. . . . He’s the president, he can’t get away with that, especially when people’s lives are in danger.”
Anne Applebaum/Atlantic:
The Facts Just Aren’t Getting Through
The electorate is split into separate information bubbles. But unconventional messengers, appeals to patriotism, and even jokes can reach voters who don’t want to listen.
The point I am making here is not about Russia. It is about the deep gap in perceptions that now separates a tenth of German voters from the other 90 percent. Is that chasm permanent? Should the other German political parties try to reach the people in the populist bubble? But how is it possible to reach people who can’t hear you? This is not merely a question of how to convince people, how to use a better argument, or how to change minds. This is a question about how to get people to listen at all. Just shouting about “facts” will get you nowhere with those who no longer trust the sources that produce them.
Peter Wehner/Atlantic:
Why Trump Supporters Can’t Admit Who He Really Is
Nothing bonds a group more tightly than a common enemy that is perceived as a mortal threat.
One does not have to be a champion of the Democratic Party to know this chthonic portrait is absurd. But it is also essential, because it allows Trump and his followers to tolerate and justify pretty much anything in order to win. And “anything” turns out to be quite a lot.
In just the past two weeks, the president has praised supporters of the right-wing conspiracy theory QAnon, which contends, as The Guardian recently summarized it, that “a cabal of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires runs the world while engaging in pedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children.” Trump touted a conspiracy theory that the national death toll from COVID-19 is about 9,000, a fraction of the official figure of nearly 185,000; promoted a program on the One America News Network accusing demonstrators of secretly plotting Trump’s downfall; encouraged his own supporters to commit voter fraud; and claimed Biden is controlled by “people that are in the dark shadows” who are wearing “dark uniforms.”
Military disrespect, and the Bob Woodward 60 Minutes interview re coronavirus response will eat into Trump support:
It’s the story that won’t go away. Well, both of them are.
Erica Cortellessa/Washington Monthly:
Is Trump Scaring Democrats Away from Vote by Mail?
New evidence suggests he might be—and that could hand him the election.
These actions have sent a message to voters that the Postal Service will screw up their ability to vote by mail, either by not getting their ballots to them on time, delivering them to elections officials too late to be counted, or maybe even losing them altogether. Unfortunately for Democrats, this anxiety could become a catastrophic problem. There’s evidence to show that if Democratic voters are worried about the USPS and decline to vote by mail, they won’t necessarily march to the polling place instead. Many of them just won’t vote at all. Given that Trump won key states by minuscule margins in 2016, such a drop-off could secure his reelection.
That fact has not yet fully sunk in with many prominent Democrats, who have responded to Trump’s manipulation of the mail system by encouraging voters to embrace multiple voting options. “We’ve got to vote early, in person if we can,” Michelle Obama said in her convention speech. “We’ve got to request our mail-in ballots right now, tonight, and send them back immediately and follow up to make sure they’re received, and then make sure our friends and families do the same.” Other influential voices have been more alarmist. New York Times columnist Tom Friedman wrote that he would “damn well get to my neighborhood polling station” because was scared of Trump’s “deliberate sabotaging of the U.S. Postal Service.”
On the other hand, from Politico:
‘A huge risk’: Trump’s allies can’t sway him on mail-in voting
Trump briefly curbed his mail-in voting criticism, but then appeared to suggest voters should cast two ballots, fueling new concerns he is damaging his chances in November.
On-message Trump didn’t last long. He recently appeared to suggest people vote twice — voting in person as a way to determine if their mail-in ballot had been counted — later warning Democrats would be “thieving and stealing and robbing” their way to an election win. Now, five Republicans close to the president’s campaign say that if Trump keeps up his vacillating mail-in voting rhetoric, they fear infrequent voters, especially older ones, will simply sit out the election.
In an election in which a record number of Americans are expected to cast ballots by mail, that could cost Trump a victory.
So there you have it.
It’s not 2016.