When Governor Abbott finally mandated face masks in Texas on Friday (NPR), he did it because he had to and not because he wanted to. The goal of GOP governors has been to juice the economic numbers for political purposes, prioritizing that over public health. It’s been a complete failure (politically, economically, and from a public health POV). Congrats or something.
Dana Milbank/WaPo:
A massive repudiation of Trump’s racist politics is building
“For many white Americans, the things Trump is saying and getting away with, they just didn’t think they lived in a world where that could happen,” says Vincent Hutchings, a political scientist specializing in public opinion at the University of Michigan. Racist appeals in particular alienate white, college-educated women, and even some women without college degrees, he has found: “One of the best ways to exacerbate the gender gap isn’t to talk about gender but to talk about race.”
Trump’s racism has also emboldened white Democrats, who have often been on the losing end of racial politics since George H.W. Bush deployed Willie Horton against Michael Dukakis in 1988. “They’re embracing the racial issues they used to cower on in decades past,” Hetherington says.
This is what Parker had in mind when he wrote in 2016 that Trump could be “good for the United States.” The backlash Trump provoked among whites and nonwhites alike “could kick off a second Reconstruction,” Parker now thinks. “I know it sounds crazy, especially coming from a black man,” he says, but “I think Trump actually is one of the best things that’s happened in this country.”
Catherine Rampell/WaPo:
Trump decries ‘cancel culture’ — but no one embraces it more
In a divisive speech at Mount Rushmore on the eve of Independence Day, President Trump railed against “cancel culture” and the left’s supposed wholesale embrace of totalitarianism (err, “toe-tally-terrio-tism”). He accused his political opponents of “shaming dissenters and demanding total submission from anyone who disagrees,” arguing that such behavior has “absolutely no place in the United States of America.”
Unfortunately, no other American has spent more time, energy and (taxpayer) resources trying to cancel dissent and enforce submission than Trump. Here are just a few of the ways that Trump has used or tried to use the powers of his office to punish critics and perceived enemies:
Robin Givhan/WaPo:
Trump got his crowd and his fireworks, and peddled his fiction
Mount Rushmore is painfully complex — much like America itself. The faces of four revered but profoundly flawed presidents were carved into the stone by a talented sculptor who sympathized with the Ku Klux Klan. The majestic monument — a testament to human tenacity — scars land considered sacred by Native Americans.
But the president is not a man of complexity and nuance. He is a man who sees things in gloriously righteous white and suspicious, dangerous black. For him, Mount Rushmore is not complicated. It’s telegenic. His was not an open-armed celebration of American independence and the country’s raucous striving to fulfill its promise. The president had orchestrated a rally — a place where he could wade into a warm embrace of approval.
Politico:
Donald Trump's shrinking electoral map
But privately, campaign aides, senior administration officials and GOP donors have begun to acknowledge what they call a more plausible scenario: a pair of losses in the Rust Belt, most likely Michigan and Wisconsin. That would mean the president has to win some proven Trump-averse states to crack the 270-vote threshold needed to clinch a second term.
Gone are the days of forecasting a landslide victory, said one person close to the Trump campaign. The president’s team is now recasting its expectations to identify not where Trump can win more, but how he can lose less.
“We don’t need 306. We just need 270. We can lose Michigan and lose Pennsylvania and still win,” said a top Trump adviser, noting that a win in New Hampshire, combined with one in Nevada or New Mexico, would provide enough Electoral College support to prevent defeat even if Biden wins big in the industrial Midwest.
Bent Flyvbjerg/Salon:
"Regression to the tail": How to mitigate COVID-19, the climate crisis and other catastrophes
We face even worse pandemics and more extreme climate ahead. But basic principles can help us navigate the risks
In another example, made famous by Nobel Prize-winner in economics Daniel Kahneman, pilots who performed well on recent flights tended to perform less well on later flights, closer to the mean of performance over many flights. This was not because the pilots' skills had deteriorated, but because their recent good performance was due not to an improvement of skills but to lucky combinations of random events.
There is nothing as practical as a theory that is correct. Regression to the mean has been proven mathematically for many types of statistics and is highly useful in health, insurance, to casinos and in risk management, e.g., for flight safety.
But regression to the mean presupposes that a population mean exists. For some random events of great social consequence this is not the case…
I suggest we name this phenomenon — that events return to the tail in sufficient size and frequency for the mean to not converge — "the law of regression to the tail." The law depicts a situation with many extreme events, and no matter how extreme the most extreme event is, there will always be an event even more extreme than this. It is only a matter of time until it appears.
The above illustrates the mistaken idea that ‘it will all work out because it always does”. Sometimes it does not, and one needs to plan accordingly. From the same piece:
First, the COVID-19 pandemic was entirely predictable. Indeed, the pandemic was predicted years ago by people as different as Taleb (author of "Incerto"), philanthropist Bill Gates, and numerous epidemiologists who are now, deservedly, having a field day as what-did-I-say prophets, after being ignored for years by government, business and media.
I resemble that remark.
STAT:
Experts are calling for a 9/11-style commission on U.S. coronavirus response. Here’s where it could start
By the most basic of measurements — rates of illness and death — the U.S. response to the Covid-19 pandemic has been catastrophic. So it seems inevitable that there will be an independent, bipartisan commission to evaluate the nation’s preparedness and response to the pandemic, in the style of the famous 9/11 commission empaneled in 2002. Already, many experts are calling for such a panel.
The response to Covid-19 leaves behind a target-rich environment for any pandemic commission. Nearly 130,000 Americans have died of the respiratory disease since February. Over 2.5 million have become sick. And perhaps most jarringly, in states like Arizona, Texas, California, and Florida, the situation appears to be getting worse, not better: New coronavirus cases and deaths are skyrocketing amid substantial resistance to basic public health measures like social distancing and wearing masks.
The country’s long list of missteps includes decisions from President Trump, governors, local officials, and even activists who have vocally resisted mitigation measures like wearing masks and maintaining social distancing. Looking more broadly any examination could begin with the country’s failure to build infrastructure for testing and contact tracing in early 2020, Trump’s consistent downplaying of the virus even amid mass death, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s highly publicized testing debacle.
NY Times:
How the Republican Convention Created Money Woes in Two Cities
Donors are wondering why they gave to a Charlotte event that has mostly been scrapped. And Jacksonville fund-raisers find money is on hold because of concerns about the surge in virus cases.
Organizers are trying to assuage vexed Republicans who collectively gave millions of dollars for a Charlotte event that has mostly been scrapped. The host committee there has spent virtually all of the $38 million it raised before the convention was moved, leaving almost nothing to return to donors, or to pass on to the new host city.
They think a convention is going to happen as planned?
The only thing I’m going to say about Kanye:
And your weekend Coronavirus update: