Pick One: Fewer Deaths Or More Corporate Profits

Last week one of the famous electoral prognosticators, who never gets anything right until a day or two before the election, looked at the Senate election in Montana and pontificated that "Based on what we can piece together, the race seems like it’s neck and neck at the moment. But does that actually make it a Toss-up? We are not quite there yet." I wrote that he should be there and will be there in a few weeks and went into why, which you can read at the link. But a new poll of likely voters from Montana State University shows Bullock pulling out ahead already.

The Democratic governor-- whose state has the second fewest COVID-19 cases in the country (after Alaska) and just 439 cases per million (compared to a national number of 3,681 per million)-- has pulled ahead of the incumbent Steve Daines, whose head hasn't been pulled out of Trump's ass once this year. Montanans were asked who they would vote for if the election for Senate were held now.

• Bullock- 46%
• Daines- 39%
• Someone else (Libertarian or Green)- 6%
• Unsure- 7%

53% of Montana voters approve of Trump's response to the pandemic, but 70% approve of Bullock's response. (Only 48% approve of Daines' response-- and 28% said they don't know what Daines' response is.)

Bullock isn't exactly a Berniecrat-- not by a long shot-- but he seems pretty good for an establishment guy and is certainly better than any of Schumer's other recruits. I wouldn't be surprised if the Montana Senate race turns out to be the only case in the country where Schumer and I are backing the same challenger.

There seems to be a structural difference between conservatives and progressives when it comes to a very basic perspective playing out right now in regard to how to confront the pandemic-- individualism vs societal cooperation. I bet you're not surprised to see that conservatives value business over life and progressives value lives over business. John Pavlovitz seem to have tweeted it this week:

And for the conservative side of the argument, let's turned to the former-- and hopefully last-- Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, a guest on Dana Bash's show Monday. Christie told her that the country needs to reopen, despite separate key coronavirus models forecasting that thousands may die daily.

"Of course, everybody wants to save every life they can-- but the question is, towards what end, ultimately?" Christie, a Republican tapped to lead President Donald Trump's presidential transition team in 2016, told CNN's Dana Bash on the Daily DC Podcast. "Are there ways that we can... thread the middle here to allow that there are going to be deaths, and there are going to be deaths no matter what?"

Christie told Bash that "we've got to let some of these folks get back to work, because if we don't, we're going to destroy the American way of life in these families-- and it will be years and years before we can recover." His comments Monday echoed similar characterizations by other Republicans-- including President Donald Trump-- that the economic impact of coronavirus is just as devastating to the nation as the virus itself.

When Bash pressed Christie on whether people would be able to accept reopening in light of news of a Trump administration model projecting a rise up to about 3,000 daily US deaths from coronavirus by June 1, Christie responded, "They're gonna have to."

"We're in the midst of a pandemic that we haven't seen in over 100 years," he said. "And we're going to have to continue to do things."

With governors facing mounting pressure mounting to reopen their states' economies and Trump itching to scale back on social distancing nationwide as soon as possible, more than half of states had lifted aspects of their stay-at-home orders as of Monday.

Yet, a separate influential coronavirus model often cited by the White House is now forecasting that 134,000 people will die of Covid-19 in the United States, nearly double its previous prediction. The model, from the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington, had predicted 72,433 deaths as of Monday morning.

Christie, asked Monday what his messaging would be to the American public if he sat in the Oval Office, said, "The message is that the American people have gone through significant death before." He pointed to the first and second World Wars as examples of how "we've gone through it and we've survived it. We sacrificed those lives."

"We sent our young men during World War Two over to Europe, out to the Pacific, knowing, knowing that many of them would not come home alive," he said, adding: "And we decided to make that sacrifice because what we were standing up for was the American way of life. In the very same way now, we have to stand up for the American way of life."

The former governor lamented the "economic devastation" as "equally sad," and told Bash that while he wasn't advocating for crowded public gatherings like rock concerts or football games, "we have to let certain people get back to work because I can see my own state here."

Christie encouraged vulnerable populations to stay indoors, as "they're the ones who are gonna really swallow this burden badly, the elderly and those with respiratory diseases, depressed immune systems from cancer treatments or other things."

"Those folks are going to have to be even more careful than the rest of the population," he added. "I don't know what the choice is."

There's a way to do this and minimize loss of life and there's a way to do this and minimize loss of profit. It's not all black or all white; it's a matter of prioritization. Conservatives pick one way and progressives pick the other. As a voter, you'll have to pick between the two. Liam O'Mara is the progressive Democrat taking on corrupt Republican incumbent Ken Calvert in Riverside County, California. Riverside County has the 4th highest population in California, after L.A., San Diego and Orange counties. But Riverside is second in the number of COVID infections and deaths. CA-42, where Liam is running, gave Calvert a 56.5% to 43.5% win in 2018 (an R+13 PVI). That would be just the kind of district with large numbers of sociopaths who refuse to obey social distancing regulations out of selfishness and disregard for their neighbors. And the county band of supervisors is debating whether or not to just scrap the regulations altogether and open up for business without masks or social distancing. This is the sensible letter O'Mara sent the board:

Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) noted that "We can deliver unemployment checks to those who were laid off. We can get loans to small businesses who had to shut down. We can provide stimulus payments to families affected by the pandemic. But we cannot bring the dead back to life. This is why we cannot haphazardly rush to reopen without adequate testing, tracing and isolation."

Bullseye by Nancy Ohanian