Republicans Backed The Donald's Every Move-- And Now They're Being Flushed Down The Toilet With Him

 

A new PBS-NPR poll by Marist finds the Donald down by 10 points nationally-- 52% to 42%. Trump's overall disapproval number is a dismal 53%.

Coronavirus and trust

Going into the final stretch of his reelection bid, Trump has tried to stir optimism about the outlook for the coronavirus pandemic, even when top infectious disease experts, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, paint a different picture. On Wednesday, Trump claimed that Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield was “confused” after Redfield testified to a Senate committee that any coronavirus vaccine was unlikely to be widely available for most Americans until spring or summer 2021. Redfield did not retract his statement.

A new book from journalist Bob Woodward revealed last week that Trump has said he knowingly played down the severity of the virus back in February. Meanwhile, the U.S. is approaching 200,000 deaths tied to the virus, while life for many remains disrupted by jobs lost, income gone and food and housing uncertain in many parts of the country.

“I really do believe we’re rounding the corner,” Trump told reporters gathered on Sept. 10 at the White House.

Most Americans don’t share Trump’s optimism. More than two-thirds of U.S. adults-- 69 percent-- said that they think it’s going to be at least six months before daily life gets back to normal. That includes 86 percent of Democrats, 73 percent of independents and 48 percent of Republicans.

Mixed messages from the Trump administration and leading public health officials have made it difficult for Americans to know who to trust for information about the pandemic. Trump’s word garnered the least amount of confidence, with only a third of Americans saying they trust what he has to say about the virus. Confidence has also slipped substantially when it comes to the news media, state and local government officials, and even public health experts. The last group still conjures the greatest amount of trust, among 69 percent of Americans, but that’s down from 84 percent in March.

Erosion of trust could be influencing the public’s willingness to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The number who said they would get the vaccine has dropped from 60 percent of Americans in August to 49 percent today, with 61 percent of Democrats and 40 percent of Republicans prepared to roll up a sleeve.

Misinformation and anti-vaccination talking points that cast doubt on the entire scientific method have been applied to this virus, said Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist who studies infection and immunity at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. That misinformation has compromised many people’s understanding that science is credible, she said, so people are losing faith in fundamental elements of public health.

“People don’t know what to think,” Rasmussen said. “They don’t know if it’s going to be reliable or not. It’s going to make a lot of people who normally do get vaccinated skeptical of the process.”

It should be worrying for Democrats that most voters think Trump is better on the economy than Biden. Also, Trump still enjoys greater enthusiasm than Biden-- 79% of those who say they plan to vote for the Donald are doing so because they support him, while 17% say it’s because they are against Biden. People who plan to vote for Biden are more evenly split in their reasoning, with 49% explicitly supporting him and 46% motivated more by voting against the Donald.

But that polling from Maris wasn't all the bad news Republicans are grappling with this weekend. Yesterday the NY Times focused on how Trump's terrible response to the pandemic is tanking him and GOP senators, focusing on polling from Maine, Arizona and North Carolina.

Alexander Burns and Matt Stevens reported that the Siena poll shows the Democratic candidates up by 8 in Arizona, and 5 each in Maine and North Carolina. It is their contention that the Donald's mismanagement of the pandemic "has imperiled both his own re-election and his party’s majority in the Senate." Trump is losing by 9 points in Arizona, by 17 points in Maine and by 1 point in North Carolina.

The poll, conducted among likely voters, suggests that the most endangered Republican lawmakers have not managed to convince many voters to view them in more favorable terms than the leader of their party, who remains in political peril with less than 50 days remaining in the campaign. Democrats appear well positioned to gain several Senate seats, and most voters say they would prefer to see the White House and Senate controlled by the same party. But it is not yet clear that Democrats are on track to gain a clear majority, and their hopes outside the races tested in the poll largely depend on winning in states Mr. Trump is likely to carry.

...Potentially unsettling for Republicans was the enthusiasm voters expressed for having the same party control the White House and the Senate. Political strategists have long discussed the possibility that if Mr. Trump were to fall irretrievably behind Mr. Biden, Republicans could make the case to voters for electing a G.O.P. Senate as a check on the Democrats’ agenda.

But in all three states, two-thirds of voters or more said it would be better for the country if the White House and Senate were controlled by the same party, including a majority of independent voters.

...The limitations of crossover voting were most on display in Maine, where Ms. Collins is running well ahead of Mr. Trump and collecting significantly more support from independent voters and women. The poll found Ms. Collins drawing support from 42 percent of those voters, while Mr. Trump struggled to win just a third of either group.

Yet Ms. Collins was still five points behind Ms. Gideon, her Democratic challenger. A large share of voters appear determined to punish Ms. Collins for her affiliation with Mr. Trump: Fifty-five percent of voters said they disapproved both of her vote against impeaching Mr. Trump and her vote to approve Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh’s nomination for the Supreme Court.

Half of Maine voters said they approved of Ms. Collins’s vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act, including three in five Democrats and a majority of women. But that gratitude was not translating into enough votes to overcome the Democrats’ overall advantage in the state.

Ginger Cazan, 69, of Swanville, is the kind of Maine voter whom Ms. Collins might once have been able to draw into her column. A self-described moderate Democrat, she said that she personally “would never have an abortion,” but that she was dismayed by Ms. Collins’s vote for Justice Kavanaugh because she believed he would “change the law and take women’s rights away.”

Ms. Cazan said she planned to vote for Mr. Biden and called Mr. Trump a “dictator in waiting”-- which reminded her of another reason she opposed her Republican senator: Ms. Collins, she recalled, “did not impeach Trump when she had the chance.”

Mr. Trump’s disadvantage in Maine was so severe that it was not clear he would even carry the state’s Republican-leaning Second Congressional District. The state splits its Electoral College votes by district, and four years ago Mr. Trump picked up a single elector from the more conservative of Maine’s two seats. But the poll showed Mr. Biden with a nominal lead of two percentage points in that district.

Mr. Trump was not without relative strengths. In North Carolina, most voters saw him as better suited than Mr. Biden to manage the economy, and by slim margins preferred him on matters of national security and public order. Mr. Trump enjoyed a two-point advantage on the economy in Arizona and was even with Mr. Biden on national security, even as he trailed his challenger over all. But Mr. Biden led on law and order in Arizona, and on every issue tested in Maine.

There was no evidence that the president had managed to shift the overall shape of the race in his direction, despite weeks of efforts to redirect voters’ attention to the protests and occasional violence in the Midwest and, more recently, his demand that Mr. Biden unveil a list of people he would consider appointing to the Supreme Court.

That last issue does not look like a winning one for Mr. Trump. On the question of which candidate would do a better job of choosing Supreme Court justices, voters in all three states favored Mr. Biden, by varying margins.

And, of course, it's not just in the Senate where the GOP is in trouble because of Trump's toxicity. Virginia's 5th congressional district-- most of Southside but through central Virginia and into the exurbs of DC-- has a PVI of R+6. Trump beat Hillary there 53.4% to 42.3% and Obama lost both times he ran. The seat was open in 2018 and Republican Denver Riggleman beat progressive Democrat Leslie Cockburn 53.3% to 46.7%. (Notice Riggleman did the same as Trump and despite negativity from the DCCC, Cockburn 4.4 points better than Hillary. And yet... yesterday Cook moved their forecast for the district to toss-up from "leans Republican."

Right-wing crackpot Bob Good beat Riggleman, who was also very right-wing, in the very bitter GOP primary and he's having a problem uniting his party. Meanwhile the Democrats picked what Dave Wasserman labeled "perhaps their most ideal House candidate anywhere: Cameron Webb, a telegenic 37-year-old physician who works at UVA's School of Medicine." Webb, for better or worse, is a very conservative Democrat from the Republican wing of the party, backed by both the Blue Dogs and the New Dems, so not really worth getting too excited about. Wasserman (who is very excited):

Good's biggest problem might be money. By the end of June, Good had raised just $259,000 for the cycle, while Webb had raised $1.3 million and is on pace to raise $5 million total for the cycle. Sensing a mismatch-- and real danger-- the NRCC went on air with coordinated ads in early September to try to bail Good out. The ads warn voters to "look past the smooth presentation" and that Webb would "defund the police."

But Webb perfectly anticipated the attack, immediately responding with an ad accusing Good of "lying" about him wanting to defund the police and then featuring a multi-racial group of beefy retired county sheriffs endorsing his campaign.

The biggest challenge for Webb may be turnout in Charlottesville. Although in-person classes at UVA began on September 8, it's not clear how many students will be on grounds in November and how the pandemic will limit efforts to register them to vote in the 5th CD. The district is extremely polarized, and Webb will likely need at least a 35,000 vote margin out of Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County to win.

This wasn't originally a seat Republicans thought they'd have to worry about. But the combination of GOP disunity, an exceptional Democratic candidate and a big fundraising disparity mean they'll need to scramble to avert a disaster. Trump will almost certainly win the district, but private polling taken by both parties suggests Webb's ads have broken through. The race moves from Lean Republican to the Toss Up column.