The GOP Response To The Pandemic Will Kill Republican Chances Up And Down The Ballot

"Fargo" Revisited by Nancy Ohanian

Ipsos has a new poll out that they took for Axios. It has doom for the GOP written all over it. Despite Trump's protestations that it's all a hoax to get him, 58% of Americans now say they personally know someone who has tested positive and a growing 22% say they know someone who has died. As for trusting candidates information about the pandemic, 46% say Biden is believable while just 31%-- almost entirely partisan Republicans-- say Trump's information is trustworthy, a number low enough in itself to predict an election loss in November. 51% of Americans say they do not trust Trump at all and another 18% say they don't trust him much-- that's 69% who say the president can't be believed on an existentially important issue that will drive election results.

The key take-away: "most believe the federal government is making our country’s coronavirus recovery worse." The key here is that while 74% of Republicans and just 19% of Democrats think the federal government is making the country’s recovery from the pandemic better-- typical partisan interpretations-- independents have lost faith in Trump's regime to handle the pandemic. Only 32% of independent voters think the federal government is handling the pandemic appropriately. If that number holds or-- just as likely-- gets worse into October and November it is enough to hand the GOP big losses in all the swing states, including Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, Iowa, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire, Nevada, Minnesota, Virginia and even if it isn't enough to flip the entire state of Texas in the presidential race, it is certainly enough to flip as many as 8 House districts where there are enough Democrats and independents to determine outcomes: TX-02 (R+11), TX-10 (R+9), TX-21 (R+10), TX-22 (R+10), TX-23 (R+1), TX-24 (R+9), TX-25 (R+11) and TX-31 (R+10).

In the furious battle for control of the Texas state House, the top 3 most flippable seats for the Democrats show incredible polling shifts in a blue direction. One, where Trump beat Hillary 52-43% in 2016, now shows Biden ahead of Trump 54-42%!

Similarly, in Florida, Democrats have a shot at flipping 6 congressional seats, flipping the state Senate and challenging Republican iron-clad dominance in the state House. In Congress the congressional districts where disgruntled independents could oust the GOP are FL-03 (R+9), FL-06 (R+7), FL-15 (R+6), FL-16 (R+7), FL-18 (R+5) and FL-19 (R+13). [NOTE: FL-25 (R+4) would have been the easiest to flip by the Florida Democratic Party and the DCCC conspired to make sure GOP incumbent Mario Diaz-Balart would have no opponent. That's who the DCCC and the Florida Democratic Party-- not as bad as the GOP, but almost-- are.]

Adam Christensen won the Democratic primary in FL-03 and is now running a more activist campaign in north-central Florida than anyone remembers ever seeing before. He told me that in his district "independents make almost around a third of the total voters. In the previous years they have voted primarily for the Republican incumbent (Ted Yoho). This year is different. The pandemic is hitting everyone hard. Even before it hit, we had two of the poorest counties in all of Florida within our congressional district. Union county’s average income was $14,000 a year (before the virus). Now people even in our richest neighborhoods are doing worse than they did in 2008. The biggest thing on everyone’s mind is survival, paying the bills, keeping their homes. They have completely lost faith, not only in the Republican party but, in many cases, with government in general. There is an anger building up unlike any we have ever seen in our lifetimes. It’s the Occupy + Tea Party movements all at once."

Adam continued, explaining that "Proposing actual solutions to get everyone out of the mess we are in is how you will win elections in Florida, not by talking about how one party screwed everything up. In fact, before the pandemic the reason so many people were hurting was because of the corporate wings of both parties. Both parties decided to get rid of Glass Steagall, both decided price fixing in the pharmaceutical industry was ok. Both parties decided credit card interest rates could be allowed kill the middle class. When it comes to being against the working class, both parties are to blame for the situation we found ourselves in right before the pandemic. The pandemic only exasperated what was going on before. The Republican party is dying; it’s getting wiped out. But that isn’t enough to win here or change anything. What wins, in a red district like mine is connecting emotionally and winning people over by showing them you will fight for them as hard as you will fight for yourself. At at the end of the day, it’s a whole lot easier to convince people that you actually know what they are going through when you are going through the same thing yourself. The pandemic is killing Republican chances up and down the ballot simply because working people are standing up for themselves because they are sick of being taken advantage of."

Dr. Cindy Banyai is the Democratic candidate running for the open seat to represent Florida's open 19th congressional district (hard hit Fort Myers and Naples). "Donald Trump," she told us, "has lied hundreds of thousands of times-- no one can believe him! This has cost American lives during the COVID-19 pandemic and prolonged our economic crisis, which has especially hurt families and small businesses. My opponent is hitching his wagon to Trump, so we can expect more lies and failed policy if he were elected. Independents and moderate Republicans across southwest Florida are craving a functioning government and leadership they can trust, which is what I’m offering." What Trump and his puppet governor, Rick DeSantis and her opponent, Byron Donalds are offering is an increase in the over 500 COVID-deaths in Lee and Collier counties and the 30,300 cases, 29,683 of which are active cases.

"Over 180,000 people have died, millions of people have contracted Coronavirus, and many millions more have lost their jobs, because our elected officials have failed us. People in this district want their government to provide relief to the families and businesses affected by Covid. They want our elected officials to address this public health crisis, so that we can get the virus under control and try to return to some sense of normalcy," said Alan Cohn, candidate for Florida's 15th Congressional District. "That is my number one priority and in Congress I'm going to do everything I can to work toward that end. It's an absolute shame that my opponent wants to do the opposite-- even going as far comparing mask mandates to Japanese internment camps."

Bob Lynch is running for the state House in a Miami-Dade swing district occupied by GOP big shot Daniel Perez. Lynch told us that in theory, the disastrous performance by the Florida GOP should be a boon for all Democratic candidates but added that "In practice, it has proved to be a lot more difficult. Local races are often decided solely on name recognition and are often left blank by voters who don’t have enough information. My opponent spent $500,000 on his primary alone and is a well known GOP hack. You would think that given the pandemic response and unemployment system debacle the Florida Dems would have been ready to capitalize on this opportunity to peel independents and moderate Republicans away by running candidates in every district, but this wasn’t the case. It took groups such as 90 for 90, led by Dr. Fergie Reid Jr. and the Florida Democratic Environmental Caucus, led by Dr. Janelle Christensen to come through at the last minute to recruit candidates to contest all but one state House and senate racea in Florida. This was done much to the chagrin and even direct opposition of Democratic Party officials. Part of my district falls in FL-25, I should be campaigning side by side with a Democrat running for Congress, but the race was left unopposed in the most important election of our lifetimes. My race was going to go unopposed until I was recruited. I come from the financial world and we always like a nice return on investment for a small capital outlay. Not fully supporting local candidates as the situation in Florida rapidly deteriorates is leaving free money on the table. I’m confident some of my fellow candidates will win just due to the GOP backlash. If everyone was on board with flipping Florida blue and getting 29 electoral college votes for Joe Biden, candidates like myself should win."

And what's true for Texas and Florida, is true in Republican-held districts all over the country. Iowa and Nebraska, for example, have been extremely hard-hit by COVID and the states' governors-- Kim Reynolds and Pete Ricketts-- and GOP-controlled state legislatures have made matters much, much worse by relying on their right-wing ideologies rather than on science and sound public health requisites. Nebraska reported 241 more new cases yesterday, bringing the state total to 34,287-- a ghastly 17,725 cases per million Nebraskans. There have been over 400 COVID-deaths and the GOP is still badly mishandling the pandemic response. Polling is showing that arch Trump enabler Donald Bacon is on the verge of losing his seat to Omaha Democrat Kara Eastman. "Don Bacon," Kara told us, "continues to support pharma and insurance profits over people and public safety. Bacon voted 'hell yes' to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, voted to support the lawsuit against the ACA, supported the 2017 tax scam, opposed Medicaid expansion in Nebraska, and voted NO for the HEROES Act and HR 3. The only thing Bacon offers is lip service, but Nebraska voters will reject that in favor of a truly equitable economic recovery that expands health care access for all people in the 2nd Congressional District."