Over 7 Million Covid Cases In The U.S. And Over 200,000 Deaths-- But Trump Insists He Get An A+ For His Handling Of The Pandemic

 

Trump chit-chatted with the ass-lickers on Fox & Friends Monday morning. At the time he was on the phone 204,126 Americans had been reported dead of COVID-19. Still he rated his handling of the pandemic-- panned all over the world as the worst of any national leader (other than perhaps, Benjamin Netanyahu)-- an A+. "We’ve done a phenomenal job, not just a good job, a phenomenal job, other than public relations, but that’s because I have fake news."

Just before Trump began amusing the Fox News audience with his banalities, America slipped over the 7 million cases mark. By the time he was done speaking the U.S. national caseload was 7,005,893-- which is 21,166 cases per million Americans. Although Netanyahu's Israel has nearly as bad a record-- 21,138 cases per million Israelis-- not a single European country is in the Trump ballpark. These are the 10 worst-hit of the western European countries:

• Spain- 14,101 cases per million residents
• Belgium- 8,818 cases per million residents
• Sweden- 8,725 cases per million residents
• France- 6,933 cases per million residents
• Portugal- 6,791 cases per million residents
• Ireland- 6,653 cases per million residents
• Switzerland- 5,811 cases per million residents
• U.K.- 5,801 cases per million residents
• Netherlands- 5,600 cases per million residents
• Italy- 4,933 cases per million residents

These are all tragic numbers-- but like nothing when you compare them to what the Trumpist governor have done to their states with their partisan, ideological and anti-Science approach to the catastrophe:

• Ron DeSantis (R-FL)- 31,835 cases per million residents
• Tate Reeves (R-MS)- 31,371 cases per million residents
• Kay Ivey (R-AL)- 29,565 cases per million residents
• Doug Ducey (R-AZ)- 29,403 cases per million residents
• Brian Kemp (R-GA)- 28,835 cases per million residents
• Bill Lee (R-TN)- 26,872 cases per million residents
• Henry McMaster (R-SC)- 26,746 cases per million residents
• Kim Reynolds (R-IA)- 25,528 cases per million residents
• Asa Hutchinson (R-AR)- 25,092 cases per million residents
• Greg Abbott (R-TX)- 25,017 cases per million residents

In 2016, North Dakota was one of the most politically rancid states in America-- only West Virginia, Wyoming and Oklahoma were more welcoming to Trump's fascist and racist campaign messaging. This cycle, North Dakotans are once again ready to give Trump their overwhelming support-- if they're still alive on November 3. Yesterday, Newsweek reported that this extremely right-wing state, one of the state's with a population living in complete COVID-denialism and where there has never been any kind of mask mandate has a raging pandemic problem. "A third of North Dakota's total confirmed coronavirus cases have been recorded in the last three weeks, with almost 6,000 cases being reported since the start of September." The state has the highest rate of infection in the country. "In North Dakota, the largest proportion of new cases during the current phase of the pandemic have been people aged between 20 and 29, who have a lower mortality rate than higher-risk groups." The crackpot Trumpist governor, Doug Burgum, is still rejecting the idea of a mask mandate.

Epidemiologically, the virus knows no racial or class distinctions, but in reality, the pandemic has been much harder on poor people than on wealthy people. People of color have suffered inordinately. Yesterday, though the Wall Street Journal ran a report by AnnaMaria Andriotis, Covid Upends Middle Class Family Finances. "Millions of Americans have lost jobs during a pandemic that kept restaurants, shops and public institutions closed for months and hit the travel industry hard," wrote Andriotis. "While lower-wage workers have borne much of the brunt, the crisis is wreaking a particular kind of havoc on the debt-laden middle class. Debt didn’t present a major problem before the coronavirus. The job market was booming and median household incomes were rising, allowing families to keep up with payments."

American families with nonhousing debt making over $98,018 a year in pre-tax income owed an average of nearly $92,000 of such debt in 2016. That’s up 32% from 2004, adjusted for inflation, according to an analysis of Federal Reserve data by the Employee Benefit Research Institute, a nonpartisan nonprofit research group.

Average nonhousing debt owed by families making $52,655 to $98,018 rose about 33% over the 12 years to $33,378.

Before the pandemic, Americans had amassed $4.2 trillion in consumer debt, excluding mortgages, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a record even when adjusting for inflation. Housing debt added an additional $10 trillion to the tally.

The coronavirus has spared few industries and expanded unemployment benefits designed to replace the average American income didn’t cover all the lost pay of higher-earning workers, especially in or near expensive cities. The extra $600 weekly payments expired in July, putting them even further behind.

“What I see happening here is a core assault on successful college-educated families, which are the new breed of middle-class American families,” said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. “There’s a professional workforce that’s getting slammed.”

Roughly six months into the pandemic, many lenders that let borrowers skip monthly payments now expect to get paid again. They have set aside billions of dollars to cover potential losses on soured consumer loans-- an acknowledgment that America’s decadelong debt binge has come to an end.

Credit-card debt has fallen in recent months. But with a big chunk of government assistance gone, Congress is still haggling over a second round of coronavirus relief. President Trump signed an executive order in August to provide an extra $300 a week in federal unemployment benefits. The payments haven’t been distributed by every state yet, and Democrats say the president’s order violated congressional-spending authority.

White-collar pain

Unemployment has fallen from its pandemic peak of near 15%, but the rate stood at 8.4% in August, up from 3.5% in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Unemployment for the arts, design, media, sports and entertainment was 12.7% in August, more than triple its year-earlier level. In education, it more than doubled to 10.2%. Sales and office unemployment was 7.8% in August, up from 3.8% in August 2019.

Architects and engineers, who earn $1,826 in average weekly pretax income, well above the $1,389 average among full-time wage and salaried workers, have seen unemployment rise to 3.7% from 0.8% a year earlier. Unemployment for computer and math occupations, which earn $1,919 a week on average, more than tripled to 4.6%.

It could get worse. “The pain so far in the economy has largely been at the lower end of the pay scale,” said Discover Financial Services Chief Executive Roger Hochschild, adding that many of “the white-collar layoffs are still to come.”

...By some measures, the outlook for higher-earning workers appears worse than during the 2008 financial crisis. In August, about 3.3 million people age 25 and over with bachelor’s degrees or higher were unemployed, up from 1.2 million in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. During the last downturn, that number peaked at about 2.2 million.

Postings for jobs with salaries over $100,000 were down 19% in August from April, while postings for all other salary categories increased, according to job-search site ZipRecruiter Inc.

American Airlines Group Inc. and United Airlines Holdings Inc. have outlined plans to furlough or lay off thousands of employees on Oct. 1, when federal aid expires, unless they receive more government assistance. Business-software company Salesforce.com Inc. is eliminating 1,000 jobs; a spokeswoman said the company is also adding 4,000 jobs over the next six months.

MGM Resorts International and Stanley Black & Decker Inc. notified some furloughed employees they would be laid off. The companies said they have brought back, or expect to bring back, many of these employees.

America’s biggest banks have indicated they are preparing for a protracted downturn to hurt businesses in industries that weren’t immediately affected by shutdowns.

JPMorgan Chase & Co. says it expects the U.S. to add roughly 5.4 million jobs in the third and fourth quarters. That would leave the U.S. economy with about 9.2 million fewer jobs since February.

“The pandemic has a grip on the economy,” Citigroup Inc. CEO Michael Corbat said when the bank reported second-quarter earnings in July, “and it doesn’t seem likely to loosen until vaccines are widely available.” This month, the bank said many customers that previously enrolled in deferment programs are making payments.

...Many people who have jobs are struggling with pay cuts. As of August, 17 million workers were getting paid less due to the pandemic, said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics. Some 9.5 million took pay cuts; the remaining 7.5 million are working fewer hours, he said.

BONUS: How we survive the winter

Over the weekend, James Hamblin wrote that "It is now widely accepted among experts that the United States is primed for a surge in cases at a uniquely perilous moment in our national history." Fauci is warning Americans we must proactively cut the rate of infection by 75%. Trump is campaigning on "just the opposite message. He has promised that normalcy and American greatness are just around the corner. He has touted dubious treatments and said at least 34 times that the virus will disappear. This disinformation is nearing a crescendo now that the election looms: Trump has been teasing a vaccine that could be available within weeks. The cold reality is that we should plan for a winter in which vaccination is not part of our lives. Three vaccine candidates are currently in Phase 3 clinical trials in the U.S., and the trials’ results may arrive as early as November. But even if they do-- and even if they look perfect-- it would not mean that a vaccine would be widely available. On Wednesday, Redfield said in a congressional hearing that a vaccine was unlikely to be widely available until summer of next year, if not later. Fauci may be even less optimistic. He told my colleague Peter Nicholas that if the clinical trials go well, it could mean a few million doses could be available by early 2021. By the time we got to 50 million to 100 million doses, he estimated, 'you’re going to be well into 2021.' If each person needs two doses, as many experts expect, that would be enough to vaccinate roughly 11 percent of the population. The virus is here to stay. At best, it would fade away gradually, but that would happen after, not before, the winter. The sooner we can accept this, the more we can focus on minimizing the losses of the bleak and grisly coming months. Some of our fate is now inevitable, but much is not. There are still basic things we can do to survive." Hamblin suggests 5:

Accept Reality

Do not waste your time and emotional energy planning around an imminent game-changing injection or pill in the coming months. A pandemic is not a problem that will be fixed in one move, by any single medication or a sudden vaccine. Instead, the way forward involves small, imperfect preventive measures that can accumulate into very effective interventions. Groups of practices that minimize the spread of disease are sometimes known as prevention bundles. Our COVID-19 bundle includes important drugs, such as dexamethasone and remdesivir, which seem to help certain patients in specific situations. It also involves behaviors, too, such as distancing and masking. “Any action you take has the potential for numerous secondary and tangential benefits,” [chief of the infectious-disease division at the State University of New York Upstate Stephen] Thomas said.

A vaccine will be part of our bundles, hopefully before too long. But it will not instantly eliminate the need for everything else. If we can accept that masks will be a part of our lives indefinitely, we can focus on improving their effectiveness and making them less annoying to wear, Yale’s Ko said. “And it’s not just the design of masks themselves; we can come up with more innovative ways to promote face-mask use.” For one thing, they could be made more ubiquitous by employers and state agencies. Governments could even, as Luxembourg’s did, send masks to everyone by mail.

Plan for More Shutdowns

America’s “reopening” process is going to be less an upward line toward normalcy and more a jagged roller coaster toward some new way of life. In July, California ordered businesses and churches in some counties to again halt indoor activities after the state saw a rise in positive tests and admissions to intensive-care units. In August, the University of North Carolina sent students home barely a week after they had arrived. These sorts of moves shock the system if it relies on uninterrupted forward progress. Everyone will be better prepared if we plan for schools to close and for cities and businesses to shut back down, even while we hope they won’t have to.

“Many workplaces that have reopened don’t have clear guidelines as to when they will consider shutting back down or reducing capacity in buildings,” Kissler told me. Every place that’s reopening should assume that it might have to navigate further closures. “Having clear triggers for when and how to pull back would help us avoid what happened this spring, where everything shut down in a week,” Kissler said. “It was utter chaos. I’m afraid that scenario will play out again. We have the opportunity to avoid that.”

Live Like You’re Contagious

Even if you’ve had the virus, plan to spend the winter living as though you are constantly contagious. This primarily means paying attention to where you are and what’s coming out of your mouth. The liquid particles we spew can be generated simply by breathing, but far more by speaking, shouting, singing, coughing, and sneezing. While we cannot stop doing all of these things, every effort at minimizing unnecessary contributions of virus to the air around others helps.

Along with masking and distancing, time itself can effectively be another tool in our bundles. It’s not just the distance from another person that determines transmission; it’s also the duration. A shorter interaction is safer than a longer one because the window for the virus to enter your airways is narrower. Any respiratory virus is more likely to cause disease if you inhale higher doses of it. If you do find yourself in high-risk scenarios, at least don’t linger. Fredrick Sherman, a professor at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, recommends that if someone near you coughs or sneezes, “immediately exhale to avoid inhaling droplets or aerosols. Purse your lips to make the exhaling last longer. Turn your head fully away from the person and begin walking.”

Even as it gets colder, continue to socialize and exercise outdoors when possible-- even if it’s initially less pleasant than being inside. It’s worth thinking about sweaters, hats, and coats as protective measures akin to masks. During the holidays, don’t plan gatherings in places where you can’t be outdoors and widely spaced. This may mean postponing or canceling long-standing traditions. For a lot of people, that will be difficult and sad. For some, it will be a welcome relief. In either case, it’s better than sending a family member to the ICU.

Build for the Pandemic

This is an overdue opportunity to create and upgrade to permanently pandemic-resistant cities, businesses, schools, and homes. Now is the moment to build the infrastructure to keep workers safe, especially those deemed essential. Poor indoor air quality, for example, has long been a source of disease. Businesses can minimize spread by making ventilation upgrades permanent, as well as enshrining systems that let people work from home whenever possible. “We should be decreasing the density of indoor spaces as much as possible through telecommuting, shifting work schedules, changing work or school flows to spread people out,” the Center for Health Security’s Inglesby said. Instead of being ordered to take down temporary street dining areas, restaurants might build roofs over them to bear ice and snow, and accommodate space heaters.

Keeping people safe will save us economically: If restaurants, shops, offices, schools, and churches offer only indoor options, then they can expect attendance and business to suffer even further-- either because of legally imposed limits to capacity or because people don’t feel safe going out. Building for pandemics also extends beyond physical infrastructure, to child care for workers, public transit, safe housing and quarantine spaces, and supply chains for everything from masks to air filters to pipette tips. We could make sure that sick people have places to go to seek care, and that they aren’t compelled to spread the virus by basic financial imperatives.

Hunt the Virus

Developing fast and reliable ways to detect the coronavirus will become only more crucial during the winter cold-and-flu season. Symptoms of the flu and other respiratory diseases can be effectively indistinguishable from early and mild symptoms of COVID-19. Natalie Dean, a biostatistician at the University of Florida, told me that testing will be needed to identify real cases and assure others in schools and workplaces that their coughs are not due to COVID-19. Being able to distinguish who among the sniffling masses truly needs to quarantine for two weeks will be vital to keeping essential workers safe and present.

The flu vaccine will be useful in helping to prevent a disease that can look very similar to COVID-19. But returns to normalcy in the coming year will depend on advancements in testing for the coronavirus itself. As of now, PCR tests, the most widely used forms of diagnostic testing, are not suited for efficient, massive-scale screening. They cannot identify every infection reliably enough, and are too resource-intensive to use as a comprehensive surveillance system. Some experts hope that November will be a watershed month for new ways of testing, as numerous novel point-of-care tests should have come to market by then. These will theoretically allow for on-premises testing at schools, offices, and polling stations-- with results obtained in minutes. There are already concerns about the accuracy of such tests, but if they work well, they would be the most effective tool in our bundle. Results would ideally be coordinated nationally, with real-time tracking, to inform precise and minimal shutdowns.

...Throughout the pandemic, America’s most significant barrier to this progress has been Donald Trump. Since February, he has depicted his response to the virus as a success by minimizing the threat. He has exaggerated and lied about treatment options, about the availability of tests, and about the importance of preventive measures such as masks. This week, after Redfield testified that a vaccine would not be widely available until mid-to-late 2021, Trump contradicted him and said Redfield was “confused.”

Trump’s insistence that normalcy is on the horizon trades long-term safety for short-term solace. Under his administration, the agencies that typically ensure the accuracy and proper usage of medical products like tests and vaccines-- the FDA and the CDC-- have been weakened and politicized. In August, the White House urged a rewrite of CDC guidelines to discourage testing asymptomatic people who have had high-risk exposures to people with COVID-19. This week, the New York Times reported that this happened over the objections of CDC scientists. In the coming months, “direct to consumer” sales of COVID-19 tests are expected to further clutter the information landscape. It will be up to the FDA to ensure that they work. Tests and vaccines will be worthless if the public can’t or simply doesn’t trust them.

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.

Was The Trump Tweet Yesterday A White Flag?

Trump's tweet was hilarious Wednesday morning. I wondered if it gave McConnell heart failure; I'm certain it sent Pelosi into a state of near exultation, if not euphoria. He completely undercut McConnell's already weak bargaining position on the must-pass pandemic relief bill-- telling the Republicans (i.e.- McConnell) to "go for the much higher numbers." It also looks like Trump told Meadows to get a bill done. Right after the tweet, Meadows told the media he feels "optimistic" and that "If the Speaker is willing to stay in, I'm willing to stay in, the Secretary [Mnuchin] is willing to stay in and negotiate."

In May the House passed a $3.4 trillion bill (Heroes Act), which McConnell has refused to even allow to be debated. Instead a joke of a "skinny bill," offering a shameful $650 billion. The Republican bill doesn't give any money to local governments, doesn't do anything about battling COVID-19 and would trigger a Depression. Yesterday, before the tweet, The Atlantic's Derek Thompson suggested the reason Trump, stuck in a Pollyannaish fantasy of his own making," isn't trying to save the economy. Bad economies defeat incumbent presidents and, noted Thompson "The 2020 economy is worse than weak; it is, for many, an outright catastrophe. Look beyond the healthy housing market and the stock market, and you will see a depressed leisure-and-hospitality sector, 8 percent unemployment, and tens of thousands of small businesses on the brink of collapse. The implication seems obvious. President Donald Trump faces an array of obstacles on his path to reelection. But he could do one thing, right away, that would, in all likelihood, immediately improve his odds with almost no downside risk: Call for Congress to open the cash spigot and buoy the lackluster economy on a wave of stimulus. All he has to do is announce his intention to sign a second major economic relief bill-- a CARES Act II, essentially-- and count on Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to muddle through. Such a law would almost certainly improve the financial state of countless families at a time of mass desperation, and just weeks before the election."

Maybe Thompson's article is what spurred Trump's tweet. It wouldn't surprise me. But why hasn't he done so before yesterday's tweet? Thompson reiterated that "With no pressure from the top, Senate Republicans rejected the HEROES Act, the multitrillion-dollar stimulus package that Democrats passed in the House, and countered with a stingy-- or “skinny”-- stimulus that did not include another round of checks for taxpayers or state and local government aid."

On the campaign trail and in his television ads, Trump proclaims that a great and historic economic recovery is afoot. The notion that the economy is sick enough to require a trillion-dollar booster shot is in direct tension with the claim that it’s thriving. So, the theory goes, Trump is unwilling to advocate for stimulus, because he doesn’t want to acknowledge that the economy is broken in the first place.

Trump’s approach to the enfeebled pandemic economy resembles that of a certain cartoon dog sipping coffee in a burning room. It’s the “This Is Fine” style of American politics. Surrounded by evidence of a crisis, Trump seems content to make up promises about a fictionalized economy rather than take action to fix the real thing.

Meanwhile, the people around Trump aren’t urging him to reject this faulty logic. Some of them are simply afraid of objecting to a leader with a taste for punishing his intraparty rivals. But the GOP, as a group, has also convinced itself that more stimulus is unnecessary. Republicans are more dubious about Keynesianism than Democrats, even though they stood by quietly as deficits mounted under Trump before the plague hit. The GOP largely prefers targeted social insurance over the broad-based stimulus of mailing checks to hundreds of millions of American households. They don’t believe that states and local governments need a huge bailout. They’re reluctant to top off unemployment-insurance checks with hundreds of dollars in pandemic bonuses.

The generous interpretation is that Republicans believe the economy will rebound without federal assistance; the critical one is that, just as Trump is delusional about economic realities, the GOP is delusional about economic policy. The Great Recession demonstrated clearly that without emergency support after sharp recessions, state and local governments lay off workers, whose unemployment delays the overall recovery. But the GOP, refusing to learn from the experience of past economic conflagrations, is clasping anachronistic ideas about economics with both hands. In other words: “This Is Fine.”

It would be one thing if the tendency to ignore reality were limited to Washington. But the inability to see reality through the smudge of one’s own ideology is a national affliction. As a general rule, Americans pick sides first; the thinking comes second.

Overall, Americans’ evaluation of the economy these days has very little to do with reality. An analysis by the University of Michigan’s Richard Curtin found that partisan differences in how people perceive the state of the economy has never been higher. In other words, at any given moment, Democrats and Republicans claim to be seeing almost completely opposite countries. Take, for example, a Fox News poll from last week. Two-thirds of Republicans said the economy is “excellent” or “good,” almost the exact same share who approved of Trump’s job performance. Meanwhile, just 16 percent of Democrats said the economy was “excellent” or “good,” also close to the same share who approved of Trump’s job performance.

Meanwhile, a pandemic followed by an unprecedented fast freeze of the face-to-face economy has scarcely updated Americans’-- and, particularly, Republicans’-- views of the world. National approval for Trump’s handling of the economy is not meaningfully different than it was in the summer of 2018 or 2017, even though the economy has gone from extremely strong to severely distressed.

In the past 100 years, economic conditions have determined voters’ political preferences. But today, especially on the right, political preferences shape most voters’ attitudes about the economy. For many, it doesn’t matter if the world is freezing, on fire, or just right. “This is fine,” and it will always be fine, just as long as your team is in power.

I asked Nate McMurray, the union-backed western New York (NY-27) candidate running against billionaire reactionary Chris Jacobs (R) if the state of the economy and the stubborn, systemic Republican Party refusal to pass the pandemic relief package is impacting his own race. "For decades," he told me this morning, "my district has been plagued by out-of-touch Republicans who chase power, abandon the people in pursuit of power, and end up resigning in disgrace. Is it any wonder that NY-27 has one of the worst job markets in the country? To Chris Jacobs, Mitch McConnell, Donald Trump, and any other do-nothing politician that stands in the way of working-class families putting food on the table in the middle of a global pandemic that they lied about: History, and the voting public, will not forget the death and ruin you caused by abandoning the American people. If we don't take a clear stand in support of humanity and our democracy, we will lose both of them. If I were in Congress today I'd be fighting for monthly direct payments to individuals, a free and universally available vaccine, rent, mortgage and student loan forgiveness; a full-blooded bill that actually answers the cries of families like mine that are struggling to survive in Trump's America."

It's Almost Like The GOP Is Committed To Making The Pandemic Worse!

The editorial page of the Wall Street Journal is as far right as the typical Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham show. Not the news coverage, the editorial page. Yesterday, the editors asked about a Trump comeback and noted that Biden wants to make the campaign a referendum on Trump. He’s succeeding with Trump’s help. The story of this election will be how Biden won because he succeeded in not getting in the way of it being a referendum on Señor Trumpanzee. In conservative circle, there is still hope-- despite the polls-- that Trump is "going to stage a comeback, and not become only the fourth incumbent in a century to be denied a second term" but to do that, warns the editors, "he will have to make the race about policy differences and Mr. Biden’s indulgence to the Democratic left." In other words, he has to paint a picture of Biden-- a career-long conservative-- that makes him into a socialist!!!! and a puppet of AOC, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Nancy Pelosi, 4 of the Democratic women the far right media has worked so hard to demonize with only the most modest success outside their own bubble.

The editors admit that "If the race comes down to a character contest, Mr. Trump will lose. This isn’t a repeat of 2016 when Hillary Clinton was almost as disliked as Mr. Trump. Voters may have doubts about Mr. Biden’s capacity, but they don’t dislike him. Americans have also seen Mr. Trump in office for 42 months, and even millions of his supporters dislike the way he conducts himself. This isn’t merely a normative judgment. It’s a political fact as measured in the polls. Mr. Trump’s job approval rating rests at about 43%-44%, and his personal approval is lower. [These jerks need to take off their right-wing blinders; Trump's job approval average is actually 44.2% approval, 53.0% disapproval-- and that is even with averages that include fake GOP polls by Rasmussen and Trafalgar.] He hasn’t been able to sustain his job approval above what it was on Inauguration Day. Unlike Richard Nixon or George W. Bush, who won with pluralities the first time but majorities the next, Mr. Trump has failed to expand his coalition."

Wringing their hands because in reinforcing "the intensity of his core support," the Orange Menace "has shed support in the suburbs, especially among college-educated voters and women. This has been the case in nearly every election since Mr. Trump’s narrow victory in 2016. The Trump GOP is a smaller but more intensely loyal coalition."

Trump’s Labor Day press conference... was intended to play off the strong August jobs report to drive the theme of economic recovery. Mr. Trump started out on message by citing the facts, but soon he was careening from grievance to attack or anything that popped into his head.

• “His [Joe Biden’s] son, “Where is Hunter?”-- Where is Hunter?-- I call him ‘Where is Hunter?’-- walked away with one and a half billion dollars to manage, even though he never did that before.”
• “And Biden is a stupid person. You know that.”
• “I was never a fan of John McCain because he wanted the endless wars, and I didn’t.”
• “They spied on my campaign. And if they were Democrats, they would have been in jail two years ago. They would have been in jail-- literally, if this side were the Democrat side, they would have been in jail two years ago for 50-year terms for treason and other things.”
• “And the dirtiest fight of all is the issuance of 80 million ballots, unrequested. They’re not requested; they’re just sending 80 million ballots all over the country. Eighty million ballots, non-requested. I call them unsolicited ballots. That’s going to be the dirtiest fight of all.”
• “But I watched Kamala’s poll numbers drop from 15 to almost zero, and then drop out even before she ran in Iowa because people didn’t like her, and I understand why. She will never be President-- although I have to be careful, because Obama used to say that about me. So I have to be a little bit careful.”

This tower of babbling is entertaining in its Trumpian way, but his economic point was washed away like an irrelevance. The press barely reported it.

Voters have heard this riffing for three years, and one campaign question is whether there are enough undecided voters who are still listening. The country deserves a debate over policy because Mr. Biden is proposing the most left-wing agenda of any major party candidate in our lifetime. The Democratic strategy is to keep Mr. Trump talking about Donald J. Trump.

And in the midst of a deadly pandemic the Trump regime and it's allies are trying to deny exists-- even if it means killing people-- Trump's raucous campaign style doesn't read well outside of his low-IQ base. Yesterday, Josh Dawsey, Michael Scherer and Annie Linskey, writing for the Washington Post that the morons who support Trump think being anti-mask = being pro-Trump. When an announcer at a recent Trumpanzee rally in an airplane hanger New Hampshire "urged a packed airplane hangar of supporters to don their masks, a cacophonous round of boos erupted, followed by defiance. No matter that the attendees’ chairs were inches apart, their temperatures had not been taken and masks were required by the state." The contrast with Biden's campaign style couldn't be starker. His small, outdoor events are all social-distanced and, unlike Trump's, none his voters are going to be too sick-- or dead-- to vote on election day. "These are more than just competing messages for a country riven by a pandemic less than two months before an election," wrote The Post trio. "The two sides don’t even agree on what constitutes campaigning. And Republicans and Democrats each say their opponents are making a fatal error-- with the Trump campaign attempting to cast life as largely normal, while Biden and his campaign largely stay at home... If Trump is showcasing his brand of defiant individualism, Biden is seeking to demonstrate his rationality and willingness to heed experts. Democrats say Trump is scaring away swing voters alarmed by the pandemic while appealing to a core base that sees public health measures as going too far." What pity!

In North Carolina-- a must-win swing state for Trump-- he was running around campaigning live in Winston-Salem, endangering his supporters and himself and staffers. Dave Plyler, the Republican chairman of the Forsyth County Board of Commissioners, told him to wear a mask in North Carolina, where a second spike is going badly. On Tuesday, when Trump was in his county, the state reported 651 new cases, bringing North Carolina's total caseload to 179,068, or 17,073 cases per million residents. On top of that-- 9 new deaths to mark Trump's visit with a total of 2,937 for the state.

Instead of wearing a mask, Trump decided to use the occasion to mock pandemic restrictions, a popular position among his moron-base, but not with normal people. "But when the president emerged Tuesday evening to address a cheering group of supporters, his face was fully exposed, a likely violation of the state’s coronavirus rules.”

“The same was true of many of the supporters behind his podium, especially those high up in the stands and out of view. And in fact, the whole event appears to have defied restrictions from North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper (D), who has limited outdoor mass gatherings at 50 people under the state’s current phase of reopening."

Two super-spreaders, Donald and Shannon

And, obviously, this Republican rebellion against public health isn't just a problem in North Carolina. In every state with Republicans, this has been a problem, a problem that prolongs and worsens the pandemic. Take California. The minority leader of the state Senate, Trumpist crackpot Shannon Grove of Kern County is supposed to be in quarantine because of her close contacts with another lunatic fringe Republican state senator, Brian Jones, who has COVID. "Instead," reported the Washington Post Grove took the stage on Sunday and spoke at length-- maskless-- to thousands of religionists "packed shoulder-to-shoulder outside the Capitol "and promised the huge church event would have a real impact. But state leaders are warning the event’s impact could actually be a mass coronavirus outbreak. Although Grove’s permit allowed 1,000 people and required social distancing, the California Highway Patrol said three times as many showed up; videos showed virtually no social distancing or masks in the crowd."

If Gavin Newsom had any balls-- he doesn't-- Grove would be sitting in a jail cell right now. California reported 3,409 new cases yesterday, bringing the state's total to 744,895 highest in the nation-- along with 13,835 deaths. There are 18,852 cases per million Californians. Grove's own area is a COVID-shotspot with 30,202 cases across Kern County (6th worst in the state), 16,546 of those cases active (4th worst in the state). And up in Sacramento County, where Grove was doing her super-spreader event on Sunday there were 114 new cases reported, bringing the county's total to 19,460.

And if conservative politicians won't mislead you about the pandemic, there's a good chance your own brain will. That's what Lia Kvatum reported for the Washington Post yesterday. "More than six months into a pandemic in the United States," she wrote, "we know a few things. We know that the novel coronavirus can be fatal, that it's passed via respiratory droplets, that masks and social distancing help stop its spread. And yet many Americans, weary of lockdowns, seem determined to return to social gatherings and other "normal" activities, even though experts have warned against this. The question is, why? Why do some take the threat of the virus more seriously than others? Your risk of contracting covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, depends on a number of variables: where you live, how old you are, whether you work indoors or out, whether you have high blood pressure or other so-called co-morbidities, how many people in your community have been tested, and so on. But ultimately, the difficulty of grasping the threat of this virus may have less to do with data and more to do with fundamentals: Humans are not that good at it." And especially not if you were stupid enough to buy into Trump's bullshit from the beginning. Those are really the brains in trouble.

Howard Kunreuther, co-director of the Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the University of Pennsylvania, studies why people tend to be poor judges of whether they will experience a natural disaster and the policy implications of that. In the 2017 book The Ostrich Paradox: Why We Underprepare for Disasters, which he co-wrote, he explains that people often don’t like to think too far in the future; they also misunderstand threats and are influenced by those around them. Kunreuther sees parallels between the way people downplay the threat of natural disasters and the way they dismiss the threat of the coronavirus.

According to scientists, risk assessment involves two basic types of thinking: intuitive and deliberative. The intuitive kind is “thinking without thinking,” explains Ralf Schmälzle, a biological psychologist at Michigan State University, and “is rooted in the evolutionary need to survive.” By contrast, deliberative thinking, he says, is “mostly conscious” and “effortful ... whereby one reflects about reasons and weighs available evidence, perhaps comparable to comparing options in a chess game and deciding which move is best.”

...In the instance of a threat like the coronavirus, information without feeling is largely ineffective. “Knowledge alone is not enough to motivate,” explains Schmälzle. So, even though we hear that hundreds of thousands have died of covid-19, that risk may feel distant if we don’t know anyone who has had it. Our unwillingness to change our minds based on information alone can lead in the opposite direction, too: Many humans remain fearful of flying, even though statistically it’s incredibly safe.

...Our judgments are also shaped by those around us. “The communities that we are a part of play a huge role in how we interpret information. Oftentimes, the things that we believe connect us to certain communities,” says Meghan Moran, an associate professor of health, behavior and society at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “We are more likely to believe things that fit in with our existing worldview or value system, so information that does that becomes more appealing.” This can contribute to a belief in conspiracy theories or a disdain for expert advice.

Scientists can do only so much to persuade us, and it doesn’t help that they’re frequently hesitant to speak in definitive terms. Schmälzle, for instance, is excited by the findings from his 2013 study but also cautioned against reading too much into them because of the small sample size and other limitations. This is how evidence-based science works. With a new threat like covid, experts’ understanding is rapidly evolving, and so are their recommendations. Take masks. In February, before widespread lockdowns, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said healthy people didn’t need to wear them in public. By April, as multiple studies began to show people can spread the virus without knowing they have it, the CDC reversed that recommendation, angering some and confusing many.

“In general, folks who are not scientists are seeking certainties, so they want to know what’s going to happen, and it will always be that way,” Moran says. “I think we get into trouble when we rely on terms and phrases that are a little more ambiguous than what the public is comfortable with hearing. It can be misinterpreted that scientists don’t know what they are doing. It can result in a lack of trust when it’s not conveyed in a way that’s clear to the public.”

So, what’s the solution? There are no magic bullets. But until there is a vaccine, perhaps recognizing our inherent cognitive limitations is one more way to protect ourselves.

The White Working Class Is Not Sold On Biden, But Will It Abandon Trump In The COVID-Election?

Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg recently watched a series of focus groups of white working class voters in rural Wisconsin, the Mahoning Valley region in Ohio, northern Maine and suburban Macomb County, Michigan, all swing areas where Trump did well. Vote-rich Macomb County, for example, gave Trump a 53.6-42.1% victory over Hillary in 2016, after going for Obama both times he ran. Trump won the northern Maine congressional district, which also voted for Obama twice, by an astounding 10 points-- 51.4% to 41.1%. In 2018 though, the district ousted its Republican congressman and elected, Jared Golden, a Democratic state legislator in his place.

Greenberg wrote that what he watched told him that "the heartbreaking health care crisis that is ravaging working-class and rural communities threatens to cut short Donald Trump’s political career, and demands a forceful response from opposition Democrats. It will teach big lessons about how to reach working people who are struggling, regardless of color." He shared his findings with the American Prospect, noting that "In 2016, a white working-class revolt enabled Trump to win [working class] men by an unimaginable 48 points and women by 27. But disillusionment was real in the midterms: The Republican House margin dropped 13 points across the white working class. In the new poll, Trump lost a further 6 points with white working-class women, where Biden only trailed Trump by 8 points (52 to 44 percent). While Trump has been throwing a lot of red meat to his base, white working-class men have not been dislodged from their trajectory, as Trump’s margin eroded another 4 points."

These are mostly low-wage families, many with children raised by a single parent. They are consumed with rising opioid deaths and disabilities and a deadly expensive health care system. That was a big part of why they voted for Donald Trump in 2016: so he could end Obamacare and its costly mandate, and deliver affordable health insurance for all. When he failed to do so, many voted against the Republicans in the midterms.

But the pandemic was the perfect storm. I have never seen such a poignant discussion of the health and disability problems facing families and their children, the risks they faced at work, and the prospect of even higher health care and prescription drug costs. The final straw was a president who battled not for the “forgotten Americans,” but for himself, the top one percent, and the biggest, greediest companies.

That is why most in the Zoom focus groups pulled back from President Trump. Three-quarters of these voters supported Trump in 2016, but less than half planned to vote for him now. Even those who still supported him did not push back when other participants expressed anger with his doing nothing about health care, fostering hatred and racism, dividing the country, siding with the upper classes, and having no plan for COVID-19. This is a life-and-death issue for them, as much as nearly any other group in American society.

The same voters were still very cautious about Joe Biden, who seemed old and not very strong, but most importantly offered the prospect of only minor changes to the health care system and seemed unlikely to challenge the power of the top one percent. Like lots of other working people, they are looking for a leader who will make big changes in health care, fight for working people over big business, and unite the country to defeat the current economic and public-health crisis.

Working-class anger with the establishment after the financial crisis of 2008 ran deep into the Democratic base of Blacks, Hispanics, unmarried women, and millennials, too. Many were not initially enthusiastic about the Affordable Care Act, and in election after election failed to rally fully for Democratic candidates until the 2018 midterms, when Democrats ran on “health care, health care, health care!” The pandemic may allow progressives to battle for working people, regardless of color.

In today's working-class and rural communities, health care is everything. In introductory remarks, participants in the focus groups went right to the personal health care crises they were facing every day.

“My wife is disabled,” said one man from Wisconsin. “My daughter has 30 percent immune system left so she’s bouncing around from doctor to doctor and the wife says don’t bring [the pandemic] home.” Another Wisconsin man spoke of his terminally ill seven-year-old son. A woman in Maine explained how she nearly bled to death and had a $24,000 medical bill “on my credit report for who knows how long.” One woman from Ohio had two kids with autism, and another had a grandson with allergies, requiring access to a lifesaving EpiPen. “I haven’t been able to get him one for the last three years, I can’t afford it... my insurance won’t cover it,” the woman said. Prices have skyrocketed for EpiPens and remain stubbornly high.

As I was observing the Zoom group, I initially wondered whether the focus group recruiter had used some specialized list to find the participants. But then I checked the census data on disabilities.

Across the country, 12.6 percent of the population has disabilities, rising to 15.1 percent in rural areas. Black and Native American populations are more likely to have disabilities than their white counterparts. The rate is over a quarter for those 65 to 74 years old and half of those over 75 years-- all groups that are overrepresented in these rural areas. And structural racism has played a powerful role here: 20 percent of Blacks with disabilities were employed at the beginning of this year, compared to 30 percent of whites and Hispanics with disabilities.

Then I looked at census data for the congressional districts where these sessions were being held. It was a new window into America in the pandemic. In suburban Macomb County, the disability rate looks like the rural areas, with 14 percent of both whites and Blacks disabled. In northern Maine, the numbers show one in five with disabilities, slightly more for whites. In Ohio’s Sixth Congressional District, both one in five whites and Blacks are disabled. And seniors in these areas are even more disabled than other rural Americans.



TRUMP KNEW IN FEBRUARY-- AND LIED TO THE PUBLIC


So COVID violently brought together the personal health crises of these people and the failed and corrupted government response, breaking their emotional bond with Trump.

Just throw out the words “health care,” and people relayed a train of horrors: a “$16,000 deductible,” employers throwing them off health insurance, “ridiculous” premiums, a $400 bill for their asthma medicine paid for out of pocket. They spoke of the frustrations of making too much money to be eligible for Medicaid but not enough to stay in the solid middle class. They explained how people avoid treatment because they can’t pay the associated costs. “The way we deliver health care is just unbelievable,” said one woman from Michigan, “the amount of waste and how much it costs to let people go bankrupt to pay for medical bills.”

Most of the respondents live on the edge in a virtual “minimum wage” economy, where companies don’t care about their employees and look just to enrich themselves. “You’re just a number now,” said one Ohio woman. They fight for every dime, as they are being overwhelmed by a health care crisis that they recognize Donald Trump has failed to fix. And importantly, for working families outside poverty, the health care reforms passed by the Democrats-- the Affordable Care Act and insurance on the health care exchanges-- just were not much help.

Discussion of the Affordable Care Act did not sound ideological, as they talked about their direct experience with insurance on the exchanges, which in the words of one woman “costs a lot of money and doesn’t pay for much of anything.” The health care system is failing them, and they want someone to fix it. And Joe Biden’s rhetoric has not been very reassuring that he would make big changes. “He’s been vague on health care,” one woman from Wisconsin said. “I want to know the specifics of what he’ll do to make it better.”

These working-class and rural swing voters voted overwhelmingly for Trump, but their response to him is now profoundly shaped by what has happened in the COVID-19 crisis. They think he failed to take the virus seriously and has just made a mess of it. They think he is failing at the most important issue for them.

What was striking is how the usual Trump deflect-and-blame strategy no longer works with these swing voters. “It seems like a lot of the stuff he’s saying could be proven wrong,” said one man from Wisconsin. “He just won’t admit where things are, he’s out of touch with reality,” said another woman. “It’s just embarrassing to have a country with the highest COVID cases, highest COVID deaths,” said a man in Michigan. “We’re supposed to be the leader in the world and we completely fumbled the ball on this.”

Respondents despaired about the lack of a national plan of action, with everyone “just left on their own.” Meanwhile, there was dismay that the president gave more care to his family’s businesses than the rest of the nation. One woman theorized that he didn’t shut down domestic travel “because he owns hotels.” These participants are paying a lot of attention to the position of Trump’s family in the administration and how the bailouts and loans are benefiting his family business, his cronies, and the top one percent.

At the same time, they are on a financial knife’s edge, worried about being one bad break away from being homeless. The focus groups happened after the $600 federal unemployment benefit ended, and those in the groups who were out of work despaired of getting by without that. Nearly all of them supported Trump in 2016 because he was a businessman who would grow the economy. But now they’re scared about the economic damage. Trump reminding these voters of his great economic successes before the pandemic fell flat. His economic bravado was not reassuring at a terrifying moment. “I remember my father watching the news and crying, and I find myself crying sometimes when I watch the news,” related a woman from Wisconsin. “And I think, oh god, I’m turning into my parents. You have no choice. The things you see are gut-wrenching.”

In emails we asked the participants to send to President Trump, you can feel that the spirit that led them to join the working-class revolt is just broken. While some hope he will get back in the right direction, most used their email to express their deep disillusionment. You can feel that they wanted a president who didn’t divide the country and make it a “laughingstock” (two writers used that exact word) internationally. They wanted a president who put the interests of the people, not just big business, first.

“I supported you in the beginning over Hillary but in the end unfortunately, you show me you’re just not for the people,” wrote one man from Wisconsin. “You lied to the American people about COVID,” wrote another. “You are everything that is wrong with America, you have effectively ruined this country,” added a woman from Ohio. “Congrats, you suck.”

It is critical to listen for what they did not say: “What an ass I was to vote for that guy in the last election.” They did not regret or say they made a mistake. All working Americans have been in financial trouble since the 2008 crash, and rising health care problems and disabilities, health care costs and deductibles, and empowered insurance and pharmaceutical companies were an explosive brew. It is why many working people voted for Trump in 2016. It is why many working-class Democrats of color and millennials failed to turn out and defend Obamacare in midterm elections and in 2016. All these voters had reasons for those choices.

COVID has shattered so many lives, but also seemingly insurmountable political barriers. The great majority of working people, regardless of color, are desperate for a government that stops taking direction from the pharmaceutical companies, and brings the boldest feasible changes to our health care system.

Western Riverside County (CA-42) is one of the fastest growing areas in southern California-- and one of the last southern California districts with a Republican member of Congress, in this case "Crooked" Ken Calvert. In 2016, Trump won the district, although by smaller margins than McCain or Romney. Still, his 53.4% to 41.4% win over Hillary was substantial. In 2018, the anti-red wave wasn't big enough to dislodge Calvert. This year, though, the Democrats nominated a better candidate, independent minded progressive Liam O'Mara. His district shares a lot of traits with the districts Greenberg was looking at. There is a white plurality and nearly 40% of the adults did not go beyond high school. About 21% are blue collar workers and 44% are sales and service workers. Liam had quite a lot to say about it, as you might expect. Please read it-- and then consider contributing to his campaign by clicking on the Bluer California thermometer below.

There is a lot of anger in the Inland Empire. The biggest challenges Democrats have faced out here have to do with the targets of that anger. Lacking the populist energy nationally to focus it on the élites who have kept wages low and costs high, too much of the population has been susceptible to fearmongering about immigration and crime. In election after election, Calvert has been all-too-happy to shift the blame for his policies onto working class brown and black people, maintaining a firm lock on the working class white vote in the district.

A couple of key factors now threaten that strategy, both in 2020 and long term. The first is demography. While white voters remain solidly in the majority for the district, they are not as monolithic in their views, with many more recent migrants from other parts of southern California attracted by lower housing costs. And the district is a lot more diverse than it once was, with large immigrant communities from Asia, and with Hispanic people making up more than a third of the total.

The other important change is to the national conversation on economics. It is true that Biden is exactly the kind of milquetoast neoliberal who has said he cares about the people but delivers mainly for the super rich, and he will not excite people at the polls. That he isn't Trump just won't be enough in this area, even with the pandemic raging. Bernie won the district by a very solid margin in the primary, and were he our standard-bearer, retiring Crooked Ken Calvert would be much easier. But the shift in policy emphasis matters still for our own race, and it is why we have drawn in so many new voters and historic independents this year.

Given the very real impact on ordinary people of rising costs and stagnant wages, this country needs to turn around. It elected Barack Obama because he spun a tale about hope and change that resonated with a country in the grip of recession. There was a historic opportunity in those first two years to realign the economy to favour growth for all, not just the one per cent. Alas, Obama failed completely to rise to the challenge of the day, preferring to bail out the people who caused the problem, not those who suffered its effects. At the end of the day, exactly the same people and ideas were left in charge. This is how we got Trump. And people really thought Biden was their best shot against him? For some reason, "It's the economy, stupid!" remains one of the hardest lessons for this party to learn.

If Democrats really want to win nationally, not just against Trump but consistently, and regain ground in the swing states, we must get back to our New Deal roots and tear up the nonsensical DLC crap that's driven the party since the 1970s. And a new batch of policy-driven challengers across the state and country give me hope that we're gaining ground at the grassroots at least. The Squad is already set to double this year, and there are a lot of great challengers running in red districts as well as the safely blue seats.

The purplish districts are where the real action is, in my view. If folks like Kara Eastman, Blair Walsingham, and I can flip red seats, or at the least improve upon past Democratic performance in these areas, we can show that populist issues resonate with a wider share of the population. That is the path back to the unchallenged dominance which the Democratic party enjoyed in the House thanks to the FDR to LBJ economic consensus. Since those days, we have lamentably allowed the fault lines to shift to racial issues and law-and-order dogwhistles, thanks to Republican strategy.

But we didn't need to fall for it! It's the same shit they pulled in the late 19th century against the populist movement of those days, disrupting solidarity with racism. And as I like to remind people, those who reject the lessons of history are condemned to repeat its mistakes. We need to get past the narrow focus on identity politics and work for all Americans again. Yes, the country is more diverse, and we should continue to embrace that diversity... but not at the expense of talking about the cost of living and the declining American Dream.

We need to be laser-focussed on the things that will get the attention of working people overall: The high cost of health care and housing, the unjust tax burden, the lack of affordable child care and elder care, the limited opportunities for education and business-creation, and the high crime rates caused by stubbornly-high poverty. We need to stop ceding the economy to the Republicans and the corrupt neoliberals, and start telling people that they can dream again.

I am running to lower the cost of living for working families, period. I don't talk about Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi because they have nothing to do with my race. I tell people that they'll have a fighter in me-- someone who will go to bat for them against anyone, of either party, who says they need to tolerate the poor conditions they face now. We deserve an economy that works for all of us, and that starts with replacing tools of the ruling class like Crooked Ken Calvert.