Trump's Eviction Moratorium Opens the Door for Medicare for All by Executive Order

Donald Trump declares a coronavirus national emergency on March 13, 2020 (source)

by Thomas Neuburger

On September 1, the Trump administration announced a nationwide moratorium on evictions to last until December 31, a full four months. The reason for the moratorium, according to a White House spokesman, was to make sure that people "struggling to pay rent due to the coronavirus will not have to worry about being evicted and risk the further spreading of, or exposure to, the disease."

The moratorium applies only to people "who would otherwise be eligible for federal stimulus funds in the previous CARES Act, which went only to people with certain tax income levels and citizenship status." The ban also requires that renters "self-certify" to become eligible. As Politico put it:

"The new ban covers tenants who certify that they have lost “substantial” income; that they expect to make no more than $99,000 in 2020 or received a stimulus check; and that they are making their “best efforts” to pay as much of their rent as they can. Tenants must also certify that an eviction would likely make them homeless or push them to double up with others in close quarters."

It should be noted that the ban does not cancel rental obligations; it just delays payment. Also, as the order itself states, "Nothing in this Order precludes the charging or collecting of fees, penalties, or interest as a result of the failure to pay rent or other housing payment on a timely basis, under the terms of any applicable contract."

As a solution, it's better than nothing, but it only defers the pain.

About Half of All Landlords Will Suffer Too

The order provides no funds for relief to landlords. For the many landlords who are, in fact, millionaires, billionaires, and large, well-funded corporations and venture capital firms, this may look to many like just desserts. For the other half of the landlord population, however, especially the minority who own just one or two rental properties, this could spell financial disaster as great as the disaster their tenants are facing.

It's hard to get figures for the breakdown of the wealth among landlords, but the industry-friendly article in Politico quoted above implies that the wealthy landlord group, while "a fraction of the market," is in fact almost half — which technically qualify as "a fraction," but a sizable one. The article states that "a little over half the rental housing in the country" consists of small properties with between one and four units per building — which means that a little under half of the market consists of large buildings.

The Politico article, clearly industry-sourced, then focuses on the suffering of a percentage of the percentage of small owners, ignoring completely the mega-owners, just as it ignores the suffering of the renters themselves, except to emphasize how many of them pose an economic danger to landlords. Still, small owners are left in the cold by the administration's ban, and their distress will be real.

What Makes This Declaration Legal?

The authority for this action comes from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Surgeon General, who reports to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — not from the Housing or the Treasury departments — and it's based on the stated need to prevent the spread of disease in a crisis.

The applicable language states (emphasis added):

[Title 42 U.S.C.] §264. Regulations to control communicable diseases
(a) Promulgation and enforcement by Surgeon General

The Surgeon General, with the approval of the Secretary, is authorized to make and enforce such regulations as in his judgment are necessary to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable diseases from foreign countries into the States or possessions, or from one State or possession into any other State or possession. For purposes of carrying out and enforcing such regulations, the Surgeon General may provide for such inspection, fumigation, disinfection, sanitation, pest extermination, destruction of animals or articles found to be so infected or contaminated as to be sources of dangerous infection to human beings, and other measures, as in his judgment may be necessary.

This declaration and the unusual legal authority on which it is based has many important ramifications. For one, it opens the door for Medicare for All by executive order.

Ramifications of Trump's Moratorium

We can discuss Trump's action in several ways, each of which could become an essay on its own.

1. Clearly the primary reason for Trump's action is political. He wants people to feel like they are getting relief from him that they're not getting from Congress. In that, he's right. They are getting relief from him that they're not getting from Congress.

But in doing so, he's just kicked the can down the road until after the election, solving none of the underlying problems in doing so. Renters will still owe rent that they can't pay from income they don't have, and those small landlords with mortgages are still on the hook to their own creditors regardless of having been forced to keep non-paying tenants.

2. A much more reasonable action would be the obvious, socialist one — let government write checks to landlords on behalf of renters, then work out repayment (or debt forgiveness) schemes later.

Or better, let government cover the payrolls of businesses that are suffering or going under, then forgive what's owed later. After all, the root cause of the economic downturn is lost payrolls. As for repayment, this is an emergency after all, and FEMA doesn't send bills to those whose hardship it relieves. The money spent is just the cost of the crisis.

But that's a socialist, Sanders-like solution, and neither party wants any part of it. Thus the hesitation to act, the labyrinthine schemes, and the means-tested requirements and restrictions.

3. This action places Trump to the left of national Democrats on Covid relief. If he's smart (he's not), he'll stay to their left and offer all sorts of "socialist" (Sanders-like) solutions to the economic crisis — see below for a major one. After all, Trump ran the 2016 election on a Sanders-like platform — against NAFTA, against free trade, for infrastructure-as-stimulus, against the forever war, and so on.

If he's smart, he'll restart that campaign. But he's not smart.

4. The biggest thing Trump could do — and it would be a game-changer — is to use the authority he's has under "Title 42 U.S. Code § 1395rr–1 - Medicare coverage for individuals exposed to environmental health hazards" to provide Medicare coverage for everyone in the United States "exposed to environmental health hazards." Which in these Covid times ... is everyone.

He could do this tomorrow using executive authority, the same executive authority that underlies his eviction moratorium.

The applicable section of Title 42 allows for a "Pilot program for care of certain individuals residing in emergency declaration areas." That care can be defined as "access to all of Medicare":

(b) Pilot program for care of certain individuals residing in emergency declaration areas
(1) Program; purpose
(A) Primary pilot program

The Secretary shall establish a pilot program in accordance with this subsection to provide innovative approaches to furnishing comprehensive, coordinated, and cost-effective care under this subchapter to individuals described in paragraph (2)(A).

The Secretary of HHS could even use this law to create "optional pilot programs" to supplement regular (and in many ways, inefficient) Medicare:

(B) Optional pilot programs

The Secretary may establish a separate pilot program, in accordance with this subsection, with respect to each geographic area subject to an emergency declaration (other than the declaration of June 17, 2009), in order to furnish such comprehensive, coordinated and cost-effective care to individuals described in subparagraph (2)(B) who reside in each such area.

For this to work, an emergency declaration must have been declared, which it has.

Eligible individuals must meet the following criteria:

(A) In general An individual described in this paragraph is any individual who—
(i) is diagnosed with 1 or more conditions described in subparagraph (B);
(ii) as demonstrated in such manner as the Secretary determines appropriate, has been present for an aggregate total of 6 months in the geographic area subject to an emergency declaration specified in subsection (b)(2)(A)..."

While subsection (3)(B) applies to individuals with named diseases — asbestosis, mesothelioma, and the like — subsection (3)(C) allows this law to apply to an individual who "is diagnosed with a medical condition caused by the exposure of the individual to a public health hazard to which an emergency declaration applies, based on such medical conditions, diagnostic standards, and other criteria as the Secretary specifies."

In short:  

Trump could guarantee himself a second term if he applied this law in this way, to give the nation Medicare For All under executive order.

5. Finally, while I think it unlikely that Trump would take this avenue to gain an electoral victory, I nonetheless hope he does, for these three reasons.

First, it would give Medicare for All ... to all. That would be a huge progressive win in and of itself, a win we're not going to get under a Biden presidency without monster effort, and win we've been unable to achieve since the Truman administration.

Second, it would force Biden to match him or admit defeat on ideological grounds. That's a problem I would love for Biden to face.

An added benefit: Trump's support of Medicare for All takes all the burden of moving Biden left off of progressives and places it onto the Republicans, who would be playing an Ace if Biden doesn't play an Ace of his own. Let Republicans do the heavy threatening. This frees progressives to happily and genuinely support a compliant Biden (for a change).

Finally, for Biden to match Trump's offer of Medicare for All with his own would ensure a Biden victory, perhaps by a landslide. After all, Biden today is running, and possibly winning, on a single platform — not being Trump. Imagine his margin of victory if he ran on Medicare for All as well as not being Trump.

Trump wouldn't have a chance if Biden did that, and Biden would be hailed by history as the literal savior of this generation. That's a whole lot better than than the legacy he's now on track for — being the not-Trump slower-paced sinker of it.
  

Trump Is The Worst Monster On Earth-- But Does Biden Want To Make You Puke Up Your Lunch?

6 states have fewer than a million people; Delaware is one of them. Biden has never been elected to anything-- unless you want to pretend he was elected VP-- outside of Delaware, a state with a pronounced penchant for electing very conservative Democrats. He has often tried to make it seem that he was a favorite son of Pennsylvania, the 6th most populous state in the union but he's never run for anything there. With 20 electoral votes, Pennsylvania is an important prize. Trump managed to win it in 2016-- 2,970,733 (48.18%) to 2,926,441 (47.46%) in a stunning and consequential upset. This year Trump is likely to lose the state-- and badly. Last week's Fox News poll shows Biden ahead 50-39%. It isn't so much that Biden is ahead-- few voters are enthused about Biden as president-- as much as Trump being behind. Voters are very enthused about kicking Trump out of office. At "best" voters are hoping for a 3rd Obama term.

Writing for Newsweek yesterday, Chantal Da Silva reported that most people in Pennsylvania who have decided to vote for Biden are actually voting against Trump, not actually for Biden... and that's a state he claims a solid connection to. A new poll from Franklin & Marshall College "found that 55 percent of Biden backers were motivated to vote for the former vice president so they could see Trump unseated, rather than out of an eagerness to see Biden himself in power. Among those who said they would be voting for Trump, the overwhelming majority expressed the opposing sentiment, saying they were backing their candidate out of support for the president himself, rather than as a vote against Biden." This poll shows losing with 41% to Biden's 50%.

In theory, it isn't too late for Biden to turn that around-- and many idealists with their heads in the clouds hope he will. He won't. Biden is who Biden is and he's not about to change that-- especially with all polls showing him headed for a landslide win, even if it's really a landslide loss for Trump. In an OpEd for the San Jose Mercury News Wednesday, Bernie delegate Norman Solomon wrote that 4 years ago overconfidence and thinly veiled hostility toward the left by the establishment wing of the Democratic Party, "glossed over and shrugged off the disaffection among Sanders supporters, especially young voters. Instead of selecting a vice-presidential candidate who might attract progressives, Clinton chose a pillar of the Democratic establishment, Sen. Tim Kaine. Today, many 'Berners' are frustrated and angry. It’s not only that hopes for a Sanders nomination and presidency were abruptly dashed. More corrosive and significant is a common feeling that, despite his recent nods leftward, Biden remains largely oblivious to social imperatives-- most notably, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, Medicare for All."

Nothing would make me vote for Biden, but I suspect, millions Democratic voters would feel a lot more enthusiastic about voting for him if he embraced Medicare-for-All. He won't; in fact, he said he would veto it if it passes Congress, which it won't anyway, Schumer having set up the most conservative Democratic Senate imaginable for 2021.

Virtually every exit poll of Democratic primary voters this year reflected strong majority support for Medicare for All, often by lopsided margins, even in conservative states. National polling has continued to show that two-thirds of all registered voters want Medicare for All.

While Biden is now calling for a “public option” that would be an improvement on the 10-year-old Affordable Care Act, he hasn’t budged from his opposition to making Medicare universal-- at a time when tying medical coverage to jobs has been exposed as a grim travesty. A new study says that 5.4 million American workers lost their health insurance due to losing their jobs between February and May.

While touting his “Build Back Better” program, Biden declared in a July 9 speech: “Let’s finish the job of Obamacare by ensuring everyone has access to quality, affordable health care.” By clinging to timeworn and evasive buzzwords like “access” and “affordable,” Biden affirmed his alignment with the multi-trillion-dollar health care industry more than with Americans who want health care to be treated as a human right in reality instead of in mere rhetoric.

Just as Biden’s chances of winning the presidency would improve if he embraced Medicare for All, his prospects would also be enhanced by adopting popular positions that are especially important to racial minorities. For instance, he could do the right thing by finally supporting the legalization of marijuana, which would be a major step toward ending racist law-enforcement practices.

Young African-Americans share with other young people a distinct lack of enthusiasm-- and a likelihood of low turnout-- for Biden. A similar problem exists with Latino voters, who heavily backed Sanders in the 2020 primaries and caucuses.

Solomon cites polling showing that 12% of Bernie voters having decided, like me, to forgo casting a ballot for the lesser evil and he thinks they will-- unlike me-- vote for Biden if Biden adopts progressive policies. Biden never will. He's aggressively anti-progressive and always has been and always will be. Wednesday John Nichols reported how 700 delegates to the convention say they will oppose the party platform unless it includes Medicare for All. It won't-- and does their threat matter at all? The Democratic conservative establishment has captured the party. Get used to fighting it. The platform will reflect Biden's conservatism on every single issue-- from healthcare, a Green New Deal, Israel and a jobs guarantee to marijuana legalization and ending qualified police immunity. Biden is on the Republican side of every issue. Yesterday, after I tweeted a list of Republican senators who should be asked if they support Trump's call to postpone the election-- Susan Collins, Steve Daines, Cory Gardner, Dan Sullivan, Martha McSally, Miss McConnell, Lindsey Graham, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, David Perdue-- @VastLeft responded that he thought for a second that it was Biden's Supreme Court nominee list.

Nichols wrote that "it is hard sell to claim that this is the boldest Democratic platform in American history. The 1900 Democratic platform began by 'warn[ing] the American people that imperialism abroad will lead quickly and inevitably to despotism at home.' That was bold. The 1932 Democratic platform announced, in the midst of the Great Depression, that the party was committed to 'stamping out monopolistic practices and the concentration of economic power.' That was bold. The 1944 Democratic platform asserted, in a time of Jim Crow segregation when the party relied on the 'solid South' as a part of its coalition, that 'racial and religious minorities have the right to live, develop and vote equally with all citizens and share the rights that are guaranteed by our Constitution.' And it argued that 'Congress should exert its full constitutional powers to protect those rights.' That was bold. The 1960 Democratic platform declared, at a point when new technologies were transforming workplaces, that 'we will provide the government leadership necessary to insure that the blessings of automation do not become burdens of widespread unemployment.' That was bold. The 1972 Democratic platform promised 'to rethink and reorder the institutions of this country' to address systemic racism and sexism and classism-- and it outlined a plan to 'restructure the social, political and economic relationships throughout the entire society in order to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and power.' That was bold. So, too, was the document’s recognition that a for-profit health care system was failing the United States-- and its commitment to 'establish a system of universal National Health Insurance which covers all Americans with a comprehensive set of benefits including preventive medicine, mental and emotional disorders, and complete protection against catastrophic costs, and in which the rule of free choice for both provider and consumer is protected. The program should be federally-financed and federally-administered.'"

From the 1940s through 1980, on health care issues, Democratic platforms took bolder stands than does the party’s 2020 draft platform. “Progressive ideas are nothing new,” notes Representative Ro Khanna, a cochair of the California delegation to this year’s convention, who argues that “there’s no reason we can’t finish enacting those policies today.”

Unfortunately, the platform committee does not propose to do so.

A Medicare for All amendment advanced by supporters of the 2020 presidential bid of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders was rejected overwhelmingly on Monday, garnering just 36 “yes,” versus 125 “no,” votes from a committee dominated by Biden backers. Proposals to lower the Medicare eligibility age and expand access for children were also rejected.

The party’s refusal to support Medicare for All is wrongheaded practically, as Michael Lighty noted Monday when he urged platform committee members to join civil rights groups in supporting Medicare for All. “It’s vital that we meet this moment that demands health justice and Medicare For All to create a system to address the health inequities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic when Blacks and Latinos are dying at rates two-, two-and-a-half-times that of whites,” said the veteran single-payer activist.

The party’s refusal to support a single-payer system is also wrongheaded politically, as the campaigns of Sanders and a rising generation of Democratic members of Congress have popularized the Medicare for All agenda to such an extent that recent polling finds it is supported by 69 percent of all Americans and 88 percent of Democrats.

“The Democrats are making a fatal mistake by turning their backs on Medicare for All,” argues Winnie Wong, a former senior political adviser to the Sanders campaign, more bluntly. She labeled the committee votes “shameful” at a time “when the country is in the death grip of a global pandemic and people are dying” because they can’t afford health care.

This is Obama's party. He's calling the shots. He was in office for 8 years and I never heard any serious talk about Medicare-for-All, did you?. His wing of the party doesn't want it and it's not going to happen. Nothing in the progressive agenda will. That was decided on Super Tuesday. Do you know what a general strike is? Fighting about a platform isn't going to get anyone anything.

And most of all, at John Lewis' funeral, Bill Clinton-- the most corporate Democrat of our lifetimes-- wants to thank Jim Clyburn-- more than Obama or Bush or Pelosi... Why? For killing the peoples' campaign behind Bernie, that's why. It's less than a minute, just listen... and watch the ugly smirk from this serial rapist pig.

9 Really Horrible Things That Don't Even Include Trump-- And One Really Good One That Will Help Us Get Rid Of Him

GROT by Chip Proser

Yesterday, everyone around the water cooler-- and beyond-- was talking about Politico Magazine's cover story about the 9 disaster's we still aren't ready for. Garrett Graff put together a Politico post-COVID "Domestic Threat Assessment"-- a list of the most significant events that might impact the U.S. over the next 30 to 50 years. Hard to imagine there could be a bigger threat or worse impact on our country than Trump in the White House, but when my friend Helen sent Graff's article to me yesterday she said it was the scariest thing she had ever read and urged me not to show it to Roland. "These are threats that seem rare," wrote Graff, "but that over a given period are almost guaranteed to occur-- events that humans, and therefore political leaders, have a hard time understanding and planning for... Beyond other pandemics, which appear regularly every decade or two, there are eight other major threats (and one wild card) that scientists and national security officials worry about currently that are real, identifiable and stand a chance that is more likely than not of occurring-- at some scale, ranging from mild to catastrophic-- in the next five to 50 years. Here’s what’s coming for us now:

• Globalization of white supremacy
• Attacks on trust and truth

If the 2016 election was the story of our democracy being blindsided by misinformation, disinformation and hack-and-dump cyberattacks, cyber experts are warning that the next new threat online will almost certainly involve attempts by adversaries to manipulate or delete data or otherwise raise public doubts about whether reported reality is real reality. “Trust and truth are the foundations of free and open societies,” says Sue Gordon, a career intelligence officer who served until last summer as the principal deputy director of national intelligence, the top career official in the intelligence community. “Our growing concern about those two things are causing chaos in open societies and leaving room for authoritarian tendencies.”

...[I]nsidious for democracy are the threats that come as the country enters the election season this fall. Security experts have been warning of all manner of data manipulation attacks that could lead to ongoing or permanent questions about the accuracy of election results. While actually altering votes at scale would prove challenging, it could be comparatively easy to alter the reported vote totals on a secretary of state website or a news site, or to post images-- real or fake-- of hacking a single machine.

Experts like Robert Chesney and Danielle Citron have also raised alarms about "deepfakes,” AI-driven doctored audio or video that could literally put words in peoples’ mouths or place them in physical locations where they never were. Simpler “dumbfakes” or “cheap fakes” have proven effective: Trump supporters have circulated both a slowed-down video of Nancy Pelosi, meant to make her appear cognitively impaired, and a sped-up video that made CNN’s Jim Acosta appear to aggressively hit a White House intern. Much more sophisticated techniques already are on public display.

• Biosecurity

Terrorists, mad scientists, lab cccidents and biological warfare.

• Technological disruption

Downed power grids, GPS outages and solar flares

• Nukes

• Climate Change

Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond. Climate hazards … are intensifying, threatening infrastructure, health, and water and food security.

• COVID-19's next level impact

[T]he country’s ongoing, disastrous response to the pandemic-- by almost any measure one of the worst in the developed world-- is sending a clear message to other countries that the U.S. can no longer be counted on to lead global conversations. The U.S. didn’t even show up to a massive international vaccine virtual summit this week.

Um...  Nothing by Chip Proser

The U.S., if current trends continue, might find that it finally beats the virus in a year or two-- but emerges from the pandemic no longer the world leader economically, politically or morally that it’s been for the last 75 years. The world, in turn, may discover in this moment that it doesn’t need the U.S. in the way that it thought it did. That could be even more true if a Covid vaccine emerges first in China or Europe.

• Catastrophic earthquakes

California’s “Big One,” along the San Andreas, gets most of the attention, but there are three other U.S. faults that cause emergency planners perhaps even more heartburn.

First, the Cascadia Subduction Zone, a fault about 700 miles off the Pacific Coast of Oregon and Washington, or what the New Yorker called in 2015, “The Really Big One.” The fault, when it goes, might unleash “only” an earthquake between 8.0 and 8.6 magnitude, which itself would rank as one of the most powerful and destructive quakes to ever hit the United States. But a so-called full margin rupture of the fault would prove truly catastrophic, potentially topping 9.0. Beyond the quake’s damage from the shaking, it could cause a multi-hundred-mile tsunami to inundate the West Coast with just 15 minutes warning. FEMA’s projections show 13,000 initial deaths from the quake and the tsunami, and upward of a million people displaced. These are hardly abstract threats; geologists say there’s a one-in-three chance of an 8.0 earthquake in the region in the next 50 years. “The amount of devastation is going to be unbelievable,” an Oregon geologist Rob Witter said in 2009, after calculating that a full 9.0 quake has a 10 percent to 14 percent chance of occurring in the next half century. “People aren't going to be ready for this.”

Second, the New Madrid Seismic Zone—named for a Missouri town and running from Arkansas up to Illinois—has historically produced the strongest earthquakes in the lower-48 states. In the winter of 1811-1812, a series of three quakes shifted land more than 15 feet, liquified the ground and caused whole islands to disappear. In a 2019 regional exercise, known as “Shaken Fury,” local, state and federal officials drilled on how to respond to a 7.7 magnitude New Madrid earthquake. Daniel Kaniewski, a managing director at Marsh & McLennan who until February served as the No. 2 at FEMA, recalls visiting one major state emergency operations centers and discovering that officials there refused to even simulate a quake of that strength; they’d determined that the local devastation would be so great that emergency planners would have no adequate response, even in a tabletop exercise. “Just the exercise alone could so tax the system that there wouldn't be valuable lessons learned,” he recalls. “That earthquake is one that we as a nation are very vulnerable to.”

...Third, and probably least known of all, is the Wasatch fault zone, stretching across Utah and Idaho, tracing the rough outline of the Salt Lake Valley, and which has been active even just in recent days; in March, it recorded a 5.7 magnitude quake. “The earthquake in Idaho and Utah was a big wake-up call,” Phoenix says. Larger earthquakes in the region might quickly prove devastating. “Wasatch is every bit as concerning as a southern California quake, not simply because of the magnitude potential but because of the vulnerabilities present there,” Kaniewski says. “Much of the building construction in Salt Lake City is unreinforced masonry-- URM-- and it crumbles when a quake happens.”

• Unknown unknowns

COVID-45 by Nancy Ohanian

That was a taste of what Graff has to say. You need to read the whole thing. Meanwhile, I'm sticking to what I said earlier about how it's hard to imagine anything worse for our country than Trump-- and I'm not even voting for Biden!! Speaking of which, last month, Dr. Drew Westen, a psychology and psychiatry professor at Emory University who founded a politics-oriented strategic messaging consulting firm published a piece in Psychology Today about what motivates voters. He's discovered over the years that reasoned beliefs don't determine which candidate most people vote for. Two other factors do: voters' feelings for the candidate's political party (partisanship) and voters' feelings about the candidate himself.

"Neuroimaging studies," he wrote, "confirmed no signs of intelligent life when people were purportedly reasoning about unflattering information regarding a preferred political candidate. Neural circuits typically active in reasoning tasks never turned on. What did light up were circuits that traffic in negative emotions and Houdini-like efforts to escape-- until they came up with a satisfying rationalization that eliminated the problem. Then something totally unexpected happened. Their brains actually gave them a little emotional pat on the back for their efforts. There was a flurry of dopamine activity in reward circuits. I came to understand that it is hard to change the partisan brain because we get rewarded for lying to ourselves... It’s not that rational thinking is irrelevant when we pull that voting lever, but that we think for a reason, and the reasons are always emotional in nature. The only things we reason about are the things that we care about. Our feelings are our guide to action. Reason provides a map of where we want to go, but first we have to want to go there. In politics as in the rest of life, we think because we feel." That led to this conclusion"

"Politics, then, is less a marketplace of ideas than a marketplace of emotions. To be successful, a candidate needs to reach voters in ways that penetrate the heart at least as much as the head. That makes political messaging critical-- and perhaps about to determine the course of American history." Westen wrote that In 2007 he had "watched one Democratic presidential candidate after another go down in flames... and wrote a book titled The Political Brain. It dissected how candidates might talk with voters if they started with an understanding of the way our minds actually work."

As was readily apparent from their campaigns over decades, Democrats and Republicans have had two very different implicit visions of the mind of the voter. Republicans talked about their values, such as faith, family, and limited government. Their think tanks are feel tanks and fuel tanks, generating and testing what the brilliant wordsmith on the right, Frank Luntz, called “words that work.”

Democrats, in contrast, talked about their policy prescriptions, bewitched by the dictum that “a campaign is a debate on the issues.” Their think tanks brought in fellows to work out policies based on the best available science. Perhaps blinded by their indifference to emotion, they left to chance the selling of those policies to the public.

...Survey data across decades of elections show that success or failure at the ballot box tends to reflect, first and foremost, voters’ feelings toward the parties, the candidates, and the economy, in that order. Then come feelings toward candidates’ specific attributes, such as competence or empathy. Feelings on any given issue come in a distant fifth in predicting election outcomes. Voters’ beliefs about the issues barely register. And except for political junkies, most voters are neither interested in detailed policy prescriptions nor competent to assess them.

What voters want to know are the answers to two questions: Does this person, and does this party, share my values? And do they understand and care about people like me? Those turn out to be pretty rational questions. No one can predict a black swan or coronavirus pandemic, but you’re likely to feel comfortable with the decisions of leaders who share your values and care about people like you... Studying voters’ responses over the last several years has allowed me to distill three basic principles central to effective political messaging, all rooted in the way our minds and brains work.

Principle #1:

Know what networks you’re activating. Our brains are vast networks of neurons, which combine in millions of ways into circuits that not only maintain our lives but create all of our thoughts, feelings, and actions. Of most significance to persuasive messaging are networks of associations, sets of thoughts, feelings, images, memories, and values that become interconnected over time. These networks are primarily unconscious, always whirring in the background, directing our thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

Nothing could be more important in political communication than knowing which neural wires we are inadvertently tripping, which networks we want to activate or connect, and which ones we want to deactivate.

Consider this phrase: the unemployed. What’s wrong with that? Just about everything, because it trips some inadvertent wires.

For starters, it takes real people with pain-lined faces and turns them into nameless, faceless abstractions. If you want people to feel something for the unemployed, you need to do just the opposite. It also turns a group of people that likely includes someone you know and care about yourself-- and among whose ranks you have likely been at some point-- into a them. And then there’s the just-world hypothesis-- our tendency to rationalize away bad things that happen to good people. Speaking of the unemployed cries out for just-world sentiments such as, “I wonder what they did to lose their jobs?” or “Perhaps they are just lazy.”

All of this happens unconsciously and in the flicker of an instant, so that by the time you’ve gotten half a sentence out, you’ve already taken two steps backward, and none forward. The alternative is simple and humanizing, rather than abstract and dehumanizing: People who’ve lost their jobs. You can literally feel the difference from the unemployed. And to inoculate against the just-world hypothesis, try People who’ve lost their job through no fault of their own.

Abstractions activate a thin strip of cortex-- the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-- that plays a central role in neural circuits involved in reasoning and conscious thought. But those aren’t the circuits that move levers in the voting booth.

If you care about policies that help people who are unemployed, then you want to evoke empathy for those people. The brain has circuits that evolved specifically to create empathy toward others. These neural circuits, the ventromedial and orbital areas of the prefrontal cortex, are also just a stone’s throw away from circuits involved in emotional processing. And our language captures something important about emotions: They move us.

How about Medicaid recipients? What image comes to mind when you think of a recipient? If you’re like most white people, it is outstretched hands, which are looking for a handout-- a phrase that evolved from the gesture. Recipients are also passive. The term does not connote people actively seeking work or trying to help themselves. That is why referring to people on Medicaid is equally destructive: It suggests they are on the dole-- back to outstretched hands.

Making matters worse, although the majority of people who rely on Medicaid for their health are white, the phrase tends to activate unconscious or implicit prejudice, as most white people who hear Medicaid recipient picture poor people of color, with all the conscious and unconscious bias it entails.

The alternative, once again, is to turn people into people: People who rely on Medicaid for their health care. They are not recipients. They are not on anything.

And there is a way to turn Medicaid recipient into something powerful. No anti-Medicaid message I have ever tested can block the 20-point boost in favorability delivered by a message that begins with these words: Chances are, if you have a parent or grandparent in a nursing home, Medicaid is paying for their care. People in nursing homes are often disabled-- cognitively, physically, or both-- but we love and care about them, either because they are our beloved relatives or someone else’s, and they deserve dignity in later life or care for their illness. And the hero of the story is Medicaid, which is actively and benevolently paying for their care.

There’s still room to up the ante and make the statement even stronger-- 10 favorability points stronger. Just precede it with one clause: Whether you’re white, black, or brown, chances are, if you have a parent or grandparent in a nursing home... Why does that improve the message? First, it deactivates the implicit stereotype among white people of Medicaid recipients and the negative emotion activated by that stereotype. Second, the them becomes us. The phrasing is inclusive in a way that doesn’t feel like pandering or indulging in identity politics. It is about all of us, and it doesn’t matter what color we are.

Which brings us to DREAMers. Like the unemployed and Medicaid recipients, it’s an appeal to empathy without the appeal. And it adds an element of unintelligibility to the average voter. Why are they called DREAMers? What are they dreaming about? What’s the story with the capital DREAM? (It’s an acronym for a piece of legislation with a name no one knows.) And perhaps most important, why do the children of undocumented immigrants get to have the American Dream when, for the first time in history, three-quarters of Americans do not believe that their own children will be better off than their parents-- the core of the American Dream?

So who are DREAMers? Try this: children who have never pledged allegiance to any flag other than ours.

Principle #2:

Speak to voters’ values and emotions. Our emotions and values are not arbitrary. We have them for a reason. Positive emotions draw us toward things, people, and ideas we believe are good for ourselves and the people we care about; negative emotions lead us to avoid or fight them. In politics, messages that tap into hope, satisfaction, pride, and enthusiasm, on the one hand, and fear, anxiety, anger, and disgust on the other, move people, first of all to vote, then to vote for one party or candidate versus another.

What all human beings find compelling is rooted in the structure and evolution of our brains, and it is expressed in our values as well as in our emotions. Family is a value that matters to people across the political spectrum. Natural selection, at its core, is about survival, reproduction, and alliances with people who help us survive, reproduce, and care for our kin.

For years, the political left ceded family values to the right, which tested that term 40 years ago, saw a winner, and spent hundreds of millions of dollars branding it as theirs. For more than a generation, that effort essentially tied the hands of Democrats in speaking about perhaps the most important value to our species and the source of the most powerful of emotions.

Principle #3:

Tell a coherent, memorable story. Our brains are wired to understand, to be drawn to and into, and to remember and pass along to others information presented in a particular form: narrative. As a species, we survived for about 200,000 years before the emergence of literacy, requiring some mechanism for transmitting knowledge and values across generations. All known human societies have myths and legends in the form of stories.

Issues are not narratives. Nor are 10-point plans. Narratives have protagonists and antagonists. At least in the West, narratives tend to have a particular story structure, or grammar, recognizable even to preschool children. It includes, among other elements, an initial situation, a problem, a battle to be fought or hill to be climbed, and a resolution. Stories also tend to have a moral. The particular values embedded in that moral are central to the difference between the right and the left.

Perhaps the most important lesson I have learned from testing hundreds of thousands of narratives on the most important issues of our time, from contraception and abortion to climate change and economics, is that virtually every successful political narrative has a structure derivative of this grammar. Except for attack ads, which diverge only partly from this structure, effective messages begin with a statement of values that transcends political divides (to establish a connection between speaker and listener), then raise concerns in vivid ways that activate emotions, particularly moral emotions, such as fairness or indignation. Finally, after briefly describing a solution, but skipping details, they end with a sense of hope.

In 2020, high-quality affordable healthcare for all Americans is one of the top priorities for voters, as it has been for three decades. Illness doesn’t come in red or blue. Lack of insurance harms people on both sides of the aisle.

When Barack Obama first ran for president 12 years ago, several organizations that had been working on the issue hired me to develop pro-reform messages and test them against potential attacks. Public support for expanding healthcare coverage proved so widespread that the issue was bulletproof-- but only with effective messaging. If any of the messages began with, I believe in universal healthcare, the percentage who supported reform roughly equaled the percentage opposing it, given a tough narrative from the right about “socialized medicine” or “a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor.” But if the same message began with, I believe in a doctor for every family, support exceeded opposition 70 percent to 30 percent. Universal healthcare is abstract, cold, and sterile-- just like the name of the bill that succeeded in at least partly expanding coverage, the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The name does not capture many of the most important values that move voters on healthcare: the choice to retain the close personal connection they may already have with their doctor and the ability to choose a plan they believe is best for their family.

Universal healthcare also unconsciously activates neural networks that evoke both prejudice and legitimate concerns about quality, as white voters picture images of clinics with long lines, packed with people of color getting the kind of inferior care many people of color currently receive. Had the bill instead been named A Family Doctor for Every Family-- parallel to George W. Bush’s signature legislation on education, No Child Left Behind-- it would have activated entirely different neural networks, connoting a personal connection with their doctor, high-quality care they have chosen, and coverage for everyone.

Within the first hundred days of the Obama administration, the House of Representatives passed a healthcare bill that captured what the American public wanted. The Democrats said it was about making sure everyone has good, affordable care. It took the Senate over a year to pass a watered-down version that dropped key provisions-- a Medicare-like option to compete with private insurance and the power of the government to negotiate drug prices. By the time the bill passed, the Republicans had captured the narrative, turning a once-popular reform bill into “socialized medicine.”

Since then, Republicans have pushed to curtail the law and refused to amend it in ways that could improve care for millions more people. The ACA covers 20 million people who didn’t have coverage before, including all children, and permits coverage of people with pre-existing conditions. But it’s still possible to get stuck with a $10,000 deductible, and medical expenses remain the leading cause of bankruptcy.

Republican opposition to the Affordable Care Act, deficient as it is, cost it control of the House in the 2018 midterm election. The Democrats enter the 2020 race with the challenge of selling to voters a broken program and the promise of fixing it.

To start with, what do they even call it? Most voters do not know what the Affordable Care Act is. Many speak negatively about Obamacare, not realizing they use and like it. Research shows that the two worst things to call either extending the ACA or taking a different path to healthcare are the names Democrats are currently using: Obamacare and Medicare for All. It was Republicans who coined the name Obamacare in an attempt to kill it. Any program named after a president will have the lasting enmity of the voters of the other party.

Medicare for All, although assuring that everyone would be covered, scares tens of millions of voters who fear it would create lowest-common-denominator care. A defining feature of U.S. culture is individualism; for all does not resonate with the political center.

  ...Voters want a solution to healthcare issues that addresses their values, interests, and concerns. They want high-quality, affordable care, with freedom to choose among plans, freedom from worries about problems like pre-existing conditions, and coverage for everyone. At the same time, they do not want to lose their current plan or doctor, they worry about any program that will create long lines and poor-quality care, and they worry about the cost of the program. Many swing voters are also leery of “socialized medicine.”

The evidence points to fixing the program begun by Obama. How to talk about it? Incorporating the principles of messaging, a winning campaign might sound like this:

It’s time to finish the job we started on healthcare, not tear it down. Democrats built a high, rock-solid floor on what insurance companies had to cover in every plan on the market, including pre-existing conditions, procedures your doctor orders, and life-saving preventive medicine, like breast cancer screening. Since the healthcare industry couldn’t lower the floor, they sent premiums, deductibles, and copays through the roof. So now it’s time to build the ceiling. That means limiting the amount insurance companies can raise fees every year. It means letting the most powerful union in the world that is supposed to represent the interests of working people-- the United States government-- negotiate drug prices with the pharmaceutical industry, or we’ll buy our drugs where they’re less expensive. And it means giving insurance companies some healthy competition by letting people of any age choose Medicare if they prefer it. Let’s finish the job so no Americans will ever again have to choose between taking their child to the doctor and putting food on the table for their family.

That would leave only the question of what to call it. Democrats might do well with “A Family Doctor for Every Family.” That’s a clinic Americans would be happy to visit.

What People Think

Networks of associations are always active.

Because so much is at stake in political messages, it’s important for candidates to capitalize on the associative power of words and phrases. Here is a glimpse into the minds of people when they hear the words healthcare reform.

Party Of Death by Chip Proser

Biden's And Trump's Shortcomings Aside, Why Still Bernie? Part I

I have every intention of writing in Bernie's name in November. Why? He's the best man to be president. I don't vote against people; I vote for people. Bernie and his platform were right for 2016 and he and his platform are right for 2020. Watch the video above and maybe you will decide to write him in too.

Last week, HarrisX did a Medicare-for-All poll for The Hill. They found that 69% of registered voters support Medicare-for-All. That breaks down to 88% of Democrats, 68% of independent voters and 46% of Republicans. Gabriela Schulte wrote that "Progressive lawmakers have been pointing to the coronavirus crisis to make a case for the need for Medicare for All as millions of Americans are kicked off their employee-based health insurance due to the economic fallout of the pandemic. 'Crises are moments of opportunity for policy change,' Robert Griffin, Research Director of the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group, told Hill.TV... President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute, Felicia Wong, believes support for Medicare for All will only grow amid the coronavirus crisis. 'These progressive policies have been popular for a long time. I think COVID-19 will make them more popular as it becomes clear just how fragile our American political economy really is,' Wong told Hill.TV."

Yesterday, Pramila Jayapal (D-WA)-- with 33 co-sponsors-- proposed the Medicare Crisis Program Act, which is meant to ensure that everyone has guaranteed access to health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the millions of Americans who have been thrown out of work and off their employer-related health insurance. The legislation would expand Medicare and Medicaid eligibility during the crisis, cap out-of-pocket costs for Medicare enrollees, and eliminate co-pays, coinsurance or deductibles for COVID-19 testing and related care. Pramila's office explained that "More than 26 million Americans have filed for unemployment in the last five weeks, and as a result many have lost their income and seen their health coverage disappear in the middle of a public health emergency. As COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc on our economy, it is estimated that up to 35 million Americans will lose their health coverage-- joining the roughly 30 million who were previously uninsured. By dramatically expanding the number of Americans eligible for Medicare and Medicaid-- two effective and efficient health insurance programs-- the Medicare Crisis Program Act would guarantee Americans have health care when it is needed the most."

In a written statement, Pramila noted that "Our nation’s for-profit, employment-based health care system did not make sense before COVID-19 struck, and it is proving dangerous and deadly during the crisis. Millions of Americans are losing their job and their health insurance at precisely the moment when we need everyone to be able to access care and treatment for illness. The Medicare Crisis Program Act would guarantee health care for millions of people struggling with the health and economic realities of the COVID-19 pandemic and protect Americans from outrageous out-of-pocket costs."

Her chief co-sponsor is Joe Kennedy (D-MA) and other members of Congress who have signed on are Earl Blumenauer (F-OR), Yvette Clarke (D-NY), Steve Cohen (D-TN), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Mike Doyle (D-PA), Eliot Engel (D-NY), Adriano Espaillat (D-NY), Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI), Alcee Hastings (D-FL), Jahana Hayes (D-CT), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), Ro Khanna (D-CA), Barbara Lee (D-CA), Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), James McGovern (D-MA), Grace Meng (D-NY), Grace Napolitano (D-CA), Joe Neguse (D-CO), Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Chellie Pingree (D-ME), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Jamie Raskin (D-MD), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), Darren Soto (D-FL), Mark Takano (D-CA), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), Juan Vargas (D-CA) and Peter Welch (D-VT). Not one Republican or Blue Dog is behind the bill.

Doctors Justin Lowenthal and Meenakshi Bewtra, co-chairs of the COVID-19 response taskforce and members of the national board of directors of Doctors for America, issued a statement on the proposed legislation yesterday: "Doctors for America and its 20,000 members nationwide have been on the frontlines of this pandemic and we commend Representatives Jayapal and Kennedy for including critical health and life-saving measures that aim to ensure increased availability and equitable distribution of PPE and other medical equipment for all frontline workers. We also know firsthand that COVID-19 has not merely caused-- but rather, exposed-- the deep and critical problems that our patients face in affordability, equity, and accessibility of their health care. We applaud this proposal for ensuring coverage, affordability, and access to health care for all of our patients during the COVID crisis, while illustrating one of several viable approaches for moving toward universal health care in the future. This crisis shows us that, as a nation, we are all in this together: We should all have access to PPE when caring for and serving others, and we should all have insurance coverage that does not disappear when you need it nor depend on your employment status during a pandemic."

I have no idea who Dr. William Haseltine favors for president. It's probably not Trump, though, as you might guess from the Fox News interview below. Haseltine is a scientist, biotech entrepreneur, author and current chair and president of the global health think tank ACCESS Health International. He is also the chair of the U.S.-China Health Summit and was in Wuhan last November just before the outbreak there emerged. This is an OpEd about healthcare for all in The Hill yesterday.

Each day a new story of crowded hospital corridors and exhausted health care workers appears in our newspapers. But another story, equally tragic, is unfolding in the privacy of our homes. Countless Americans with chronic conditions and other serious illnesses languish in isolation without access to care. While hospitals have of course remained open for urgent care, patients with less critical needs have been relegated almost entirely to virtual visits.

Many without illness are able to cope, but countless families have been permanently broken by the hospital closures. Take, for example, the blood cancer patient in Philadelphia who was desperately in need of chemotherapy. Unfortunately, blood supplies had been rationed for COVID-19 patients and the patient couldn’t get enough transfusions to allow his chemotherapy to begin. His clinic visits were cancelled, his condition worsened and by the middle of April, he had passed away, a death expedited by COVID-19.

Stories like this are just the tip of the iceberg. Doctors across the country have been reporting concerning trends among patients, with many delaying much-needed care because of concerns about contracting COVID-19 during an emergency room visit. A survey of nine major hospitals published earlier this month in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology found that the number of patients presenting with severe heart attacks had dropped by nearly 40 percent since March. Vaccinations and well-child visits have seen a similar deterioration, with millions of children now at greater risk of infection of other preventable diseases due to the stark decline.

All of this reinforces the undeniable fact that the first facilities to reopen in our communities must be our hospitals. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) recently released guidance for reopening health care facilities for non-emergent cases, but the advice included is vague at best. While it has recommendations for testing and screening of both patients and providers, it gives no concrete advice on how often to screen each group or what to do if a health care provider tests positive.

Guidance from state departments of health is equally inadequate and, in some cases, downright dangerous. Some in the hardest hit areas suggest that health care professionals can return to work after testing positive for COVID-19, assuming they have been symptom free for just three days and seven days have passed since their symptoms first developed. This despite the fact that studies have shown that some people may be infectious for up to ten days after obvious symptoms have resolved.

In the absence of more careful guidance, many medical centers have developed their own more stringent guidelines. In addition to designing their own strategies to protect health care workers, hospitals are also crafting their own plans to protect patients. Some hospital systems have created broad networks of ambulatory care centers that operate as outpatient facilities. Many hospital administrators think their best bet may be to funnel patients suspected of COVID-19 to the hospitals while maintaining a steady supply of high-quality services for non COVID-19 patients through the ambulatory care centers. This would keep hospital beds free for the worst COVID-19 patients and still provide high-quality care to other patients in need.

All of this extra effort will require additional resources, something that is becoming a pivotal challenge for all hospitals. Ever since facilities were forced to cancel these procedures to ramp up COVID-19 care, they have been hemorrhaging cash in extraordinary amounts. In New York State alone, one of the Buffalo region’s smallest hospitals has said it is losing roughly $1 million each month. In New York City, some of the major medical centers are losing as much as $450 million.

The only way these hospitals can survive is with an immediate infusion of money. True, there are some large hospitals with generous endowment funds that may be able to make it through the crisis without outside support. But smaller hospitals in rural communities and many safety net hospitals in larger cities are running out of cash already. We cannot charge patients more for the care they are receiving. A recent poll suggests that one in seven Americans avoid seeking care because of the financial burden and potential cost.

The onus is on our government to step in and support our hospitals as they reopen fully. It is quite simply a matter of life and death, not convenience or economic recovery.

 

It Appears That Trump Is About To Deliver The Senate To The Democrats

Democratic primary voters-- for whatever reasons-- didn't support Bernie to the extent he needed them for the fight to fundamentally reorder American society. And yet the vast majority of Democrats tell pollsters that they want Medicare-for-All, Bernie's signature policy, one that Status Quo Joe has threatened to veto if it ever reaches his desk. Among all registered votes, between 69 and 70% of us want to provide Medicare to every American. Between 2018 and 2020 support among Democrats grew from 86% to 88%, stayed steady among independents (68%) and even in sinking by 6 points among Republicans still leaves 46% of Republicans in favor of Medicare-for-All. Men and women support Medicare-for-All equally and every region of the country backs it:

• West- 78%
• Midwest- 70%
• Northeast- 64%
• South- 64%

Because of the Trump regime's incompetence and dysfunction and because Trump himself is a malignant narcissist incapable of grappling with society's problems, the U.S. is the worst-hit of any country in the world by the pandemic. Last week we crossed over 50,000 deaths, Next week we will cross over a million confirmed cases. The dozen countries worst hit as of Saturday:

• U.S.- 926,530
• Spain- 223,759
• Italy- 192,994
• France- 159,828
• Germany- 155,054
• U.K.- 143,464
• Turkey- 104,912
• Iran- 89,328
• China- 82,816
• Russia- 74,588
• Brazil- 54,043
• Belgium- 45,325

And now the pandemic is spreading beyond big cities like New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Baltimore, New Orleans, Atlanta, Newark, Detroit and Chicago and on into Trumpistan. Last week, the states with huge growth in confirmed cases relative to their populations were South Dakota, Iowa, Nebraska, Mississippi, Utah, Alabama, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kansas, Wisconsin and South Carolina.

A new Brookings study shows that "during the first three weeks of April, new counties showing a high prevalence of COVID-19 cases are more suburban, whiter, and voted more strongly for Donald Trump than counties the virus hit first. Note in the chart below how between March 29 and April 19 how counties that supported Trump went from about 34% of the infection rates to around 42%.

NY Times star reporters Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman wrote yesterday that Nervous Republicans See Trump Sinking, And Taking Senate With Him. A great part of their nervousness revolves around Trump's continued inability to confront the pandemic. They wrote that his "erratic handling of the coronavirus outbreak, the worsening economy and a cascade of ominous public and private polling have Republicans increasingly nervous that they are at risk of losing the presidency and the Senate if Mr. Trump does not put the nation on a radically improved course... [His] standing in states that he carried in 2016 looks increasingly wobbly: New surveys show him trailing significantly in battleground states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, and he is even narrowly behind in must-win Florida... Trump’s single best advantage as an incumbent-- his access to the bully pulpit-- has effectively become a platform for self-sabotage. His daily news briefings on the coronavirus outbreak are inflicting grave damage on his political standing, Republicans believe, and his recent remarks about combating the virus with sunlight and disinfectant were a breaking point for a number of senior party officials." Trump's late February standing in a dozen swing states according to the Morning Consult Trump Tracker in terms of what has happened to his net approval since taking office:

• Arizona- down 19
• Florida- down 19
• Georgia- down 16
• Iowa- down 14
• Michigan- down 18
• Minnesota- down 8
• New Hampshire- down 19
• North Carolina- down 13
• Ohio- down 15
• Pennsylvania- down 11
• Texas- down 13
• Wisconsin- down 17

In their report Martin and Haberman noted that "Glen Bolger, a longtime Republican pollster, said the landscape for his party had become far grimmer compared with the pre-virus plan to run almost singularly around the country’s prosperity. 'With the economy in free-fall, Republicans face a very challenging environment and it’s a total shift from where we were a few months ago,' Mr. Bolger said. 'Democrats are angry, and now we have the foundation of the campaign yanked out from underneath us.' ... Republicans were taken aback this past week by the results of a 17-state survey commissioned by the Republican National Committee. It found the president struggling in the Electoral College battlegrounds and likely to lose without signs of an economic rebound this fall, according to a party strategist outside the R.N.C. who is familiar with the poll’s results. The Trump campaign’s own surveys have also shown an erosion of support, according to four people familiar with the data, as the coronavirus remains the No. 1 issue worrying voters."

The Republican Senate woes come as anger toward Mr. Trump is rising from some of the party’s most influential figures on Capitol Hill.

After working closely with Senate Republicans at the start of the year, some of the party’s top congressional strategists say the handful of political advisers Mr. Trump retains have communicated little with them since the health crisis began.

In a campaign steered by Mr. Trump, whose rallies drove fund-raising and data harvesting, the center of gravity has of late shifted to the White House. His campaign headquarters will remain closed for another few weeks, and West Wing officials say the president’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, hasn’t been to the White House since last month, though he is in touch by phone.

Then there is the president’s conduct.

In just the last week, he has undercut the efforts of his campaign and his allies to attack Mr. Biden on China; suddenly proposed a halt on immigration; and said governors should not move too soon to reopen their economies-- a week after calling on protesters to “liberate” their states. And that was all before his digression into the potential healing powers of disinfectants.

Republican lawmakers have gone from watching his lengthy daily briefings with a tight-lipped grimace to looking upon them with horror.

...Privately, other party leaders are less restrained about the political damage they believe Mr. Trump is doing to himself and Republican candidates. One prominent G.O.P. senator said the nightly sessions were so painful he could not bear watching any longer.

Charles Booker is a progressive state Rep from Louisville who is running for the Kentucky Senate seat McConnell uses as his base of power. "Mitch McConnell," he told us yesterday, "knows that Donald Trump's lack of leadership is hurting Americans-- including his own constituents in Kentucky-- but in order to preserve his own power he has made himself into the President's lapdog, covering up his corruption, facilitating his failures, working to suppress the vote and hijack our democracy from American voters who he knows don't approve of the direction of the country."