Let's Put The Pandemic's Preference For America Into Some Context

Worldwide, reported COVID-19 cases were 5,391,485 yesterday, of which 1,666,012 were in the U.S. The 5 countries with the next highest caseloads have, combined, far more people than the U.S. does, but, also combined, far fewer cases:

• Brazil- 342,410
• Russia- 335,882
• Spain- 282,370
• U.K.- 257,154
• Italy- 229,327

The U.S. has something even worse-- Trump. "It’s perfectly clear by now," wrote Andrew Sullivan on Friday, "that the United States does not have a functioning president or administration. It also seems clear that this does not matter to a sizable chunk of the population. They just don’t care-- even when it could lead them to lose their lives and their livelihoods. A year ago precisely, Trump’s approval rating was, in FiveThirtyEight’s poll of polls, 53.8% disapprove, 41.1% approve. This week, the spread was 53.1% disapprove and 43% approve. Almost identical. None of the events of the last year-- impeachment, plague, economic collapse-- have had anything but a trivial impact on public opinion. Neither, it seems, does the plain evidence of Trump’s derangement... I know we’re used to it, but there is no rational or coherent explanation for any of this. There is no strategy, or political genius. There is just a delusional pathology in which he says whatever comes into his head at any moment, determined entirely by his mood, which is usually bad. His attention span is so tiny and his memory so occluded that he can say two contradictory things with equal conviction repeatedly, and have no idea there might be any inconsistency at all."

A new YouGov poll for Yahoo News found that fully 44% of self-identified Republicans actually believe that Bill Gates is plotting to use a mass COVID-19 vaccination campaign as a pretext to implant microchips in billions of people and monitor their movements. Just 26% of Republicans correctly identify the story as false. Obviously, normal people do not believe this far right trope.

Another example churches are often a breeding ground for the contagion. Putting their services online, saved South Korea as the disease spread from church-goer to church-goer early on in the pandemic. Last week, churches opening early in the U.S. had to close down again when their parishioners started getting sick. Trump's response?

Reporting for Politico, Gabby Orr wrote Friday afternoon that "A sudden shift in support for Donald Trump among religious conservatives is triggering alarm bells inside his reelection campaign, where top aides have long banked on expanding the president’s evangelical base as a key part of their strategy for victory this November. The anxiety over Trump’s standing with the Christian right surfaced after a pair of surveys by reputable outfits earlier this month found waning confidence in the administration’s coronavirus response among key religious groups, with a staggering decline in the president’s favorability among white evangelicals and white Catholics. Both are crucial constituencies that supported Trump by wide margins in 2016 and could sink his reelection prospects if their turnout shrinks this fall." A PRRI survey last month showed Trump's favorability collapsing among both white evangeicals-- down 11 points-- and among white Catholics-- down 12 points. He had already been cratering among mainline Protestants but declined a further 18 points in one month!! Well, at least, he'll always have the Hassidic Jews of Brooklyn!

Republicans would have be out of their minds not to understand that these kinds of numbers at the heart of the GOP base is going to threaten dozens of career politicians' careers as well. This week Change Research looked at 8 key Senate races where Republican incumbents are struggling to hang on and found that voters in all 8 states "want aid allocated to state and local governments for essential services, jobs, and schools, benefits and protections for essential workers, and public health initiatives including testing and treatment." That's Pelosi's HEROES Act which McConnell and his cronies have bottled up in the Senate. These are the 8 incumbents with the percentage of voters who support the HEROES Act:

• Martha McSally (R-AZ)- 59% support, just 37% agree with McSally and McConnell.
• Cory Gardner (R-CO)- 62% support, just 34% agree with Gardner and McConnell.
• David Perdue (R-GA)- 55% support, just 38% agree with Perdue (and Kelly Loeffler) and McConnell.
• Joni Ernst (R-IA)- 53% support, just 43% agree with Ernst and McConnell.
• Susan Collins (R-ME)- 59% support, just 36% agree with Collins and McConnell.
• Steve Daines (R-MT)- 54% support, just 40% agree with McSally and McConnell.
• Thom Tillis (R-NC)- 65% support, just 30% agree with Tillis and McConnell.
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)- 54% support, just 40% agree with Graham and McConnell.

Change Research also reported that voters in battleground states say that they are more likely to vote for an elected official who supports the HEROES Act-- 68% so in North Carolina, 65% so in Colorado, 63% in Maine, 61% in both South Carolina and Arizona, 59% in Georgia and 57% so in both Montana and Iowa. This is incredibly bad news for these Republican incumbents who are attached at the hip to both Trump and McConnell.