Americans Trust Democratic Governors Far More Than They Trust Trump To Handle The Pandemic-- And That Will Play Out In November

Louisiana is a deep red state, although they elected a fairly conservative centrist Democrat, John Bel Edwards, governor-- twice. In 2016 the state went for Trump over Hillary 1,178,004 (58.1%) to 779,535 (38.4%). She took 10 of the state's 64 parishes-- basically the black vote and nothing more. The state has 2 ultra-conservative Republican U.S. senators and of the 6 congressional seats, 5 are incontestably Republican and one (grotesquely gerrymandered)-- with a 61.4% black majority-- incontestably Democratic. The legislature is also a Republican bastion. The state Senate has 27 Republicans and 12 Democrats and the House has 68 Republicans, 35 Democrats and 2 independents.

Jon Bel Edwards, the former House minority leader was elected governor in 2015, beating scandal-scarred David Vitter 646,860 (56.1%) to 505,929 (43.9%). Not one of the brilliant pundits mass media depends on for their campaign coverage got that right:

Edwards, the only statewide elected official in Louisiana and the only Democratic governor in the Deep South, had a much tougher race in 2019 and no Democrat had been reelected in Louisiana in living memory. Trump and Pence campaigned fiercely for their candidate, Eddie Rispone (a crooked businessman who self-financed his campaign to the tune of $12 million). On election day the Republicans won a veto-proof supermajority in the state Senate and fell two seats short of the threshold in the House. Edwards beat back the Trumpist challenge 774,469 (51.3%) to 734,128 (48.7%).

The reason I'm rehashing all this today is to give you a little context for a brand new Louisiana survey from PPP-- one I contend shows the lay of the land in terms of how voters nationally may be looking at the response-- or non-response-- of the Trump Regime to the coronavirus. Yesterday Atlantic writer Peter Nicholas-- in a piece about those daily wretched coronavirus briefings-- quoted Trump ass-licker Lindsey Graham (R-SC) explaining that "Trump’s opponent really is the coronavirus. If he’s seen to have handled this well and done a good job in the eyes of the public, he’d be almost impossible to beat. If he’s viewed as having fallen short, he’d be in trouble." A hefty majority of Louisiana voters are still lockstep Republicans and there is no question that they will give the state's 8 electoral votes to Trump in November-- even though it is worth mentioning that according to the latest (pre-pandemic) Morning Consult tracking poll, Trump's job approval has decreased by 10 points since he was inaugurated and now stands at 59% approving and 38% disapproving.

But what PPP found is fairly stunning. Edwards is leading Trump among registered voters on their respective handling of the pandemic by an astounding 43 points. We're talking about Louisiana... where national Democrats don't even campaign.

68% approve of the job Edwards is doing handling the virus to 16% who disapprove for a net rating of +52. Democrats (81/8), independents (60/19), and Republicans (56/25) alike give Edwards good marks. His overall approval rating is similarly high with 66% approving and just 18% disapproving of his work as Governor.

Opinions on Trump are much more closely split and polarized. 50% approve of the job he’s doing handling the virus to 41% who disapprove for a net rating of +9. While he gets strong support from Republicans for the job he’s done (87/9), independents are much more closely divided (47/43), and he gets only 22% support from Democrats.

Louisiana voters are taking the virus seriously. 78% say they’re very concerned about it to 17% who are ‘somewhat concerned’ and just 5% who say they’re ‘not that concerned.’ Almost no one thinks the government is over reacting in its efforts to slow down the virus. At the state level 59% of voters say the actions that have been taken are ‘about right’ with 28% saying there’s been an under reaction and just 10% saying there’s been an over reaction. At the federal level it’s more divided with 47% saying the actions taken have been ‘about right,’ 41% saying there’s been an under reaction, and just 9% saying there’s been an over reaction.

When asked who’s done a better job handling the virus overall Edward beats out Trump by a 46-41 margin, pretty impressive given that Trump won the state by 20 points.

Last week, PPP released similar polls of voters in 3 swing states-- Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina-- plus California. All 4 polls show voters prefer their governor's response to the pandemic than Trump's.

In our new Michigan poll, conducted for our friends at Progress Michigan and their Lake Effect state survey, ‘That Woman from Michigan,’ as the President has referred to Governor Gretchen Whitmer, has a net approval 37 points better than his on handling the virus. 62% approve of the job she’s doing to just 28% who disapprove. Meanwhile he’s upside down, with 46% approving of the job he’s doing to 49% who disapprove.

The Michigan poll also shows Biden narrowly beating Trump 48-45% and Democrat Gary Peters winning reelection over Republican John James 45-38%.

In Pennsylvania only 46% of voters approve of how Trump has handled the virus to 49% who disapprove. By contrast Governor Tom Wolf gets a 62% approval rating for his handling of the virus, to only 20% who disapprove.

It’s a similar story in North Carolina. Voters are closely divided on Trump’s handling of the virus, with 49% approving and 45% disapproving. Meanwhile they give overwhelmingly positive reviews to Governor Roy Cooper, with 63% approving and just 19% disapproving of his handling of the virus.

...The North Carolina poll also found bad news for Richard Burr and Thom Tillis. 50% of voters in the state think Burr should resign to only 24% who think he should remain in office in wake of revelations about his stock sales. Burr’s had a net 28 point drop in his approval rating since last summer from -4 then at 32/36 to -32 now at 22/54. Thom Tillis isn’t a whole lot more popular. Only 24% approve of the job he’s doing to 48% who disapprove as he heads into a tough reelection challenge from Cal Cunningham.

California is as blue as Louisiana is red and, predictably, voters polled there are even less impressed with Trump in 2020 than they were in 2016. In 2016, Hillary beat Trump in California by a substantial 61.6% to 32.8%. If the election were held today, a far weaker candidate than Hillary, Status Quo Joe, would beat Trump 67 to 29%. California voters think Governor Gavin Newsom is doing a much better job on handling the pandemic than Trump is. 56% strongly approve and 27% somewhat approve. 5% strongly disapprove and 8% somewhat disapprove. Meanwhile 51% of voters surveyed say they distrust the federal government's ability to handle disasters like the coronavirus emergency. Trump's overall job approval rating in California was a shockingly low 29% last week.

Failure by Nancy Ohanian

A Little Look At Trump's America One Year Before The Fateful Choice

Barr, Pompeo, Trumpanzee and Pence

UPDATE: With 100% of parishes reporting, Governor John Bel Edwards (D) was reelected in red, red Louisiana, despite-- or more likely because of-- a barrage of Trump's carrying on and tons and tons of Republican sewer money:

• John Bel Edwards (D)- 763,386 (51%)
• Eddie Rispone (R)- 731,455 (49%)

If anyone wasn't already sure, this confirms that Trump has the kiss of death when it comes to endorsing candidates. America is onto this crook, even in states like Louisiana and Kentucky, and if Trump can't win in Louisiana and Kentucky, where exactly can he win? He's still relatively popular in both of those states, but his approval is underwater in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Georgia, Arizona, North Carolina, Florida, Utah, Montana, Nebraska, Alaska, Ohio... all states he won in 2016. Watch him drag Republican senators Steve Daines, Martha McSally, Cory Gardner, Susan Collins, Joni Ernst, Thom Tillis, David Perdue and Dan Sullivan down the crapper with him. And don't they all ever deserve that!

Chris Strohm and Jordan Fabian, reporting for Bloomberg, wrote that Giuliani is being investigated by the Feds for "campaign finance violations and a failure to register as a foreign agent as part of an active investigation into his financial dealings. The probe of Giuliani, which one official said could also include possible charges on violating laws against bribing foreign officials or conspiracy, presents a serious threat to Trump’s presidency from a man that former national security adviser John Bolton has called a 'hand grenade.'" He is widely expected to be indicted.

Last night, the Washington Post published an Op-Ed by prominent authors Jon Meacham, Walter Issacson and Evan Thomas, It's The Wise Men vs The Wise Guys In Trump's America. They noted that Napoleon is reputed to have said that "geography is destiny" and continued that the axiom "came to our minds this week as we watched two very different but neighboring universes collide before the House Intelligence Committee. The ramrod-straight William B. Taylor Jr. and the bow-tied George Kent, two diplomats from the largely WASP ethos of the post-World War II foreign policy establishment, one headquartered at places such as the Council on Foreign Relations’ imposing Harold Pratt House at 68th Street and Park Avenue, found themselves bearing noble witness amid an impeachment imbroglio that may be best understood by an appreciation of the wilder mores of midtown Manhattan. Only a few blocks away from the portrait-lined walls and genteel cocktails of the Council lies the real center of gravity in the politics of 2019: the gilded Trump Tower, built on the fluid morals and cutthroat deal-making of New York real estate. The Tower sits cheek-by-jowl (the image is chosen purposely) with the Grand Havana Room, a cigar club frequented by Rudy Giuliani, atop a Fifth Avenue building owned by the family of Jared Kushner. Walk a bit farther south-- you don’t even need a Town Car-- and you reach Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., home of Fox News and the New York Post."

To Trump supporters, the testimony Wednesday was the “deep state” surfacing briefly from the depths of white papers, institutional knowledge and a facility with U.S. military and diplomatic history. (Kent’s evocation of von Steuben and Lafayette was straight out of a Ward Just novel.)

To Trump’s critics and defenders of constitutional norms, the Republican narrative that the president’s threats to deny security assistance to Ukraine was just the kind of thing tough guys do (and, after getting caught, he didn’t do it!), suggested that tabloid hyperbole, Fox News arcana and New York hardball had replaced the real world. From the Long Telegram to Twitter, and from Averell Harriman to Sean Hannity: To borrow a phrase of Henry Adams, himself a scion of presidents, the current moment disproves Darwin.

The story of upended conventions and of a president who careens between self-parody and serious lawlessness is by now familiar, as old as the Age of Trump itself. The distinction is that the impeachment hearings have given us perhaps the clearest example yet of the triumph of political demimonde wise guys such as Trump, Giuliani and the Rogers Stone and Ailes over the latter-day Robert Lovetts and Dean Achesons. And it’s not just Wise Men, of course: Jeane Kirkpatrick, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice hailed from the establishment world, as do Marie Yovanovitch and Fiona Hill.

The moment of decision between the Wise Men and the wise guys on Wednesday was subtle but nevertheless clear. It came when Rep. Michael R. Turner, a Republican, noted that diplomats such as Taylor and Kent “deal in words of understanding. Words of beliefs and feelings, because in your profession, that’s what you work with to try to pull together policy.” Theirs, the lawmaker was implying, was almost a touchingly naive way of life in which one trusted what one was told, assumed the fundamental truthfulness of, say, a presidentially appointed ambassador, and believed that a president himself meant what he said.

No longer: The midtown game of wheeling and dealing, often done over a cigar at the Grand Havana or perhaps an overpriced steak at 21, has now gone global as the denizens of Trump’s neighborhood run shadow foreign policy ops seeking 2020 election help and good paydays.

Had any other president, Taylor was asked, linked official aid in the American interest to private or political benefit? With a stoicism and brevity that would’ve made George Marshall quietly proud, Taylor replied, “No.”

To be sure, the establishment has been far from perfect, its fall from preeminence more than partly self-inflicted. Elite education and conventional expertise don’t guarantee good results, and America has been shaped by the battle between the privileged and the populist since long before Andrew Jackson. More recently, there was Vietnam writ large, and intelligence failures like Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. Grass-stained ideals of fair play learned on the playing fields of Groton could seem like forlorn hopes on the streets Basra or Baghdad. And the semi-aristocrats of places like Pratt House and the Century Association had a way of turning up their noses at the lesser mortals of Trump’s bridge-and-tunnel crowd.

Alger Hiss once inflamed a young congressman named Richard Nixon when he turned to Nixon, who was about to ask some probing questions about Hiss’s ties to the Kremlin, and sneered, “My law school was Harvard. Yours, I believe, was Whittier?” (Actually, it was Duke.) No wonder Nixon could sell himself as a man of the people when Hiss turned out to be a communist spy.

Such establishment condescension also fueled the rise of Joe McCarthy and of McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, who served as lawyer and mentor in the 1970s and ’80s to a young developer from Queens who was looking to make it big in Manhattan. And Donald Trump never forgot a thing Cohn taught him. (One particularly relevant lesson today: Confronted with a tough case to argue, Cohn would say that he didn’t need to know what the law was-- just who the judge was.)

In midtown Manhattan, Trump learned to dominate the news — in his rise, that meant the New York Post, with its screaming, one-sourced stories, an early harbinger of the presidential Twitter strategy. He learned the power of TV. And he learned that tough guys — or “killers,” in a favorite approbation of Trump’s-- like Ailes, who presided over this stew of often-abusive power, money and misinformation, were the kinds of guys he could count on.

For one thing was certain: The Wise Men of 68th Street or the United Nations or any of the traditional institutions of expertise weren’t his guys. The question America now faces in impeachment and, should Trump prevail, in the 2020 election, is whose New York will serve us best in the long run-- the wise guys’ or the Wise Men’s?

I bet you don't have to think about which side of the equation, the wretched and pathetic Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III falls on. Really wretched. You don't have watch them both... but you can. This doozy came first, "Blow Great Job:"





A week later, for whatever reason, Sessions' senate campaign released this cringe-worthy little portrait that illustrates how the Trump Regime is more a product of this America than an actual creator of it:

Red Hot Louisiana Appears To Be Trending Towards John Bel Edwards In The Gubernatorial Race

Louisiana's gubernatorial runoff is this coming Saturday, Nov. 16. It pits current governor, John Bel Edwards, a conservative Democrat, against a corrupt  Trumpist businessman, Eddie Rispone, who beat Rep. Ralph Abraham in the October 12 primary. Rispone beat Abraham by writing himself a $12 million check. Jungle primary results:

• John Bel Edwards (D)- 625,970 (46.6%)
• Eddie Rispone (R)- 368,319 (27.4%)
• Ralph Abraham (R)- 317,149 (23.6%)

Although Trump and Pence have been campaigning like their lives depended on it for Ripsone, two of the most prominent Republicans in state government, Senate president John Alario (a former House speaker and the longest-serving legislator in state history) and state Senator Dan Morrish, endorsed Edwards. This ad helps explain a lot about how a Democrat-- particularly a conservative one-- managed to put together a competitive coalition in a state as red (R+11) as Louisiana:





Trump beat Hillary in 2016 in a landslide-- 1,178,638 (58.09%) to 780,154 (36.45%). She won only 10 of Louisiana's 64 parishes. How did Edwards come to be the only Democratic governor in the Deep South? In 2015, the incumbent Republican Governor Bobby Jindal was not eligible to run again and the party's nominee was scandal-machine John Vitter. Edwards beat him 646,924 (56.11%) to 505,940 (43.89%), making him the first Democrat to win a statewide election in Louisiana since 2008, when Mary Landrieu won her third term as a U.S. Senator. The Republican Lt. Governor, Jay Dardenne, who had also run in the primary, endorsed Edwards over Vitter.

The Democratic Governors Association is funding Gumbo PAC to attack Rispone and as of the end of October had put $5.5 million in. The Republican Governors Association has it's own internal smear machine, Right Direction PAC, which had already sent $6.2 million against Edwards by the end of October. On top of that the neo-fascist Make Louisiana Great Again PAC spent another $373,000 on radio and TV spots smearing Edwards, and a third sewer money PAC, Truth in Politics, run by notoriously corrupt-- even by Louisiana-- Baton Rouge contractor Lane Grisby put $750,000 into ads against Edwards.

The most recent public poll, by JMC Analytics shows Edwards ahead 48-46% (and 50-47% including leaners). In person early voting-- which accounts for about 20% of the Louisiana vote, ended on Friday. And the big news was Democratic enthusiasm. JMC analyzed what we can learn for this cycle's early vote, which indicates a 51% total voter turn out (1.51 million voters) and a win for Edwards:

As of last night, 489,649 Louisianians either early voted by person or by mail in ballot (451,171 in person, and 38,478 mail in ballots). To put this number in perspective, this is the highest early voting turnout EVER for a non-Presidential election. Not only did it exceed the volume of in person early voting for the primary by 31% (or 115,459), but it was 91% (or 232,628) higher than day in person early voting for the 2015 runoff. The top five (by early voting volume) early voting parishes were East Baton Rouge (58,249 early/absentee votes), Orleans (39,260), St. Tammany (35,097), Jefferson (31,523), and Ouachita (20,854).

Whatever the turnout levels are from election cycle to election cycle, black voters (who are almost unanimously Democratic) tend to show up in greater numbers on the last day. But very rarely do they turn out to the extent that they did yesterday: a whopping 40% of the last day early voters were black (blacks represent 31% of Louisiana’s registered voters). As further illustration of how unprecedented black participation this strong is, in the 116 days of available data for in person early voting going all the way back to 2008, only four other times has the black early vote as a percentage of the total vote ever hit 40% (and three of those times were in 2008, when Barack Obama was first elected).

This 40% black electorate was in addition to stronger (relative to the primary) black early voting for the previous six days which never dropped below 29%. This means that the final early vote is 31% black-- a figure 6% higher (percentage-wise) than in the primary and 1% higher than in the 2015 runoff.

Does this 6% increase in the black share of the early voting electorate equate to a similar six point boost for Governor Edwards, though? Because at the same time that the black share of the electorate increased 6% relative to the primary, the Republican share only decreased 3% (it was 38%, compared to 41% in the primary). The remainder of the decrease came from lower turnout (percentage-wise) from white Democrats and white Independents. And since Governor Edwards has been running strongly among white Democrats (60-37% in the last poll JMC conducted and publicly released) and relatively well among white Independents (he trails 38-56% in the last poll), the incremental benefit to his campaign isn’t as much as it would seem, because the Republican percentage of the electorate remained relatively high, and among this group, Governor Edwards trails 17-79%.

What all of this analysis means in practical terms is that because of (1) the decrease in white Democrats/white Independents and (2) the relatively high Republican early vote, an Edwards poll lead of 50-47% over Rispone would become 50-46% Edwards/Rispone if the poll results were recalculated to reflect the demographic composition of the early vote.

Yesterday a Mason-Dixon poll was released by the local Fox affiliate and it also showed Edwards leading Rispone, 48-46%.

Why is this race such a big deal? Although he is a conservative, Edwards is immensely better than Rispone in terms of how Lousianans will be impacted by state government. Rispone is literally as bad as Trump-- yes that bad! And there's another factor to consider as well. The Democratic victories last week-- especially in Kentucky, Virginia and Pennsylvania-- have made a number of Senate Republicans very nervous about their lockstep support for and enablement of Trump. If Trump was unable to help GOP Governor Matt Bevin-- his closest gubernatorial ally anywhere (and in a state as red as Kentucky)-- what will he be able to do for anyone, anywhere? A win for Edwards in Louisiana next weekend will drive that home, particularly to vulnerable red state senators David Perdue (GA), Thom Tillis (NC), Martha McSally (AZ), Steve Daines (MT), Joni Ernst (IA) and Dan Sullivan (AK).

Is There Such A Thing As A Tent That's Too Big?

Gov. John Bel Edwards (D)-- The DNC will spend any money you send them to save him

"I call on the overwhelming bipartisan majority of legislators who voted for it to join me in continuing to build a better Louisiana," wrote Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards just before he signed one of the country's most draconian anti-Choice bills, "that cares for the least among us and provides more opportunity for everyone." Edwards ran as a Democrat. With his signature on the bill yesterday, Edwards helped the GOP with their pledge to get Roe v Wade overturned by the Trumpist Supreme Court. And now they can say it was "bipartisan." Louisiana is one of several states-- Alabama, Missouri, Ohio, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi-- to pass extreme and unconstitutional anti-Choice legislation this year... but the only one with a Democratic governor.

Edwards was not a reluctant supporter of the bill either. In his own words: "My position hasn’t changed: In eight years in the Legislature, I was a pro-life legislator, 100 percent with the Louisiana Right to Life. When I ran for governor, I said that I was pro-life, and so that’s something that’s consistent."

Under this law, which contains no exceptions for rape or incest, a doctor who performs an abortion after a fetal heartbeat is detected-- say 6 weeks-- could face two years in prison and lose his or her medical license. Edwards is up for reelection in November and he must be wondering how much of his Democratic base will desert him. In 2015-- when he ran against crook and pervert David Vitter (R)-- Edwards couldn't have asked for a better opponent. He beat Vitter 646,924 (56.1%) to 505,940 (43.9%) in a state that was just about to give Trump a 1,178,638 (58.09%) landslide victory over Hillary Clinton's 780,154 (38.45%). So far Republican Congressman Ralph Abraham and extremely right-wing political donor Eddie Rispone are Edwards' opponents. The filing deadline is August 8 and former congressmen Charles Boustany and John Fleming are both considering jumping in.

In any case, I think this betrayal of Louisiana Democratic women will end Edwards' chance for a second term. The latest poll showed him leading Abraham-- 40% to 36% with 24% undecided.

A Democrat in the legislature, John Milkovich, wrote the bill and Democrats in the state legislature also voted for it. State Senator Karen Carter Peterson wasn't among them. She's the chair of the Louisiana Democratic Party and her twitter stream today was not exactly Edwards-friendly. Lots like this:

All that said, I want to bring up a nice Louisiana piece in The Independent that ran a couple of years ago, Louisiana floods destroy home of Christian leader who says God sends natural disasters to punish gay people. Kate Nelson: "A flood has destroyed the home of a Christian lobbyist who preached that God sends natural disasters to punish gays. President of the controversial Christian group Family Research Council, Tony Perkins, described a deluge of 'near biblical proportions' hitting his Louisiana home. During a broadcast on the group’s radio station, he told how he and his family had fled in a canoe.

[Perkins] has also claimed homosexuality is incompatible with evolution and has likened it to a drug or alcohol addiction.

He added: "The most important thing that Christians can offer to homosexuals is hope-- hope that their sins, just like the sins of anyone else, can be forgiven and their lives transformed.”

Mr Perkins said he has been forced to live off “God’s provisions” following the flood.