Unconventional

The first night of the first virtual convention is now in the books (or, maybe more appropriately, on the hard drives). Here are our impressions:

• Short Attention Span Theater: The Democrats decided to limit themselves to a two-hour primetime window, covering the times most likely to reach viewers coast-to-coast (9-11 ET, 6-8 PT). At the same time, the Party wanted most of the bells and whistles of a convention (convocation, national anthem performance, etc.), and wanted to give lots of prominent Democrats and lots of rank-and-file Democrats a chance to share their views. The result was a rapid-fire sequence of something like 70 video clips, some live and some recorded. It was very much like the MD telethon, or a PBS pledge drive, with Eva Longoria Bastón as MC. There were some glitches, and it was a bit disjointed, but if the goal was to keep viewers' attention and/or to produce a few viral clips, the evening was reasonably successful.
  
  Some amount of attention has been given, incidentally, to the speaking slots granted to folks who are not so popular with some Democrats (John Kasich, Michael Bloomberg), and to the very brief speaking slots granted to Democrats who may not be DNC favorites (Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Andrew Yang). To a large extent, this turns out to be overblown. Excepting Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who spoke for about 6 minutes, and Michelle Obama, who spoke for about 20, nobody got more than a minute or two to speak.
  
  
• And The Award Goes To...: In addition to having elements of a pledge drive, the evening also appeared to have drawn some inspiration from the Academy Awards. Every once in a while, the Party had a musical number (most notably one from Bruce Springsteen). It felt a bit odd to us, but people on social media seemed to approve. The evening also had an "In Memoriam" segment, although one that featured folks who succumbed to COVID-19, as opposed to prominent party members who died in the last year.
  
  
• Theme 1: Democratic Diversity: There were a number of messages that were highlighted on Monday evening; the extent to which these were centrally planned, as opposed to emerging organically, is not clear. Probably some of both. In any case, the very first thing the Democrats wanted everyone to know is that they embrace diversity. The evening began with a Latina hostess, a prayer from a Latino clergyman, and a mega-Zoom performance of the National Anthem from young people of many different ethnicities. The effort to represent different groups continued throughout the evening.
  
  In terms of specific issues, a meaningful bit of time was spent positioning the Party on racial justice. George Floyd's brother made an appearance, early on, to speak about the need for change, and to ask for a moment of silence in George's memory. Nothing quite like that has happened at a political convention before. At the same time, several Democrats—including Joe Biden, in a fairly brief cameo—made clear that they are looking to reform the police, not defund them.
  
  
• Theme 2: Democratic Unity: There was also a clear effort to communicate the notion that, while the primaries may have been contentious, the Democrats are all a big, happy family now. Nearly all of Biden's former rivals for the nomination made at least a brief appearance to express their support for him, with Sens. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN) and Sanders given the most screen time. Sanders' speech was everything that the Party could have asked for; it was genuine and made a very clear argument for why his supporters should regard Biden as a far superior option to Trump.
  
  
• Theme 3: Joe Biden Is a Swell Fellow: Quite a few speakers, from Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC) to Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) to former Republican congresswoman Susan Molinari to Michelle Obama made a point of noting that they know Biden personally, can vouch for his character and his decency, and feel that he—as a fellow of working-class roots who has known tragedy—understands the challenges facing regular Joes and Josephines.
  
  
• Theme 4: Republicans for Biden: Roughly halfway through the evening, there was a run of clips from GOP politicians (Kasich, Molinari, Meg Whitman, Christine Todd Whitman) and rank-and-file Republican voters making the argument that Donald Trump has not adhered to Republican principles, and that among the choices available to voters in 2020, Biden is actually more in line with the values of the GOP. That's actually probably true, if we're talking about the Republican Party of George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon.
  
  
• Theme 5: Vote Early, or In Person: Trump and his henchman Louis DeJoy appear to have made their anti-USPS moves too early, such that many of the speakers sounded the alarm on voting, telling viewers to do whatever it takes to get their ballots counted. Michelle Obama was the most direct, declaring that if people don't mail their ballots early, they should strongly consider putting on a mask and voting in person.
  
  
• Theme 6: Trump Is Outmatched: On one hand, the Democrats want to communicate their view that Trump has been a poor president, and that Joe Biden (or, for that matter, a talking donkey, a Magic 8-Ball, or a bag of turnips) would be an upgrade. On the other hand, they don't want to put people who voted for Trump in 2016 on the defensive. And so, the evening's speakers largely shied away from hammering the President on "he's a bad person" stuff (corruption, racism, etc.) and focused more on "he just isn't up to the job, as it turns out."
  
  Handling that argument, in a general way, was Michelle Obama, who gave the best-received speech of the night:
  
  
  
  Close to tears at some points, and reminding viewers that she hates politics, but that her love for her country is even stronger, Obama said:

  Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.

  She did make references to a lack of character, to a propensity for nastiness, and to the racism in American society, but all were very carefully crafted so as not to be a full-frontal assault on any person or group of people. Unlike some prominent Democratic women, Obama knows that there is little upside in utilizing a loaded word like "deplorables."
  
  The specific case study of Trumpian mismanagement, meanwhile, was COVID-19, which came up early and often over the course of the evening. Beyond Michelle Obama's speech, the clip most likely to go viral came from Kristin Urquiza, a voter from California:
  
  
  
  Urquiza explained that her father was a Trump supporter until he contracted COVID-19 and died. "His only preexisting condition was trusting Donald Trump, and for that, he paid with his life," she observed, before dedicating her vote for Biden to her father's memory.
  
  
• Kamala Who?: For all the things the evening managed to touch upon, the VP nominee was all-but-invisible. Some have suggested that was because many of the videos were recorded before she got picked. It's also possible that Wednesday night, when Harris is scheduled to speak, is going to be Kamala Night. Maybe both are true. In any event, it was the most noticeable omission of the night.

We haven't got the faintest idea how much this will move the needle, or if it will move the needle at all. Polls suggest that only one-third of Americans plan to tune in (and most of those are presumably true believers and/or politics junkies whose votes are already set). Further, the lack of audience feedback (laughs, cheers, etc.) means that an important social cue is absent. On the other hand, if a few of the designed-to-go-viral clips actually do, it's plausible that they could have a much greater reach than a more conventional convention speech would.

Up today will be another long list of speakers, including Former Acting U.S. Attorney General Sally Yates (who probably will attack Trump as corrupt), AOC, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (who will probably be boring), former president Bill Clinton and keynote speaker Jill Biden. We will be interested to see if the evening has the same basic themes, or goes in a noticeably different direction (Corruption? LGBTQ issues? Rebuilding America's relationships abroad?), if they do another "in memoriam" segment, and if that segment is COVID-19 deaths again or if it pivots to prominent Democrats who passed in the last year (Elijah Cummings, John Lewis, etc.). (Z)

Three Polls Tell Two Stories

Yesterday, we had an item on the newest national poll from NBC news/WSJ, which has Joe Biden up on Donald Trump by nine points, 50% to 41%. Since then, three more major national polls have been released. ABC News/WaPo and CBS News/YouGov see things much as NBC and The Wall Street Journal do. They each give Biden a 10-point lead (54% to 44% for ABC, 52% to 42% for CBS). On the other hand, CNN reports that the race has tightened, with Biden leading by just four points, 50% to 46%.

What to make of this discrepancy? Well, it probably won't surprise readers to learn that we think the CNN poll is the outlier. To start, here are the results from the most recent national polls conducted by 15 different outlets/pollsters:

Pollster/Outlet	Polling Dates	Biden Pct.	Trump Pct.	Net
CNN	8/12 - 8/15	50	46	Biden +4
ABC News/WaPo	8/12 - 8/15	54	44	Biden +10
CBS News/YouGov	8/12 - 8/14	52	42	Biden +10
NBC News/WSJ	8/9 - 8/12	50	41	Biden +9
FOX News	8/9 - 8/12	49	42	Biden +7
Economist/YouGov	8/9 - 8/11	49	39	Biden +10
The Hill/HarrisX	8/8 - 8/11	44	40	Biden +4
CNBC/Change Research	8/7 - 8/9	50	44	Biden +6
Monmouth	8/6 - 8/10	51	41	Biden +10
Rasmussen Reports	8/5 - 8/11	49	43	Biden +6
NPR/PBS/Marist	8/3 - 8/11	53	42	Biden +11
GU Politics/Battleground	8/1 - 8/6	53	40	Biden +13
Emerson	7/29 - 7/30	50	46	Biden +4
IBD/TIPP	7/25 - 7/28	48	41	Biden +7
Harvard-Harris	7/21 - 7/23	55	45	Biden +10

As you can see, only two recent polls besides CNN's had the race so close, and both were from pollsters that have had a pronounced Republican lean this cycle. If we raise the cutoff to Biden +6 or closer, then we add two more pollsters to the list, one of them also known for its pronounced Republican lean (Rasmussen). In short, for whatever reason, CNN's poll looks much more like a partisan poll than it does a neutral poll.

It is also worth pointing out something we've noted many times: All polls have a margin of error (MoE), and results often move around within that margin. The CNN poll had an unusually large MoE (4 points), which means their numbers say the race could actually have Trump up by as many as four points, but that it could also be Biden +12. Obviously, the latter number is right in line with the other pollsters. Also note that the MoE really means that there is a 95% chance that the true value is in the predicted range. Put in other words, 5% of the time the true value will be outside the predicted range, just due to chance. Or in yet other words, one poll in 20 will have the true value outside the predicted range just due to bad luck. This is normal, not bias, and can't be avoided (although with a bigger sample the MoE can be made smaller).

We'll also note that if the presidential race has tightened up significantly, there should theoretically be an explanation. It's true that Trump "took action" with his three presidential memoranda and his one executive order, and that might be goosing his numbers. Or, alternatively, maybe voters care more about the relationship between Israel and UAE than anyone imagines. On the other hand, COVID-19 continues to run rampant, and the Biden campaign had a pretty good week, with the selection of Kamala Harris being very well received. It's hard to see how this all adds up to a major Trump bump, though if it does, it likely means a Trump slump is imminent once people figure out his "action" was almost entirely empty and/or the glow of his foreign policy triumph fades.

So, we're not buying that CNN poll, nor their coverage. There are a number of reasons that an outlet or a pundit might run with shaky numbers. We'll use animal metaphors for the three biggies, to hopefully make them more memorable:

• Pig in a Poke: Polls cost a lot of money, and no outlet wants to waste all that money on nothing. Put another way, the next time a media outlet or pollster runs with the headline "our poll is almost certainly an outlier" will be the first time. They always run with the idea that their poll is accurate and correctly reflects the state of the race, rather than admit their investment may have been a pig in a poke. CNN's pollster, SSRS, is a reputable firm with plenty of expertise and which doesn't work for parties or candidates, but that doesn't mean they are immune to the vagaries of sampling mathematics.
  
  
• The Horse Race: Generally speaking, a horse race is more interesting when Iron Liege ekes out a victory over Gallant Man, than when Secretariat wins by 31 lengths. And so, as we've pointed out many times before, media outlets have an interest in maximizing the drama as much as possible.
  
  
• A Dog in the Fight: We don't think this is what is going on with CNN, but some pollsters (like Rasmussen) and some analysts have a vested interest in promoting the good fortunes of one candidate/party over the other. To take a recent example, Henry Olsen just produced an op-ed for The Washington Post in which he points out that Republican candidates did better in this year's primaries in Washington than they did in 2018's primaries, and so concludes that there may just be a large amount of pro-Trump voters nationwide who aren't being captured by the polls.
  
  The fact that Olsen is a long-time Republican who works for the right-wing Ethics and Public Policy Center, which is "dedicated to applying the Judeo-Christian moral tradition to critical issues of public policy," should give pause to anyone tempted to take his analysis seriously, since he most certainly has a dog in this fight. That he neglects to mention that 2018 was a Democratic wave year, while 2020 featured many competitive races on the Republican side and few on the Democratic side, is also concerning. And his presumption that we can extrapolate for the whole nation based on one data point from a medium-sized state that uses a wonky jungle primary system is strike three and Olsen is out.

In the end, our sense is that Joe Biden still enjoys a comfortable national lead. That said, we won't really know for certain until September rolls around. Historically, each party gets a "bounce" after their conventions. Whether that happens this year, with things so different, is impossible to say, but it does mean that polling numbers in the next couple of weeks have to be taken with a few grains of salt, until both conventions are comfortably in the rear-view mirror. (Z)

Biden Gets One or Two High-Profile Anti-Trump Endorsements

At least one former Trump insider is now an outspoken Trump opponent. Miles Taylor, who served in several high-profile roles in the Dept. of Homeland Security between 2017 and 2019, has gone full apostate. He published an op-ed on Monday that scorched the President and pleaded with people to vote for Joe Biden. Taylor declares that Trump has turned DHS into "a tool for his own benefit," is utterly undisciplined and wastes time on trivialities, makes policy decisions with little thought or input, has made America less safe, and has "stoked hatred and division." Taylor's conclusion: "It is more than a little ironic that Trump is campaigning for a second term as a law-and-order president. His first term has been dangerously chaotic. Four more years of this are unthinkable."

Taylor wasn't the only one to speak out against Trump's reelection on Monday...maybe. The paperback edition of Anonymous' anti-Trump book has just been released, and in a new foreword, the author warns that Trump's reelection "will mean a nation undone," opines that "character must determine our vote," and calls on their like-minded colleagues to speak out against the President. It's at least possible that Anonymous and Taylor are one and the same, which is why we're not 100% sure if Monday gave us anti-Trump endorsements from one person or two.

It is doubtful that these sorts of anti-Trump screeds will have a big influence on voters, but maybe they'll change a few minds. Things could get more interesting if Anonymous follows through on his or her promise to come out before the election. If that person turns out to be someone very high profile (John Kelly? Jim Mattis? Christopher Wray? Dan Coats?) or if Trump melts down after the big reveal, that might just move the needle. (Z)

Democrats Will Push the Envelope

To us, it appeared that the situation with the USPS had reached crisis level about two weeks ago. Democratic leadership seems to have taken longer than we did to reach that conclusion, but they are on board now. Key House Democrats have cut their summer recess short, and are hammering out a bill to infuse the USPS with $25 billion in funding and to bring an end to the dismantling of sorting machines and other shenanigans. On Monday, the remaining House Democrats will be back in Washington to vote on the bill and to have a chat with Postmaster Louis DeJoy.

DeJoy will presumably stonewall and say nothing of value. As to the bill, there is no doubt it will pass the Democratic-controlled House. What happens next is anyone's guess, but there are many potential obstacles ahead:

• Speaker Mitch McConnell (R-KY) could toss the bill in his desk drawer with all the others
• Someone in the Senate, like Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), could filibuster the bill
• The Senate could defeat the bill on a party-line, or near-party-line, vote
• Donald Trump could veto the bill
• Donald Trump could sign the bill and then pull a Nixon and "impound" the funds
• DeJoy could refuse to adhere to the terms of the bill, daring Democrats to do something about it

If any of these things come to pass, there likely won't be much that the Democrats can do to force the issue. Obviously, everyone knows about the mechanics of the Senate. As to Trump/DeJoy ignoring the bill if it is passed, it's not likely that House Democrats can get satisfaction in the courts before the election.

With that said, the bill is not nearly as dead on arrival as, say, a bill extending Obamacare or one increasing taxes on the rich. There are many Republican senators who are up for reelection this year (including McConnell), or who otherwise don't want to be visibly on the side of "Who cares if people's votes get counted?" That list includes Susan Collins (ME), Steve Daines (MT), and Cory Gardner (CO), as well as Lisa Murkowski (AK), who is up in 2022. So, it's possible that the President's Senate firewall may fail him. And if it does, then Trump and his team will have to decide how visibly he wants to be the symbol of "Who cares if people's votes get counted?" He already is a symbol of that notion, but killing the bill or refusing to implement it would raise that to the Nth degree.

It is also the case that while infusing the USPS with some cash might be useful for the Democrats, winning the PR battle is likely more important, and it's clear that Team Blue is doing just that. Trump and DeJoy were unwise to make their moves as early as they did, as they handed the Democrats another campaign issue, and they gave the Democrats time to counter-move (including hammering on the subject at the convention). Postal service chicanery has been front-page news for days, and has also dominated the op-ed pages (see this, from Adm. William H. McRaven, ret., for a particularly strong example). At this point, even casual politics observers know what's going on, and pretty much every Democrat in the nation knows that they need to take affirmative steps to make sure their vote is counted.

Not helping things, in terms of the Trump 2020 PR efforts, is that the campaign's messaging is all over the place. On one hand, the President has argued that voting by mail facilitates fraud, which is why he's not willing to support funding for the USPS. On the other hand, he keeps voting by mail himself, and his campaign keeps encouraging supporters to do so. This weekend, many voters in North Carolina got absentee voter request forms with the President's picture emblazoned upon them. Though some Democrats feel otherwise, this is not really unethical (and is certainly nowhere near as bad as Ted Cruz's "voting violation" mailers). What it is, however, is a crystal clear and high-profile contradiction of Trump's stance that voting by mail is the font of all evil.

Besides the conventions, this is likely to be the biggest story of the next two weeks, so expect to hear a lot more about it. (Z)

Trump Goes 0-for-2 in Court on Monday

These stories are getting relatively little attention, since there was so much other big news. However, two different courts poked Donald Trump in the eye on Monday. To start, U.S. District Court Judge Frederic Block, a Clinton appointee, put a stop to the Trump administration's rollback of anti-discrimination protections for transgender patients, which would otherwise have taken effect today. The Judge's rather pointed ruling observed that the Supreme Court just put the kibosh on discrimination against LGBTQ folks, and that perhaps the Trump administration might want to reflect on the meaning of that decision.

The President also suffered a wee bit of a personal setback. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals voted Monday not to intervene in the most viable of the emoluments cases that have been filed against Trump. Judge Pierre Leval, another Clinton appointee who was writing for the majority, found the President's request for an injunction to be without merit, meaning that the case will proceed at the district level.

There isn't much time until the election, at least in terms of the speed at which court dockets are processed. So, it's not too likely there will be further developments in these two cases before Nov. 3. They are, however, another reminder that even with four years of Mitch McConnell-aided judiciary-stacking, there are plenty of federal judges who have no interest in being the President's yes man or yes woman. (Z)

UNC Pushes the 'Eject' Button

Many students have returned to school across the nation, and there have already been many worrisome developments on the pandemic front. To start, there have been predictable acts of thoughtlessness, like the University of North Georgia students who threw a massive, maskless party prior to the start of classes, or the Oklahoma high school student who attended school despite a positive diagnosis, believing that asymptomatic carriers cannot pass on COVID-19. There have been staffing issues, like mass resignations in Utah and the school in Arizona that was forced to shut down because so many faculty members called in sick. There have been mass outbreaks of disease, such as the elementary school in Georgia where 1,193 students and staff had to be quarantined.

On Monday, we had what is probably the highest-profile misfire so far. UNC-Chapel Hill made the decision to start the school year with in-person instruction and hope for the best. That lasted for a whole week. After hundreds of positive tests and the identification of at least four distinct COVID-19 clusters, the university reversed course, and will go online for the rest of the semester. Needless to say, this has left things in chaos, particularly for students who may have to move out of the campus housing they just moved into. Students are furious at this sequence of events, with the editorial board of the campus newspaper describing it as a "clusterf**k" and declaring "We all saw this coming." The union representing university staffers has already filed suit against the school, and lawsuits from students or faculty who suffer serious health complications are sure to follow.

How any university (especially a large and high-profile one like UNC) can ponder reopening at this point is a mystery. Sticking to a remote-only model has all sorts of downsides, but even worse is trying to go back to in-person instruction and having that fail spectacularly when hundreds or thousands of people get sick. In that case, you get the worst of both worlds and you also throw a giant wrench into the fall quarter/semester. Even the perfect set of precautions, adhered to religiously by all involved, may not be enough to contain outbreaks. In the real world, where achieving full compliance at all times from 5,000 or 15,000 or 50,000 people is a pipe dream, major outbreaks are a certainty.

Politically, of course, Donald Trump really wants schools back in session because he believes that is the first step toward restoring the economy. Even when failures like the ones described above were merely hypothetical, polls said that nearly 60% of Americans disagreed with the President's stance. Now that the failures have become all-too-real, that number will surely rise. The question is whether Trump will change sides. Who knows if he will; your guess is as good as ours. (Z)

COVID-19 Diaries: The Land Down Under

The high R0 (infectiousness) of SARS-COV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19) is causing some (including Dr. Fauci) to speculate that this disease may never be eradicated completely. If they are right, that raises a big question: Is it viable to try to control the disease while we await a vaccine or herd immunity?

A look at the nation of Australia may give us some early indications on that front. Culturally and politically, Australia is close enough to the U.S. that if the Aussies can beat this virus, maybe Americans can as well. In the early going, Australia was pretty successful, and nearly eradicated COVID-19. They went for 2 months with never more than one death in a day. They banned large gatherings and imposed strict social distancing in mid-March. They started lockdowns in the last week of March. By the end of March, they had banned all gatherings with over 2 people.

With everything seemingly going swimmingly, Australia started to reopen in late June, only to see new cases and deaths spike with the characteristic exponential growth curve:

Keep in mind that Australia's number of cases per million population is less than half of any state in the US. However, rather than tolerating the 10-15 deaths per day they were seeing, Victoria declared a state of disaster 10 days ago and went back to strict containment measures. They are deploying troops to enforce the lockdown. In response, new cases appear to have peaked and are now decreasing.

Australia had COVID-19 beaten, but then it came back, and now they are trying to stop the second wave. If new cases and deaths in Australia drop back to zero in a few weeks, then we have evidence that COVID-19 can be controlled and even beaten, if we just find the will to do it. If Australia fails and COVID-19 cases and deaths continue in Victoria, then we might have to wait for a vaccine or herd immunity to stop the virus. (PD)

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Dr. Paul Dorsey works in medical software, providing software to support medical practices and hospitals nationwide.

Today's Presidential Polls

More evidence that Joe Biden should focus on the must-have states like Wisconsin, and not spend time and money on the pie-in-the-sky states like Texas. On the other hand, North Carolina is definitely in play, and possibly Georgia. (Z)

State	Biden	Trump	Start	End	Pollster
Texas	41%	48%	Aug 04	Aug 13	YouGov
Wisconsin	49%	43%	Aug 07	Aug 16	Morning Consult

Today's Senate Polls

MJ Hegar is keeping this close enough to have a puncher's chance, especially with so many voters apparently undecided. (Z)

State	Democrat	D %	Republican	R %	Start	End	Pollster
Texas	Mary "MJ" Hegar	37%	John Cornyn*	44%	Aug 04	Aug 13	YouGov

* Denotes incumbent

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