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White House and Democrats Remain Far Apart on New Relief Bill

In separate television interviews yesterday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin agreed that while some progress has been made in working out a new bill to battle the coronavirus and reboot the economy, the parties still remain far apart. Meadows said: "I'm not optimistic that there will be a solution in the very near term." The two Republicans want a minimal bill, but that is not acceptable to Pelosi. The Speaker is also insisting on $1 trillion in aid to state and local governments, but Mnuchin said "that's something we're not going to do."

With nearly all the effects of the previous COVID-19 relief bills worn off now, unless a new agreement is reached very quickly, the economy is going to go south fast and unemployment is going to go north equally fast. A sinking economy is never good for an incumbent, as the challenger is going to say: "Are you better off now than you were 4 years ago?" As a consequence, Pelosi has most of the leverage here and she knows it.

Republicans have a problem, but it is largely of their own making. If they were simply to ask: "What can we do to boost Trump's reelection?," the conclusion would be to pass the $3 trillion bill the House passed in May and do it today. That will help individuals keep up their spending and pay their rent, as well as allowing states and cities to avoid laying off teachers, police officers, and other workers.

But one of the core beliefs that few Republicans ever question is that poor people are lazy and won't work unless they are forced to work by actual starvation. To them, if the government gives poor people $600 a week for another few months, few, if any, of them will seek work, which will hurt employers. There is no evidence that many people refused to go back to their old jobs (when available) on account of the $600 they were getting. They knew very well that the $600 payments were temporary but refusing to go back to work when that was possible meant losing that job forever. But punishing poor people for being poor is so ingrained in Republican thought that they can't break the grip, even when sticking with that view badly hurts their party. (V)

Meadows Walks Back Tweet on Delaying the Election

On CBS News' "Face the Nation" yesterday, Mark Meadows said: "We're going to hold an election on November 3rd, and the president is going to win."

Until Thursday, it wouldn't have been necessary for an administration official to state that the election will be held on Election Day or that Christmas will be celebrated this year on Dec. 25 or that the sun will be setting in the west. But after Donald Trump raised doubts about the former with a tweet last Thursday, and the media got into a real tizzy repeating it and pointing out that the president has no authority to postpone the election, Meadows apparently felt it was getting out of hand and had to shoot down the trial balloon, random thought, or whatever it was. Probably he felt that some swing voters might become nervous about it. Since it wasn't going to happen anyway, the downside was large and the upside was nil, so it was time to end the discussion.

But there is something else Trump tweeted that is much more significant. Trump wants the election result called on Election Night. That implicitly means that he is asking for absentee ballots that are postmarked before Election Day, but which arrive after Election Day, to be destroyed without being counted. That is actually going to happen in many states. Since the USPS is going to be overwhelmed, or may not even try very hard to deliver ballots on time, as we discussed on Saturday, the issue of when the election is actually over is critical. In particular, only one of the swing states (North Carolina) allows ballots arriving after Election Day to be counted. In the five other (pundit-certified) swing states, they go straight to paper recycling without even being opened. In Ohio and a few other states not usually counted as swing states, late ballots are also counted.

Most states send out absentee ballots a month or more in advance, so any voter who fills it in and sends it back the same day is sure it will be counted. The problem is that many voters are likely to procrastinate and not realize that a ballot mailed in the last week of October probably won't make it on time. Also, there may be some very civic-minded voters who feel they have to watch the final presidential debate on Oct. 22 before making a decision. If they mail their ballot the next morning, it will probably make it on time, but if they wait a few days, it might not.

Some states and counties may prepare for the USPS to be overwhelmed (and/or be in the tank for Trump) and may set up drop boxes for ballots to be returned in, thus avoiding the USPS. However, doing so runs the risk of campaign operatives placing fake ballot drop boxes in carefully selected neighborhoods and then burning all the ballots on Nov. 3 without even issuing a puff of white smoke. Massive voter education will be needed to prevent large numbers of voters from being disenfranchised one way or another. (V)

Clyburn: Trump Is Mussolini

Undoubtedly, Mark Meadows wanted to end the discussion about the election date before it got out of hand but it's too late already. Godwin's law states that as an Internet discussion goes on, the probability that someone gets compared to Hitler approaches 1.0. We're not quite there yet, but House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-SC) is moving in that direction. Yesterday on CNN's "State of the Union," Clyburn compared Donald Trump to Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, on account of Trump refusing to commit to leaving office if he loses the election. This is certainly a first. Even Richard Nixon was never likened to a foreign dictator against whom the U.S. fought a war.

Clyburn also said: "He doesn't plan to have fair and unfettered elections. I believe that he plans to install himself in some kind of emergency way to continue to hold on to office." Trump's refusal to say he would leave the White House if he loses could become a major issue in the fall. Some moderate Republicans might balk at installing a president-for-life, as Russia seems to have done. Republicans are starting to be concerned. Also on CNN, Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) said: "It's not helpful for the president to think out loud in a public fashion." Note that Hutchinson is not worried about Trump pulling off a coup and trying to stay in power even after losing. He is worried about Trump saying this out loud. The message here is: "If you need to do it, that's OK, just don't talk about it before the election." (V)

Will Trump's Renomination Be Private?

On Saturday, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette reported that Donald Trump's renomination would be done in private, with reporters barred from the room in Charlotte when the RNC officially renominates Trump. The spokesperson also said that the number of delegates will be reduced from 2,550 to 336 and the alternate delegates have been disinvited. If true, this would be the first convention in American history closed to reporters.

However, on Sunday, the RNC hedged this earlier statement, saying that no decision has been made yet. That's still pretty far from "Saturday's statement is no longer operative. Of course (friendly) media will be invited."

It's true that the coronavirus is surging over much of the South and having 20,000 media people be present in the room when Trump is nominated would be a disaster. Nevertheless, it wouldn't be hard to allow in a couple of reporters from the news services and major media outlets plus one TV camera crew whose feed would be given to every station in the country.

It's hard to understand what Trump has to gain by being renominated in secret. Normally, he wants as much publicity as possible. We could (sort of) understand him limiting media coverage to only friendly outlets, but banning them all? How does that help him? In fact, if reporters are forbidden to watch, the story then shifts from "Trump is renominated" to "What's he hiding?" It doesn't make any political sense, but so much of what Trump does doesn't actually help him. Nonetheless, because he ignored all his own experts in 2016 and won anyway, he is convinced that everything he thinks of is genius and he doesn't have to pay attention to his own campaign staff. Campaign manager Bill Stepien could tell him that if he lets in reporters and at least one TV crew, he will get the highest ratings in the history of the known universe, so he might relent.

The Democrats are planning a four-day convention, with prerecorded video filmed at various locations around the country being used. The number of people in the hall for the various speeches is expected to be small, but there has been no suggestion that all reporters will be banned. (V)

What's the Matter with Kansas?

The answer is that Democrats are ratf**king it, and it might work. According to a report in Politico, last Thursday the executive director of the NRSC, Kevin McLaughlin, held a private Zoom call with Republican operatives to warn them that internal polling of tomorrow's Republican senatorial primary shows it to be a dead heat between Rep. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and right-wing firebrand Kris Kobach. He also said: "The Senate majority runs through Kansas." By that he meant that if Kobach wins the primary, McLaughlin is afraid that Barbara Bollier (D) will be the first Democrat elected to the Senate from Kansas since 1932 and that could be enough to flip the chamber. With Arizona and Colorado already lost causes, and Georgia, Iowa, Maine, Montana, and North Carolina toss-ups or worse for the GOP, the last thing the NRSC wants to do is be forced to spend money on a Kansas Senate race defending a candidate who blew an easy gubernatorial race in 2018. (OK, that's an exaggeration. The last thing the NRSC wants to do is be forced to spend money to defend Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-OK, but you get the point.)

What McLaughlin is concerned about is the $5 million the Democrats have spent in Kansas nominally "attacking" Kobach for being too conservative for Kansas. For many Kansans, there is no such thing as too conservative, and if Kobach is more conservative than Marshall, all the more reason to vote for him. McLaughlin, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Donald Trump, and other top Republicans all urged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to enter the race. He would have won in a landslide and could have remained in the Senate for the next 30 years. But for reasons known only to Pompeo, he didn't throw his hat in the ring and now Republicans see a 50-50 chance that Kobach will win the primary. Then the best-case scenario would be spending millions to hold a seat that is rightly theirs. Worst case is spending millions and still losing. And with Kobach as the nominee, it will indeed take millions, because Bollier raised more money ($3.7 million) in Q2 than any candidate for any office has ever raised in a single quarter in the entire history of Kansas.

The Republicans do have a nuclear weapon they would like to use in the race, but they can't figure out how to set it off. It's Donald Trump. If Trump were to endorse Marshall, even at this late date, that would likely seal Kobach's fate. But so far, he is resisting calls from every top Republican to do so. He hasn't explained why. It is possible he actually prefers Kobach, who is a big fan of voter suppression. In contrast, before he entered Congress, Marshall was an OB-GYN and there are stories floating around that he performed an abortion at least once. Most likely it was an ectopic pregnancy and he did it to save the mother's life, but some anti-abortion fanatics oppose abortion even to save the mother's life, saying that is God's decision, not some doctor's. (V)

Arizona Votes Tomorrow

In addition to Kansas, Arizona, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington all have primary elections tomorrow. None of them are likely to affect control of the Senate, as in Kansas, but there are still some interesting contests. Let's take a look, starting with Arizona.

Other than these races, not so much going on in Arizona. (V)

Michigan Votes Tomorrow

A number of House races are attracting attention in Michigan, including these:

The Detroit Free Press article linked to above has rundowns of the other House races as well as primaries for the state legislature. (V)

Missouri Votes Tomorrow

Two stories are getting most of the attention in Missouri.

None of the other Missouri primary races appear to be all that interesting. (V)

Washington Votes Tomorrow

Not so much excitement in Washington.

After Tuesday's vote in five states, Tennessee votes on Thursday and Hawaii on Saturday. (V)

Trump's Grip on the GOP Appears To Be Loosening

For 3½ years, Donald Trump has had an iron grip on the Republican Party. However, given his deteriorating position in the polls, some Republican politicians are beginning to envision a post-Trumpian world and want to make sure they have a prominent place in it. Tom Davis, a former chairman of the NRCC, put it like this: "His weaker poll numbers and off-the-wall tweets plus his flexible, day-to-day ideology empower and in some cases encourage dissent."

The search for what the Republican Party will be like after Trump exits stage right is complicated by the belief that he will never really exit until he dies. His Twitter feed will still drive news coverage and he might start up a new television network, TNN (Trump News Network). However, it is difficult for senators up this year to oppose him because in 2016, for the first time, no senator won (re)election in a state where the other party grabbed the electoral votes. In other words, Clinton states elected only Democrats and Trump states elected only Republicans. This means that candidates up in November are going to be tied to Trump whether they like it or not.

But other Republicans have more freedom to distance themselves from Trump, even now. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is calling to revive fiscal conservatism. Gov. Larry Hogan (R-MD) is promoting himself as a return-to-good-governance Republican. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL), a former health company executive who can run on his business acumen, is already advertising in Iowa, nearly 4 years ahead of the Iowa caucuses.

Brent Buchanan, a Republican pollster, said: "What we're seeing now is a significant amount of trial balloons being floated. Everyone knows the Republican Party requires a pivot in messaging and a better ability to connect with a broader set of voters. The question is what that messaging and who that messenger looks like." Bruce Mehlman, a well-connected Republican lobbyist, hit the nail on the head when he said: "Trump has ruled the party by fear more than love, creating mostly transactional relationships whose durability depends on perceptions of his power." (V)

Poll Worker Shortage Could Disrupt Election Day

First there was no toilet paper. Then soap and cleaning supplies were sold out. Now, good luck trying to buy a decent webcam. In November, the shortage of the month is going to be poll workers. We have brought up the poll worker shortage many times this year. Now Politico has gone out and interviewed over a dozen election administrators and voting advocates to get a better picture of how bad it might be. Executive summary: It's bad.

In the past, most polling places were staffed by civic-minded, but elderly, volunteers or in some places, paid workers. In the midterms, 58% were 61 or older. These are the people most vulnerable to COVID-19 and they are saying: "No thank you" in droves, leaving huge gaps in the staffing needed to have polling places operate on Election Day (and for early voting). David Garreis, the president of the Maryland Association of Election Officials, said: "We need 39,870 people for Election Day and early voting, and we don't have anywhere near that. We have 13,021 vacant positions, [about] 32 percent statewide." Maryland has 1.8% of the country's population, so scaling this up by a factor of 55, nationwide there is a need for 2.2 million poll workers and probably on the order of 700,000 vacancies. If they are not filled, the number of polling places will have to be drastically reduced, resulting in very long lines of people waiting to vote.

Even in 2018—way before the coronavirus hit— finding poll workers wasn't so easy. The Election Assistance Commission reported that only 15% of election officials said it was easy to find enough people to staff the polling stations. Now the situation is vastly worse. And being a poll worker isn't just a matter of smiling and handing the next voter on line a blank ballot. A Michigan election official, Tina Barton, said: "Being an election official is like somebody shoving you into a batting cage, honest to God. Fastballs are coming at you from every direction, and you've got to be like this election ninja, trying to avoid getting hit." To be a good poll worker, one has to first go through training on election law and procedures and have a friendly disposition and be able to keep calm even in the face of angry voters. As in: "Yes, sir. You definitely have a legal right to a provisional ballot. No question about that at all. But they are all gone. I don't have any left. And no, writing your vote on a piece of scrap paper will not work."

Around the country, election administrators are trying different approaches to finding more poll workers on time so they can be trained properly. Among them are:

Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose sees a silver living in the cloud of coronavirus aerosol droplets. He hopes the state can sign up a whole new generation of younger poll workers.

If you are concerned about the shortage of poll workers, call your local (county) election office and ask if they need help. It's an interesting day's work and very different from what you normally do. At the very least, you'll have stories to last years. Voters are strange beasts. One of us (V) used to do this in California and can recommend the experience to see how democracy works in the field. Be sure to wear a mask and bring your own hand sanitizer, just in case. (V)

Democrats and Republicans Agree: It won't Be a Fair Election

A new Reuters/Ipsos poll shows that half of all registered voters nationwide—and 80% of Republicans—are concerned about the possibility of absentee voting leading to widespread fraud. This suggests that a large swath of the country may have trouble accepting the results. Most people are clearly unaware that voting fraud with absentee ballots is extremely low, well under 0.01%. In contrast, the error rate with in-person voting is something like 1% due to improperly marked ballots, bad scans, etc. The envelope in which the ballot is returned usually has a unique identifying number and always requires a signature. It is nearly impossible for anyone to forge votes at any scale.

Republicans are all taking their cues from Donald Trump, who has been bellowing about possibility of fraud with mail-in ballots for weeks, despite the complete absence of any evidence of it ever happening in more than a microscopic number of cases (most of which were actually mistakes rather than intentional fraud).

In addition, 73% of registered voters are concerned about voter suppression, including about 80% of Democrats and even 60% of Republicans. On the other hand, 80% of Democrats and 60% of Republicans believe their own personal vote will be counted.

One area in which Democrats and Republicans differ sharply is whether ineligible people will cast votes. About 80% of Republicans and even 40% of Democrats believe that noncitizens will be voting. Again, there is virtually no evidence that this has ever happened before except a handful of times, but if Trump repeats this often enough, people—even Democrats—start to believe it.

Voting by absentee ballot is not new in the U.S. It goes back to the Civil War, when Union soldiers were allowed to vote absentee in 1864 (roughly 80% voted for Abraham Lincoln). About 20% of voters mailed in their ballots in 2016. Five states, including deeply Republican Utah, send all registered voters an absentee ballot and there have been almost no cases of fraud. Clearly, Trump is preparing his supporters to reject the election results if he loses, with potentially disastrous results for post-election unity. (V)

The Lincoln Project's Real Goal

The Lincoln Project was started by George Conway, Steve Schmidt, Rick Wilson and their merry band of conservative Republican never-Trumpers to oppose Donald Trump's reelection. It has pulled in tens of millions of dollars from both moderate Republicans and the-enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend Democrats. It has been creating and running scathing ads attacking both Trump and his enablers in the Senate. Why is it making ads that push the envelope and go where Joe Biden's campaign would never go? The Washington Post talked to them and found out.

A clue is that some of the ads have run only in D.C. and Bedminster, NJ (pop. 8,200). Bedminster has the Jacobus Vanderveer House, used by Maj. Gen. Henry Knox during the Revolutionary War, and the Pluckemin Continental Artillery Cantonment Site, among other attractions, but the real reason the ads have run there is that Trump is frequently at his local golf club in Bedminster and watches a lot of television there, so he is very likely to see the ads. The ads aren't intended to convince swing voters to vote blue. Nor is the primary goal to give wavering Obama-Trump Republicans permission to vote for a Democrat again, although it is a bonus if they do.

No, the real purpose of the ads is get inside Trump's head and make him angry and disoriented. For the most part, the ad says little or nothing about Trump's policy positions on the wall, China, immigration, etc. They focus on his flaws as a person, so as to mock and humiliate him. Wilson summed up the goals by saying: "The fact that we're able to use his mental infirmity and addiction to television to freeze him and manipulate him serves a broader purpose for the overall campaign in terms of taking him off message, disorganizing and disorienting him."

Charlie Sykes, a conservative radio host who is not part of the Lincoln team, put it this way: "Every day that goes by that Donald Trump is off his game or distracted is a win." Then Sykes added: "What they found is that a single video can take the president of United States off track for a day or more and you see it play out." This is why the project has put out so many different ads and why they pull them off almost in real time. If Trump does or says something and the Lincoln Project is out there ridiculing him within a day, when the event or remark is fresh in his mind, it makes him very angry. Often he doubles down and makes it worse, but in any event it distracts him from whatever his campaign manager had planned as the theme of the day. A strategy of distracting a candidate so he forgets what he is supposed to be talking about and angrily reacts to some dumb TV ad would never work with Joe Biden, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, or any other candidate, but Trump's Achilles heel is that although he loves to dish out mockery, he can't handle it when it is incoming.

But even the Lincoln Project seems to have limits (so far). The nuclear weapon would be a very carefully scripted "conversation" with Stormy Daniels about how his image and reality are not necessarily in alignment. She's an actress, after all, and is undoubtedly able to memorize a few choice lines. If there is anyone who could really make Trump's head explode, it's Daniels.

In contrast, other Republicans who want Trump defeated, and want to influence actual voters rather than throw Trump off his game, go about it completely differently. Republican pollster Sarah Longwell has run many focus groups with Trump voters to discover what they see as Trump's weaknesses. Then she put together a website called Republican Voters against Trump, which features literally hundreds of people who voted for Trump in 2016 talking directly to the camera and explaining why they voted for him in 2016, why they feel cheated, and why they are going to vote for Joe Biden in 2020. It is a totally different approach from the Lincoln Project's because the audiences are different: Republican voters vs. the President himself. (V)

VP Candidate Profile: Former NSA Susan Rice

We're hitting the home stretch, just in time. Here is the list of candidates that we will profile, and the order in which we will profile them:

  1. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) [Score: 27.5]
  2. Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D-NM) [Score: 26]
  3. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) [Score: 20]
  4. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) [Score: 17]
  5. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) [Score: 27]
  6. Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA) [Score: 13]
  7. Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms (D-Atlanta) [Score: 24]
  8. Former State Representative Stacey Abrams (D-GA) [Score: 25]
  9. Former NSA Susan Rice
  10. Rep. Val Demings (D-FL)
  11. Gov. Gina Raimondo (D-RI)
  12. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D-NH)

As a reminder, we're awarding up to 10 points across five different areas of concern: How ready the candidate is to assume the presidency, if needed; what kind of coattails the candidate might have in terms of helping the Democratic ticket in their state/region; what the candidate brings to the table in terms of "nuts and bolts" political skills like fundraising and debating; the depth of the candidate's relationship with Biden (to the extent that information is publicly known); and how well the candidate balances out Biden. So, the perfect running mate would score a 50, while John C. Calhoun would score a 0.

Susan Rice

We made the executive decision to move Rep. Val Demings (D-FL) up one spot in our planned order, just to make sure we've gotten to all the frontrunner candidates before Biden announces. So, assuming he doesn't announce today (not likely), then you're up next, Madam Representative. (Z)

Today's Presidential Polls

Not much new stuff here today except that we are getting more and more convinced that Georgia really is in play and that North Carolina is more bluish purple than reddish purple. If North Carolina (which Obama won in 2008), becomes the next Virginia, the GOP has a real problem on its hands going forward, especially if Arizona also turns blue. (V)

State Biden Trump Start End Pollster
Georgia 46% 45% Jul 28 Jul 31 YouGov
North Carolina 48% 44% Jul 28 Jul 31 YouGov

Today's Senate Polls

The Ossoff-Perdue race is going to be close and could depend on whether Trump's coattails or Biden's coattails are longer. As to North Carolina, at some point someone at the NRSC is going to have to have a long and difficult conversation with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC). He has trailed in 13 of the 15 polls held since the beginning of May, and now Cal Cunningham's lead is regularly in or near double digits. What is Tillis going to say when Executive Director Kevin McLaughlin says: "Thom, please explain why it is smarter for us to give you money rather than to Susan, Joni, or Steve?" (V)

State Democrat D % Republican R % Start End Pollster
Georgia Jon Ossoff 43% David Perdue* 45% Jul 28 Jul 31 YouGov
North Carolina Cal Cunningham 48% Thom Tillis* 39% Jul 28 Jul 31 YouGov

* Denotes incumbent


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