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Many State Economies Are in Trouble
Another week, another huge wave of unemployment claims. This week, it was another 3.8 million folks, bringing the total to 30.3 million. That means that one out of five people who had a job in February doesn't have one now. And this number is absolutely, certainly, an underestimate, because many people have been unable to log into the overwhelmed state unemployment insurance websites and some people (e.g., gig workers) may not be eligible. Also, people who have not been employed recently but are desperately seeking work aren't counted as "unemployed."
As a consequence of the claims that have been made, many states' unemployment funds are in danger of running dry. The issue is particularly acute in red states, given their habit of trying to keep business costs low, not to mention their generally less robust corporate bases. Put another way, it's a little easier to balance the books if your biggest corporation is Apple (CA), with its $216 billion in annual revenue, or Amazon (WA), with its $136 billion, as opposed to Alabama Power, with $6 billion, or Sanderson Farms (MS), with $3 billion.
Trying to figure a way through this, many red states are seriously considering this mandate: If you could go to work, but you choose not to do so for health reasons, then you no longer get unemployment benefits. Or, as the numerous and vocal critics of the proposal put it, people get to choose between endangering their lives or starving. In recent memory, Republicans have been more than willing to sacrifice a few old and/or sick people in order to get insurance costs down for everyone else, and have also been more than willing to sacrifice a few old and/or sick people in order to get the economy restarted for everyone else. However, if Republican officials force hundreds of thousands of people to make this particular sort of Sophie's choice in red states, it will be political suicide. We simply can't believe they will actually go through with it.
No, what this looks like is a bluff, designed to put pressure on Congress. At various points in the last week, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) has talked a big talk about leaving the states to their own devices, and perhaps even letting them go bankrupt. This is not plausible, however, for a bunch of reasons. One big one is that it would require a change in the law that is never, ever going to get past the Democratic-controlled House. Another is that whatever the Majority Leader may be, he's not stupid. He knows that if states are somehow allowed to fail, that it will be mostly red states where the pain is felt. That translates into a near-certain loss of the Senate for the Republicans, and thus a demotion (or maybe a loss of employment) for the Kentucky Senator. McConnell is 78 and is worth $23 million (largely due to the wealth of his wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao), but retirement, say, to breed racehorses, is definitely not something he is looking forward to.
And so, all available evidence points to a big, juicy COVID-19 relief bill v5.0, with lots of money for states and localities so that they can keep themselves (and their unemployment funds) afloat. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who knows she has both the Democrats and many (most?) state-level Republican officials on her side, floated $1 trillion as the total on Thursday. At the moment, McConnell is still insisting on legal protections for businesses that reopen, but Pelosi isn't blinking, and the Majority Leader hasn't got too many cards to play. Odds are high that the next relief bill is coming soon, and that it will look a lot like what the Democrats (and the state governors) want. (Z)
Which Chief Executive Is Doing the Worst Right Now?
Harvard, Northeastern, and Rutgers have partnered to conduct an extensive poll, assessing how people in all 50 states (and DC) feel about their leaders' response to the COVID-19 pandemic. This sort of polling is an easier task these days, since people are actually home and are actually willing to take pollsters' calls. In any event, which governor would you guess is currently getting the lowest marks? We'll tell you in a minute, but it's probably not who you think it is.
For now, we'll start with the governors who are doing the best job, according to their constituents. Leading the list, to nobody's surprise, is Gov. Mike DeWine (R-OH), who has a sky-high 83% approval rating on this issue. Not far behind is Gov. Andy Beshear (D-KY) at 81%, and then Govs. Larry Hogan (R-MD) and Charlie Baker (R-MA) at 80%. Rounding out the top five, in something of a surprise, is Gov. Jim Justice (R-WV), at 78%.
And now the bottom five. Govs. Mike Dunleavy (R-AK) and Kevin Stitt (R-OK) checked in with an anemic 53% approval, tying them for 48th place. Miraculously avoiding the doghouse, given the poor reviews he's gotten, is Gov. Ron DeSantis, at 52%. Just below him is Gov. Kristi Noem (R-SD), at 49%. And deepest in the doghouse (and it's not even close), is someone it probably would have taken us 40 or 45 guesses to get, namely Gov. David Ige (D-HI), whose COVID-19 management is to the liking of only 39% of his fellow citizens. It's not clear to us exactly why the good people of Hawaii are so unhappy; it appears to be a generally unfocused response from the Ige administration, including poor communication, a lack of a clear plan forward, and carelessness with the lives of the folks on the front lines.
So, one possible answer to the question raised in the headline is: David Ige. However, the better answer is probably...Donald Trump. In addition to asking about each of the governors, the pollsters asked respondents about the President's handling of the pandemic, and he did worse than the governor in every single state (plus D.C.). He lags Ige, for example, by 7 points and DeSantis by 5. In most states, the gap is in the double digits, and often well into the double digits. For example, Trump trails Hogan and Baker by 42 points, DeWine by 32, and Beshear by 30. Outside of Florida, the president is also doing very poorly in all the swing states relative to their governors, including Arizona (-15), North Carolina (-16), Wisconsin (-19), Pennsylvania (-22), and Michigan (-27).
If you care to examine the numbers for yourself, click on the link to the poll, and jump to page nine. In any case, you surely don't need us to tell you what is likely to happen in November if people are pretty happy with Democrats and with non-Trumpy Republicans, and pretty angry with the Trumpy Republicans and with Trump himself. (Z)
Trump Administration Wants to Punish China
The search for a scapegoat continues. As Donald Trump's handling of the COVID-19 crisis continues to earn him low marks (see above), his administration is desperately trying (once again) to point the finger in China's direction. There is enormous pressure on the intelligence community to find some proof—any proof—that this was due, on some level, to malfeasance or blundering by Chinese citizens. Further, the administration is hard at work on possible ways they might punish the Chinese, including...wait for it...sanctions, as well as canceling Chinese-held American debts.
It's desperation time in the White House right now, and this new push is consistent with that, as these maneuvers are highly unlikely to work. As a practical matter, and as we've already learned many times in the past year or so, any anti-China measures taken will result in anti-US retaliation from the Chinese, leaving everyone back at square one. Meanwhile, we see two significant problems with the political messaging here. The first is the obvious question people will ask, namely: "If there were tools left in the 'pressure on China' toolkit, why weren't they deployed a year ago, as America's farmers twisted in the wind and felt the pinch from the trade war?" The second is that, as we've pointed out before, the President said all sorts of fawning things about the Chinese in the early weeks of this pandemic. A 180-degree turn isn't going to convince too many people beyond the base, who are already on board the SS Trump. So, another scapegoat will be needed, it would seem. (Z)
Justice Department to Investigate Small Business Loan Program
Everyone knows, at this point, that a lot of big corporations—from Shake Shack to the L.A. Lakers—got loans as "small" businesses, thus sucking up money meant for actual small businesses (and their employees). House Democrats are looking into it, the Government Accountability Office is looking into it, and the reporters are looking into it. Now, the Justice Dept. has joined the list, as they announced their own investigation on Thursday.
It is very unlikely that, under the leadership of AG Bill Barr, the Department is looking to point the finger at the Trump administration. The obvious goal here, as with the punishment of China (see above), is to find a non-Trump scapegoat to blame for all that money that vanished so quickly. "Those greedy, basketball-playing jerks!" will be the conclusion. And, as with the China scapegoating, we doubt it will work. When it comes to making sure that everyone plays things fair and straight, that would appear to be the job of the government, as opposed to, you know, profit-seeking business interests. How hard would it have been to add this one sentence to the relief bill: "The maximum amount any person or company can receive under this legislation is $5 million"? Or this one: "No company with 2019 gross revenue above $5 million is eligible for any funds appropriated in this legislation"? Not that hard, but the GOP donors didn't want any such sentences in there. Further, this administration took specific steps to undercut any oversight of the funding process, a fact the Democrats just might point out once or twice during this election season.
In short, it's possible that voters could blame the Shake Shacks and Los Angeles Lakers of the world for this mess, but we doubt it. Especially since, last we checked, the names "LeBron James" and "Anthony Davis" will not be appearing on any ballots in November. (Z)
Biden to Address Reade Allegations
Thus far, Joe Biden has not addressed Tara Reade's sexual harassment/sexual assault allegations publicly, choosing instead to make his case privately, and then to let (mostly female) surrogates speak out publicly. The campaign has clearly concluded that the "Why isn't Biden addressing this himself?" stories are a bad look, and are giving the issue unwanted oxygen. So, the candidate will appear on "Morning Joe" today in order to address the matter head on.
We stand by our belief that this isn't going to change, well, much of anything. Team Biden has chosen about as safe a venue as possible, and undoubtedly the candidate spent Thursday prepping for the interview, including both what he will say and how he will say it. Barring an amazingly compelling performance, or an amazingly bad one, few minds are going to be changed; all that will happen is that there will be no further point in "Why isn't Biden addressing this himself?" stories. Nor is this going to give ammunition to Donald Trump. It's true that he's utterly shameless, and is more than willing to throw stones despite living in a glass house. However, he and his campaign have clearly concluded that this issue is a big loser for a pu**y grabber; otherwise the President would already have been utilizing it extensively.
Incidentally, and as long as we're at it, there were a couple of other high-profile news items on this front on Thursday. First, former prosecutor Michael J. Stern penned a particularly thorough examination of Reade's claims (executive summary: He nearly always believes claims of sexual assault, but in this case he is very skeptical because Reade's story raises a multitude of red flags).
Also, the University of Delaware said that it will not be releasing the (extensive) papers from Joe Biden's senatorial career that it holds. The coverage of this story gives the impression that the University could release the papers, but it chooses not to, which suggests that maybe the fix is in. This is not at all correct, however. The truth is that they are still in the process of organizing and indexing the collection, such that work will not be complete for another couple of years because they have literally thousands of boxes of paper to process. As with any set of papers like this, there's nothing useful to release until the index and finding aids are ready.
Imagine, for example, that someone called for the release of Richard Nixon's papers (over 200 million pages) before they were organized; how could anyone find anything? Biden certainly didn't produce at anything close to Nixon's level (at least not yet), but his papers undoubtedly run into the millions of pages. And this is before we consider the fact that papers of government officials have to go through heavy-duty vetting, aided by librarians who have a national security clearance. Point is, the University of Delaware is a neutral party here. They've already confirmed there is no personnel-related paperwork in the files (which would be illegal), so there is nothing useful there anyhow when it comes to proving or disproving Reade's allegations. (Z)
Biden and Sanders Strike Delegate Deal
Joe Biden is, barring something unexpected in the next two or three months, this year's Democratic presidential nominee. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) has acknowledged this by dropping out of the race, but he still wants as many delegates as he can get, so as to exert influence over the party and its platform. This being the case, Sanders and his supporters have been unhappy this week about two delegate-related issues: (1) that a candidate who has dropped out of the race cannot win state-level delegates, and (2) that New York has canceled its primary and awarded all of its delegates to Biden.
On Thursday, Team Biden and Team Sanders reached a compromise on the first issue. Since it is too late to change the rules, Biden will get all of the state-level delegates. However, whatever number of delegate slots Sanders would otherwise have won will be filled with people who supported the campaign of the Vermont Senator. In other words, there will be a sizable number of DNC delegates whose vote is pledged to Biden, but whose heart is pledged to Sanders. Such is the stuff of which sausages are made, we guess.
The New York issue remains, as yet, unresolved. Former candidate Andrew Yang has filed suit in an effort to force New York to overturn the decision. Legal experts agree that he's not likely to prevail, given that both local party organs and state governments have pretty wide latitude over the process. Meanwhile, the Biden campaign and Sanders campaign signaled on Thursday that they are likely to resolve this issue the way they resolved the first issue, by filling some of the Empire State's delegate slots with Bernie-loving Joe pledges. They just have to figure out a fair way to assess how many delegates Sanders would have won had the primary been held. (Z)
Whither Justin Amash?
When it comes to the presidential candidacy of Rep. Justin Amash's (who is now officially L-MI, and thus the first Libertarian in Congress), there are two big questions. The first is: Why is he running? In our previous item on his would-be bid, we concluded—based on his vote for impeachment—that his goal would be to unseat Donald Trump. We further concluded—based on his having an IQ above 50—that he knows he cannot possibly win.
Well, Politico published an interview with the Representative on Thursday, and it appears we were wrong on both counts. It turns out that he actually wants both Trump and Joe Biden to lose, since he regards them as basically being one and the same. Further, he thinks that he is the guy who can pull it off. His assessment is that most Americans "are not very partisan," but that at the same time most of them "are fairly libertarian," and that if he can just bring the truth of the Libertarian Party home to them, he can ride that to victory. We don't know exactly what he's smoking, but we will note that you cannot spell "multiple hashish joints" without "j-u-s-t-i-n-a-m-a-s-h." He will certainly have an uphill battle selling people on the power and the glory of the Libertarian Party since he himself did not see fit to join until, you know, yesterday. In any event, although Amash is technically at the "exploratory committee" phase of the process, he made clear that he is certainly going to throw his hat into the ring.
That leads us to the second big question: Will he affect the race? There were a great many articles on that question this week (see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here for examples). Some even looked specifically at whether Amash could affect the race in his home state of Michigan, which Trump won by a razor-thin margin in 2016 (see here and here for examples).
The basic arguments about Amash's effect are twofold (and contradictory). Some die-hard Republicans who hate Trump but can't bring themselves to vote for a Democrat might vote for Amash, thus hurting Trump. However, some die-hard Republicans who hate Trump might just this one time hold their noses and vote for Biden in order to get rid of Trump. If Amash is available as an option, these votes are lost to Biden. Also, there may be a small number of Sanders supporters who don't know what libertarians stand for and who vote for Amash to punish the Democrats. If you support a $15/hr minimum wage, voting for a party that wants to abolish the minimum wage law altogether might seem odd. However, there were plenty of Democrats who voted for Gary Johnson (L) in 2016, possibly because they liked his stance on social issues and weren't aware of his stance on economic issues.
Our guess is that he will basically be a non-factor. Given what happened in 2016, people on the left side of the aisle are likely to be unusually leery of protest votes. Meanwhile, people on the right side of the aisle have now had nearly four years to either reconcile themselves to Trump or to voting Democratic in 2020. In any case, guesses are about all that anyone has, or will have, because third-party spoilers are notoriously difficult to poll for. Without fail, a percentage of people say they are going to vote third-party when that's just an abstraction, but they prove unwilling to waste their vote once the time comes to pull the lever (or check the box, or tap the touchpad, or punch the chad). So, we won't actually know if Amash was an x-factor until the votes are counted. (Z)
The Next Front in the Ballot Access Wars
Let us begin with a proposition: Republican-controlled states have, since the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court, gotten into the habit of drawing up ballot-access rules that appear to advance some useful end, but that actually have a more nefarious purpose. The most obvious example is voter ID laws, which purport to combat voter fraud (a useful goal, if not for the fact that in-person voter fraud is close to nonexistent), but which are really meant to make it harder for certain Democratic-leaning groups (poor people, immigrants, students, women) to vote.
The latest front in this little struggle involves absentee ballots, and exactly who is allowed to have them. There are currently seven states that are granting no-excuses-necessary absentee ballots on the basis of senior citizen (or near-senior-citizen) status. In Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas, it's anyone over 65, in Tennessee it's anyone over 60, and in Kentucky it's anyone of "advanced age" (whatever that means). The useful purpose this serves is to make it easier for folks who may be incapacitated to exercise their franchise. In addition, with COVID-19, it now allows a particularly vulnerable population to avoid undue risk. The nefarious purpose is that it makes it easier for older folks (who skew Republican) to vote, while keeping it harder for younger folks (who skew Democratic).
Consequently, a voter-rights group filed suit in Texas on Tuesday, seeking to make absentee voting an all-or-none proposition. The suit is based on the 26th Amendment, which reads "The right of citizens of the United States, who are eighteen years of age or older, to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of age." As Slate's Mark Joseph Stern points out, this should be about as close to a slam dunk as it gets; the plain text of the amendment makes quite clear that voters cannot be treated differentially on the basis of age, as long as they are 18 or older.
Whether this makes it all the way to the Supreme Court before November, it's certainly going to be heard at the lower levels of the court system, and the ruling is presumably going to go against Texas and the other six red states (well, unless Reed O'Connor gets it). In theory, that will be a defeat for the Republican Party. On the other hand, with the distinct possibility that older voters are going to break for Joe Biden this time around, maybe it won't matter so much after all. (Z)
Today's Presidential Polls
North Carolina may be the canary in the coal mine, but Michigan is probably the Midwestern canary in the coal mine. Donald Trump can't lose the Wolverine State, especially not by 8 points, and hold onto the other upper Midwestern states. This poll (and earlier ones of Michigan) could help Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN) grab that infamous bucket of warm liquid. If Biden thinks he can win Michigan without any help from Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), he may be more inclined to go with Klobuchar, who is better known and better vetted.
There is something about the map that bothers us. Wisconsin, Ohio, North Carolina, and Texas (states that Trump won in 2016) are all statistical ties (white center) now. Why are Montana, Iowa, and Missouri dark red? After all, surely they are less Republican than Texas, which is currently a tie. We think the answer can be found by mousing over those states and looking at the poll dates. They are Montana (Feb. 22), Iowa (Mar. 5), and Missouri (Feb. 27). All were most recently polled before the COVID-19 crisis hit and Trump's mismanagement of it became apparent. We hope some new polls of these states appear soon. It could be interesting. It is also possible that Trump's freakout when his campaign manager showed him some polls last week was caused by polls in these states, but that's just a guess. Well, maybe a bit more than a guess; there are unconfirmed reports that it was polls of Iowa, Ohio, and Maine that caused the President to flip his lid.
| State | Biden | Trump | Start | End | Pollster |
| Michigan | 50% | 42% | Apr 28 | Apr 29 | PPP |
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