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Note: Yesterday we pointed out that if you want to know how many electoral votes Biden and Trump have excluding those states where the polling is within the margin of error, you can add the "strongly" and "likely" numbers in the legend to the right of the map.
However, there is also another way. Click on the "Electoral-vote graphs" link on the menu to the left of the map. The top graph includes the close states but the second one uses only the states where a candidate is ahead by at least 5 points. The third and fourth ones show the same thing for 2016. Also note that the menu has links to other pages with interesting information. There is more to the site than the main page.
Death Toll Will Shoot up as States Reopen
With some states deciding not to shut down at all, and others partly re-opening, the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths are both going to spike in upcoming weeks and months. Just about everyone agrees on this point, the only debates are: (1) How much will they spike?, and (2) Is it worth it? Each person must answer the second question for themselves, but as to the first one, there were a couple of grim new projections on Monday. First, the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), a widely cited research group at the University of Washington, said their best guess is now 134,475 American deaths through the end of August. Meanwhile, a particularly pessimistic government report does not project an overall total, but says 3,000 deaths per day by June 1 (which would be double the current rate) is very possible.
At this point, we know exactly what Donald Trump's PR-driven strategy is: Understate the numbers, and then claim them as a great victory. His latest is that perhaps 100,000 people will die, and that a figure so low is a testament to his excellent leadership. Here are his exact words:
The data suggests that, nationwide, we have passed the peak on new cases.
A minimum, if we did nothing, would have been 1.6 [million dead]. If you cut that in half, you are talking about 800,000, 900,000, a million people dying. But we did a lot of work. And I think, right now, we're hitting at probably around 60,000, maybe 65,000. I think we have done a great job. As you know, minimal numbers were—minimal numbers were going to be 100,000 people. Minimal numbers were going to be 100,000 people. And we're going to be hopefully far below that.
There is, of course, very little that is truthful there. Nobody, perhaps outside of Trump himself, thinks the U.S. has passed the peak on new cases. While it's correct that the death toll might have been in the millions if nothing was done, "do nothing" was never a plausible option, since state governments would have acted (and, in fact, did act) without the President's involvement. The current death toll is actually closer to 70,000, and—contrary to his claim that we always knew 100,000 people would die—Trump has offered figures much lower than that several times in the past two months. We've had a few folks ask us to re-run this chart we did a few weeks back, in graphic form. Here it is, including the President's various pronouncements on death-toll projections:
Given the information at hand right now, it will be something of a minor miracle if the World War I death toll is not surpassed this year.
Still, Trump is sticking with his argument that he, and he alone, has saved millions of lives with his decisive action. At the moment, his campaign is running this ad:
It is edited to make it appear as if many folks—including Govs. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Andrew Cuomo (D-NY), as well as CNN's Wolf Blitzer—have praised the President's leadership. It is interesting that these people are liars, and bad people, and fake news, right up until they have something good to say about Trump. In any event, if you are skeptical that their words may have been misrepresented, you're right to think so. Indeed, CNN has already sent the Trump campaign a cease-and-desist letter, telling it to stop using that clip.
Of course, it is not only pro-Trump groups that can air commercials. The George Conway-led Never-Trump-Republican group The Lincoln Project has just released an ad of its own:
Entitled "Mourning in America," it's a takeoff on Ronald Reagan's famous "Morning in America" ad from 1984. In other words, for Americans of a certain age—and, let's be honest, most Trump voters are of that age—the argument is: "We served with Ronald Reagan. We knew Ronald Reagan. Ronald Reagan was a friend of ours. Mr. President, you're no Ronald Reagan." We doubt there are all that many disaffected Republican votes left out there to be won over to the Biden banner, but if anyone knows how to find such people and speak to them, it's presumably the members of The Lincoln Project. (Z)
Honest Abe vs. Not-so-honest Don
This is most certainly not the second-most important news item of the day. However, it flows pretty naturally from the previous item, so we're going to stick it here anyhow. Donald Trump is in the midst of a weeks-long, if not months-long, pity party right now, and as part of that, he whined on Sunday night that he's being treated worse by the media than even Abraham Lincoln. "They always said nobody got treated worse than Lincoln. I believe I am treated worse," the President declared.
After Trump made this statement, we got an e-mail challenging us to "come up with a positive comparison between Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln." All right, we accept that challenge. In fact, we will come up with five positive comparisons, even if it takes all day and all night:
- Both used an emerging, short-message medium very effectively (telegrams for Lincoln, Twitter for Trump).
- Both were Washington outsiders who put one over on Washington insiders.
- Both were able to avoid having a veto overridden by the Senate (7 vetoes for Lincoln, 6 for Trump).
- Both were teetotalers.
- Both inspired intense loyalty from a segment of the American public (black people for Lincoln, not black people for Trump).
That wasn't easy, and if we'd tried to extend the list to 10, it probably would have broken us. The difficulty in coming up with plausible answers illustrates what should already have been obvious, though: Trump can't hold a candle to Lincoln, and so should expect to be treated more critically.
That's not to say that the President is correct in the particulars of his complaint, though. Since he knows virtually nothing of history, he does not know that Lincoln occupied a different media landscape than the one we have today. As we've pointed out before, the Civil War was a time when newspapers were transitioning from opinion-driven content subsidized by political parties to news-driven content subsidized by large circulations. Today, there are only some outlets that do not aspire to fairness and neutrality. Back then, none of them did. To take the New York papers of the era as an example, anything Lincoln did was guaranteed to be met approvingly by The New York Times (yes, it was a Republican paper back then), and even more approvingly by The New York Sun. On the other hand, he was certain to be hammered by The New York Tribune for being too cautious, and to be slammed by The New York Herald for being too reckless.
Not helping, when it came to the treatment of Lincoln, is that the laws governing libel were even looser than they are today, and that Victorian writers were prone to over-the-top rhetoric. And so, the 16th President was slurred at various times in mainstream journals as an ape, a buffoon, a clown, a usurper, a traitor, a tyrant, a monster, an idiot, a eunuch, a bigot, a demagogue, a lunatic, a despot, a blunderer, a charlatan, and a bully. The Herald regularly described him as "that hideous baboon at the other end of the avenue" and suggested that the President should be exhibited as a curiosity by P.T. Barnum. Without a shred of evidence, newspapers spread the rumors that Lincoln was actually black, that he was an atheist, that he'd fathered a secret daughter out of wedlock, that his wife was a Confederate double agent, and that he was actually a non-citizen born in Kenya. Oh wait, that last one may have been some other president; we'll have to look into it. One rather...enthusiastic anti-Lincoln op-ed went thusly: "God damn your god damned old hellfired god damned soul to hell god damn you and god damn your god damned family's god damned hellfired god damn soul to hell and good damnation god damn them and god damn your goddamn friends to hell." Again, subtlety was generally lost on Victorian-era Americans.
If it makes Trump feel better to think of himself as a modern-day Lincoln, well, there's the Twitter/telegraph thing, and the abstinence from liquor. Beyond that, however, there is no comparison between #16 and #45, particularly when it comes to their treatment at the hands of the media. (Z)
New Poll Shows Overwhelming Support for Vote-by-Mail
There is a new poll from USA Today/Suffolk, asking people if they support vote-by-mail as an alternative in November. By slightly more than a 2-to-1 margin (65% to 32%), the answer was: yes. Of course, like everything else today, this has also become a partisan issue. Among Democrats, it was 84% in favor and only 14% opposed, while among Republicans it was 43% in favor and 53% opposed.
Generally speaking, making it easier to vote leads to more votes being cast, a circumstance that usually favors the Democrats. It is safe to assume, given polling numbers like the ones here, as well as the desire to avoid a Wisconsin-like fiasco, the blue states that don't already have universal vote-by-mail are going to adopt it pronto. Presumably, that will make the blue states even bluer. In terms of electoral votes, that doesn't matter, but higher turnout could help Democrats downballot. After all, even blue states often have competitive races in some congressional districts as well as for districts in the state legislature.
It is in the purple and red states, most of them with a Republican legislature or governor or both, that things get a little more interesting. They could bow to COVID-19 and allow universal vote-by-mail, but that would risk an increase in Democratic turnout and some possible upsets (particularly in places like Kansas or Montana or Iowa, where GOP-held Senate seats may already be on shaky ground). Alternatively, these states could insist on voting in person, but then the risk is that turnout would be down, and that turnout among elderly voters (who skew Republican) would be way down. This could also lead to possible upsets. The third option is to try to let older people vote by mail, but to insist that younger people vote in person. Seven red states have already adopted this approach but, as we pointed out last week, this is going to run afoul of the 26th Amendment, which forbids "abridging" the right to vote for anyone over 18. Is a rule to allow seniors to vote in a different way than juniors a bridge too far? Only Chief Justice John Roberts knows for sure.
The Republican Party could embrace democracy, and the idea that making it as easy as possible for people to vote is a good thing. We do not foresee the modern GOP having a come to Jesus moment like this, however, so that means that party muckety-mucks have some tricky decisions to make very soon. (Z)
Democrats Working on Torrent of Voting-rights Lawsuits
In case you were wondering whether or not the Democrats are going to hold the Republicans' feet to the fire when it comes to ballot access, wonder no more, because they are. After getting caught flat-footed in 2010, and thus handing over control of legislative and Congressional maps to Republicans in many states for a decade, the blue team is ready and raring to go in 2020. Groups aligned with the Democratic Party, including state and local chapters of the Party, as well as outside super PACs, are flush with cash and are filing voting-rights lawsuits left and right.
The range of issues covered by these lawsuits is broad, from pushing back against things like gerrymandering and voter ID laws to advocating for extended polling hours and universal vote-by-mail and restored voting rights for felons who are so entitled. Total spending on these efforts will definitely be in the eight figures, and may well reach the nine figures. These lawsuits will be filed in both federal court and in state courts in at least a dozen states.
The latest lawsuit was filed Monday in a state where a lot of lawyers are going to get rich this year, namely Florida. The Democratic-aligned Super PAC Priorities USA sued Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) and several other Republican state officials, challenging a whole bunch of existing rules. Priorities USA wants any ballots postmarked by Election Day to count (currently, they have to be received by Election Day), demands that the state pick up the cost of postage (arguing that otherwise Florida is imposing an unconstitutional poll tax), and also pushes for the elimination of rules against helping people get their ballots filled out and returned (reasoning that such limits are an infringement on people's First Amendment rights).
We have no idea how this lawsuit will turn out; it will likely depend on which president appointed the judge who gets to rule. What we do know, however, is that there are going to be a lot of lawsuits this year (the new one from Priorities USA is at least the sixth currently on the docket in Florida alone), and that it would be pretty improbable for one side to lose them all. So, change of some sort is coming. Meanwhile, these legal efforts are going to get a lot of attention, and undoubtedly many Florida voters will notice that the party that doesn't particularly want them to collect unemployment is the same party that doesn't particularly want them to vote. It doesn't take too many irritated folks to swing an election in the mother of all swing states. (Z)
Biden Calls for Any Reade Paperwork to Be Released
Whether Joe Biden is entirely guilty of the charges leveled against him by Tara Reade, or partly guilty, or not guilty at all, he's in the difficult position of trying to prove a negative. Having made his denials on TV last week, the candidate now hopes to show that there was never any sort of formal complaint lodged against him. So, he's calling on the folks who hold the Senate's personnel records to release any such documentation they might have, or else to confirm that the documents do not exist.
This may seem a relatively simple request, but it has launched a rapid and very vocal sequence of finger-pointing and buck-passing. Initially, Biden said that any such records would be located at the National Archives. However, the folks there said they don't have any such paperwork, and that the records would be the domain of the Secretary of the Senate. So, Biden asked Secretary of the Senate Julie Adams to look into it. Adams responded that she cannot legally release the records without the approval of the full Senate and, besides, she doesn't have them anyhow—the General Services Administration (GSA) does. When contacted about this, the GSA said they most certainly don't have the records; the records are at...the National Archives. Ah! Bureaucracy in action.
Maybe this game of evidentiary musical chairs will stop, and one of these entities will take responsibility, but we doubt it. To the extent that there's any guess to be made here, we would point out that if something incriminating really did exist, it seems rather unlikely that the Mitch McConnell-led, Republican-dominated Senate would keep that under their hats. They could be sitting on it until a more...inconvenient time for the Democratic Party, of course. But if August or September arrives and no evidence of a complaint has seen the light of day, it's pretty fair to conclude that such paperwork does not exist.
Meanwhile, a lot of people continue to focus on Biden's personal paperwork at the University of Delaware, and his and the university's resistance to releasing those records. As we've already explained, the University's resistance is entirely understandable and is not suspicious. They know full well that personnel records are not kept among someone's personal paperwork, as that would run afoul of the law (in particular, protections against disclosure of sensitive information). They also don't need their lengthy and labor-intensive curating process mucked up by a bunch of people pawing through un-indexed paperwork.
At the same time, Biden's reticence is also understandable. Politicians make their personal paperwork available for purposes of posterity, so that historians and others can get a look behind the curtain. However, by their very (personal) nature, there is much within them that could be problematic, particularly if taken out of context. There may be notes, or personal information about oneself or one's family members, or letters from constituents not meant for public consumption during the constituent's lifetime, or any of a host of other things.
To take a crude example, the first paper that (Z) wrote while in graduate school was about the Ku Klux Klan's brief rise to power in Anaheim, CA (and elsewhere) in the 1920s. He still has his research materials, including handwritten notes, from that project. And in them, to highlight just one specimen, is a copy of "letters to the editor" written to the Anaheim Bulletin in May 1922. A lot of the letters expressed support for Klan candidates and so, (Z) wrote a note on the page as a reminder: "Many people support the Ku Klux Klan." Imagine that observation was repeated, without mentioning that it was a summation of some 1920s historical evidence? And that was just one page in one relatively small-scale study. Biden was a senator for more than four decades; there are going to be all kinds of things in his papers that might be problematic, particularly shorn of context.
And if this brief illustration was not persuasive/illuminating, then we will also add this: virtually every politician seals their personal papers while still running for/serving in political office. That includes the current VP, Mike Pence, whose papers are likewise currently unavailable. In fact, sometimes the prohibition extends far beyond the politician's time in office. Most of Joseph McCarthy's papers, though they would be of great interest to historians, are still unavailable 63 years after he died, and will remain so until his daughter Tierney Grinavic passes away.
What Biden could conceivably do though, is authorize a small group of people whose integrity is beyond reproach (although finding even one such person in modern-day America would be a huge challenge) to get access to the Delaware papers and report back whether there were any mentions of Tara Reade there. They would have to be given a limited time period to work, lest this matter drag on past the election. On the other hand, something Biden could also do is fight fire with fire and say: "I will release all of the papers at the University of Delaware the day after Trump has made the last 10 years of his federal and state tax returns public." That brings attention back to Trump's even greater lack of transparency. (Z)
Does Biden Have a "Latino Problem"?
According to Slate's León Krauze, he does. Under the headline "Biden Has a Real Latino Problem," Krauze argues that Latino voters simply aren't excited about the former Veep, in part because there hasn't been much outreach, and in part because they associate Biden with the deportation policies of the Obama administration. The author points, in particular, to a new poll of Latino voters from Latino Decisions, observing that "only 49 percent of registered voters currently committed to choosing Biden over Trump."
To put it bluntly, we don't really buy Krauze's premise. There is a sloppy tendency in American political analysis (and Krauze does this implicitly) to treat Latinos as a monolithic bloc, much like black voters. However, while it is plausible for a Democratic presidential candidate to get in the high 80s or low 90s among black voters, that is never going to happen with Latinos, because there are big differences between, say, Cuban Americans and Mexican Americans, or Puerto Ricans and Venezuelan-Americans. It's not really viable to get them all on the same bandwagon.
That leads us to our second point. The 49% figure sounds pretty bad, until you notice that Donald Trump has the support of only 17% of Latino voters. In other words, Biden is tripling up Trump, and is certainly in position to match recent Democratic norms. Here is the percentage of the Latino vote claimed by each of the last five Democratic presidential candidates:
| Candidate | Year | Latino vote |
| Al Gore | 2000 | 62% |
| John Kerry | 2004 | 59% |
| Barack Obama | 2008 | 67% |
| Barack Obama | 2012 | 66% |
| Hillary Clinton | 2016 | 65% |
With approximately 34% of Latino voters (apparently) undecided at this point, there is plenty of room for Biden to expand on that 49%. Indeed, if half of the undecideds break for him, he'll end up with 66% of the Latino vote, which is right where Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were at, and which appears to be the Democratic Party's current baseline with that segment of the voting public.
That said, there is a difference between supporting a candidate and actually showing up to vote for a candidate. It is possible that Biden gets the same percentage of the Latino vote as Obama or Clinton, but gets fewer Latino votes overall because some of those voters aren't motivated to show up to vote for him. We doubt it, however. George Bush has Latinos in his family, John McCain had enormous Latino support in his home state of Arizona, and Mitt Romney had fairly close ties to Mexico, as his father was born there. Donald Trump, by contrast, has no such "credits" on his résumé, and now has the demerits of a shockingly harsh border policy. It's likely that there will be much motivation among Latinos in the Southwest, in particular, to get the Donald out of office. And then add in the massive outreach effort that the Democrats will wage once the election nears; viewers of Univision and other Spanish-language stations are going to be weary of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) after the torrent of commercials they're going to be exposed to.
In short, then: No, our view is that the Biden campaign does not have a "Latino problem." (Z)
Bolton Book Pushed Back Again
In the pre-COVID-19 world, there was much interest in the tell-all (or, more likely, tell-some) book written by former National Security Adviser John Bolton that was supposed to be published early this year. Now, with L'Affaire Ukraine in the rear-view mirror, there is somewhat less interest. And so, it has somewhat flown under the radar that publication has been pushed back yet again, this time to late June.
Officially, the issue is that the NSA is still vetting the book, and making sure there's nothing in there that cannot see the light of day. Is it probable that what's really going on is that the Trump administration is trying to keep the book, like the President's tax returns, a secret until after the election? Yes, it is. After all, how long can it take to review a 200-page book? Even Eric Trump could make his way through a book of that length in three, maybe four weeks tops.
In theory, Bolton could break his current silence, go on Fox News or CNN, and spill (some of) his guts, thus frustrating efforts to keep the book under wraps. However, he's clearly unwilling to do that, or he would have done the spilling already. And while the book will be of considerably less interest if it is released after a Trump electoral defeat, that is a problem for the publisher. The former NSA already has his advance in pocket.
In the end, it seems unlikely that we'll see the book before the election, or learn much of its contents, beyond what we already know. It also seems unlikely to matter; COVID-19 has proven much more of an Achilles heel for Donald Trump than Ukrainegate ever was, and the President's electoral fortunes will rise and fall on that issue. (Z)
Today's Presidential Polls
Is Iowa really in play? Ann Selzer's latest poll said it wasn't, and gave Donald Trump the nod by 10 points. She's the best, especially in Iowa. On the other hand, that poll came before COVID-19, and the PPP polls show a big drop in both Trump's numbers and Sen. Joni Ernst's (R-IA) numbers over the last six weeks. So, maybe the Hawkeye State really is going to be a battleground. We look forward to the next poll from Selzer, which will help a great deal with that assessment.
This poll seems to be part of a pattern we have been seeing of late: Red states that are statistical ties. First it was Texas, then Georgia, now Iowa. Are there more shoes (or in the case of Montana, cowboy boots) to drop? The last thing Donald Trump needs is the combination of the swing states becoming blue states and the red states becoming swing states. But once again, election is in November, not May. (Z)
| State | Biden | Trump | Start | End | Pollster |
| Iowa | 46% | 48% | Apr 30 | May 01 | PPP |
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