Category: 2020 Election

Americans widely oppose reopening most businesses, despite easing of restrictions in some states, Post-U. Md. poll finds

Washington Post logoAmericans clearly oppose the reopening of restaurants, retail stores and other businesses, even as governors begin to lift restrictions that have kept the economy locked down in an effort to combat the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll.

The opposition expressed by sizable majorities of Americans reflects other cautions and concerns revealed in the survey, including continuing fears among most people that they could become infected by the coronavirus, as well as a belief that the worst of the medical crisis is not yet over.

About half of states have eased restrictions on businesses, but Americans’ unease about patronizing them represents a major hurdle to restarting the economy. Many Americans have been making trips to grocery stores and 56 percent say they are comfortable doing so. But 67 percent say they would be uncomfortable shopping at a retail clothing store, and 78 percent would be uncomfortable eating at a sit-down restaurant. People in states with looser restrictions report similar levels of discomfort as those in states with stricter rules. Continue reading.

COVID-19’s class divide creates new political risks

The Hill logoThe COVID-19 outbreak ravaging the United States is exacerbating the nation’s class divide, closing small businesses and bankrupting households while many in the nation’s elite emerge relatively unscathed.

The disparity was highlighted in April when stock markets enjoyed a banner month even as 22 million people were added to the unemployment rolls.

It is a divide that has political ramifications for both parties, but especially so for Republicans, who hold the White House and the Senate majority. Continue reading.

Trump Is Losing Badly — So Prepare For The Distractions

As you probably already knew, the next six months of 2020 presidential campaigning are going to be ugly. I do not say this happily, but I do so based upon a lifetime of watching candidates run for election and reelection. Almost invariably, politicians return to what worked successfully in previous campaigns.

Consider the most recent presidential election of 2016. When exit polls across the nation asked actual voters whether their opinion of the two candidates was favorable or unfavorable, their answers were Donald Trump 38 percent favorable and 60 percent unfavorable, and Hillary Clinton 43 percent favorable and 55 percent unfavorable.

In the same survey, just 36 percent of voters found Clinton to be “honest and trustworthy,” while 61 percent did not. For Trump, the numbers were even worse: 33 percent saw him as “honest and trustworthy,” and 64 percent did not. Continue reading.

How Greenwich Republicans Learned to Love Trump

To understand the President’s path to the 2020 election, look at what he has provided the country’s executive class.

Prescott Bush, the father and grandfather of future Presidents, was the eight-time club champion on the golf course at the Round Hill Club, one of eight country clubs in Greenwich, Connecticut. Bush was a staunch believer in standards; he required his sons to wear a jacket and tie for dinner at home. He was tall, restrained, and prone to righteousness; friends called him a “Ten Commandments man.” In the locker room at Round Hill, someone once told an off-color joke in front of his fourteen-year-old son, George H. W. Bush, and Prescott stormed out, saying, “I don’t ever want to hear that kind of language in here again.”
In Greenwich, which had an unusually high number of powerful citizens, even by the standards of New York suburbs, Prescott Bush cast a large shadow; he was an investment banker, the moderator of the town council, and, from 1952 to 1963, a United States senator. In Washington, he was President Eisenhower’s golf partner, and the embodiment of what Ike called “modern Republicanism.” Prescott wanted government lean and efficient, but, like Nelson Rockefeller, the New York governor whose centrism inspired the label Rockefeller Republican, he was more liberal than his party on civil rights, birth control, and welfare. He denounced his fellow-Republican Joseph McCarthy for creating “dangerous divisions among the American people” and for demanding that Congress follow him “blindly, not daring to express any doubts or disagreements.” Bush could be ludicrously aristocratic—he had his grandchildren call him Senator—but he believed, fundamentally, in the duty of government to help people who did not enjoy his considerable advantages. He supported increasing the federal minimum wage and immigration quotas, and he beseeched fellow-senators, for the sake of science, education, and defense, to “have the courage to raise the required revenues by approving whatever levels of taxation may be necessary.”

Long after Bush died, in 1972, his family stayed central to the community of Greenwich Republicans. His son Prescott, Jr., known as Pressy, served as the chairman of the Republican Town Committee; alumni of the Bush Administrations still live around town. Each year, the highest honor bestowed by the Connecticut Republican Party is the Prescott Bush Award. Continue reading.

Trump sparks fight over IRS relief payments

The Hill logoPresident Trump has sparked concerns about politicizing the IRS by putting his name on the coronavirus relief checks and letters sent to Americans informing them of their payments.

The moves are seen as a way for Trump to take credit for the pandemic aid that households are receiving just months before an election where his handling of the outbreak and the economic damage it has caused will play a prominent role.

While presidents regularly tout their economic policies, critics say Trump’s actions unnecessarily inject partisanship into a government agency that should be viewed as nonpartisan. And they argue his move could backfire politically.

The Trump campaign’s tack on the Biden allegation: Focus on hypocrisy, not the case against him

Washington Post logoPurely politically speaking, this couldn’t have come at a better time for President Trump: He’s behind in the polls to former vice president Joe Biden, and Biden is having to deny a sexual assault allegation.

Instead of litigating his alleged action, the Trump campaign is emphasizing the hypocrisy they see in Biden’s words about whether to believe women.

Recall in 2016, Trump brought some of Bill Clinton’s accusers to a presidential debate against Hillary Clinton after an “Access Hollywood” tape showed Trump bragging about grabbing a woman’s genitals. He’s not afraid to go there. Continue reading.

Five ways the coronavirus could change American politics

The Hill logoHow will the coronavirus crisis affect American politics?

The focus, for now, is naturally on the emergency itself. As of Friday evening, more than 1 million people in the U.S. had been infected by the coronavirus and more than 59,000 had died, according to the COVID Tracking Project.

But here are five areas where the crisis could have a political impact over the longer term. Continue reading.

Republicans are indulging in a nasty gambit — but they won’t like the final endgame

AlterNet logoNothing angers Andrew Cuomo more than the notion that taxpayers in “red states” should resent or resist assistance for “blue states” struggling against the coronavirus. Hearing that message from Senate Republicans provoked the Democratic New York governor to remind the nation several times of the gross disparity between what his state remits to the Treasury and what their states reclaim in federal benefits.

Cuomo noted acidly that New York pays $116 billion more than it gets back annually, while lucky Kentucky, the home of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, gets $148 billion more than it pays. By that reckoning, New York has kicked in far more over the past few decades than any of the states whose Republican leaders criticize supposed liberal profligacy.

“Give us our money back, Sen. McConnell,” roared the New Yorker. Continue reading.

260,000 Words, Full of Self-Praise, From Trump on the Virus

New York Times logoAt his White House news briefing on the coronavirus on March 19, President Trump offered high praise for the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, Stephen Hahn. “He’s worked, like, probably as hard or harder than anybody,” Mr. Trump said. Then he corrected himself: “Other than maybe Mike Pence — or me.”

On March 27, Mr. Trump boasted about marshaling federal resources to fight the virus, ignoring his early failures and smearing previous administrations. “Nobody has done anything like we’ve been able to do,” he claimed. “And everything I took over was a mess. It was a broken country in so many ways. In so many ways.”

And on April 13, Mr. Trump insisted that governors were so satisfied with his performance they hadn’t asked for anything on a recent conference call. “There wasn’t even a statement of like, ‘We think you should do this or that,’” he said. “I heard it was, like, just a perfect phone call.” Continue reading.

Fed Chair to Congress: Do Whatever It Takes to Keep the Economy From Collapse

New York Times logoIt’s a reversal of the usual relationship between elected officials and independent central bankers.

There were many thousands of viewers watching Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s news conference on Wednesday afternoon, between various online feeds and financial news networks. But his most important message was directed at just 536 people.

That would be the 435 members of the House of Representatives, the 100 members of the United States Senate, and the president of the United States.

The Fed has taken expansive efforts to prop up lending markets in the United States, pledging to inject trillions of dollars of support into the markets, including for corporate bonds (big companies), bank lending (midsize companies), mortgage-backed securities (home buyers) and municipal bonds (states and localities). Congress has encouraged this, authorizing billions to the Treasury to be combined with Fed resources. Continue reading.