vox--2020-10-21--What’s the same and what’s different about the polls this time

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has a lead in the polls , election forecasters give him large odds of winning , Democrats are wrangling over the presidential transition , and Republicans are preemptively playing the blame game to position themselves for the post-Trump GOP .
It all sounds a bit too familiar to many liberals who remember the overconfident forecasts of a Clinton victory at this time in October 2016 — forecasts that only seemed to be reinforced by evident GOP infighting and a sense of foreboding doom in the Trump camp .
The two situations are , however , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Clinton ’ s 2016 victory was not based on a particularly large lead in national polls .
Instead , there were two factors at play : a flawed way of thinking about how state-level races relate to one another , and a misperception about the state of the Electoral College .
Today ’ s forecasts of Biden ’ s victory build in much more Republican-friendly assessments of state dynamics .
Forecasters think Biden is going to win because his national polling lead is just really , really big .
Uncertainty remains primarily @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is big and has been remarkably stable , things could change and it could shrink .
And if it does shrink , we ’ d see that a lot of things have not changed since 2016 .
It continues to be unclear if pollsters can more precisely gauge public opinion in the key Midwestern swing states , and the Electoral College has a large bias toward Republicans .
Still , even as those factors remain constant , there have been some key changes over the past four years .
There are two distinct @ @ @ @ @ @ @ First , they look at polls to try to assess the state of public opinion ; second , they build a model , using the polls and sometimes other data , that goes from those polls to a prediction .
Common sense says a 5 percentage point lead is better than a 2-point lead and a lead in October is better than a lead in July .
But to generate a precise forecast , you need to formalize those intuitions .
If you look back at the 2016 forecasts , some models were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all .
On Election Day , she had an 85 percent chance of winning according to the New York Times and a 98 percent chance according to the Huffington Post , while Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight gave her a more restrained 72 percent chance .
The main reason was a disagreement about modeling , not about what the polls said .
The Huffington Post looked at the election as 50 separate state races where deviation from the current polling could happen in each place , but would happen independently .
So if Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pennsylvania , a 40 percent chance of winning North Carolina , a 40 percent chance of winning Florida , and a 45 percent chance of winning Georgia , etc.
, then the model assumed that added up to something like a 2 percent chance of Trump carrying enough battleground states .
The FiveThirtyEight model — to oversimplify — built in data from previous elections and also assumed that if the polls were off , they just might be off everywhere in the same direction .
So in the moderately unlikely universe where Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ winning North Carolina , Georgia , and Florida .
Now , of course , you don ’ t want to model state election results as completely correlated with one another .
Biden could probably boost his numbers in Wyoming by a point or two by running unanswered TV ads there , but this would have no implications for the national election .
And effective outreach to Mexican American voters could help in Arizona , Colorado , New Mexico , and Texas without moving the needle in Maine or Wisconsin .
But broadly speaking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the better of this argument .
The current models all assume polling errors and swings in public opinion will be correlated .
When the Economist says that Biden has a 93 percent chance of winning the Electoral College , it is making a methodologically sounder claim than the New York Times or Huffington Post did four years ago .
Silver , whose methods have not changed in this regard , appears significantly more confident in Biden ’ s chances than he was in Clinton ’ s .
All of which is to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a bigger lead .
RealClearPolitics does a simple , naive polling average with no fancy math or house effects .
It says Biden has an 8.6-point national polling lead , which is a bit bigger than Clinton ’ s lead was at the height of her 2016 convention bump .
But Biden is not in the midst of a convention bump , and there are reasons to believe his lead will be more permanent : • Biden ’ s lead is bigger than Clinton ’ s lead was at any point in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ big lead comes just two weeks before Election Day , so there is limited time for things to change .
• While her lead was at its peak , Clinton was only polling in the low 40s with lots of undecideds and third party voters .
Biden is above 50 percent in the RCP average .
The size of Biden ’ s lead is clearly good news for him .
The significance of the stability of the lead is something modelers disagree about .
One way of looking at it is that views @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , as are views of the former vice president — and consequently , otherwise earth-shattering events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the mass protests following the police killing of George Floyd don ’ t move the polls very much .
Under those circumstances , it just looks incredibly unlikely that anything more dramatic is going to happen over the next two weeks — which is one reason the Economist is so bullish on Biden .
Alternately , one might say that past performance is no guarantee of future results .
We know that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exhibit sharp sudden moves .
It ’ s obviously unlikely that there will be a huge , last-minute swing toward Trump , but 10 days is enough time for it to happen , so why rule anything out ?
But this debate assumes that the polls are accurate .
National polling averages said Clinton was up by a bit more than 3 points on the eve of Election Day , and she won the popular vote by about 2 points , a very modest one-point error that nobody would remember as a big @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But those same polling averages showed Clinton up 6 points in Wisconsin .
That ’ s a fairly large error , a bit outside the normal variance you ’ d expect .
One major culprit , in retrospect , is that pollsters ’ samples turn out to include way more college graduates than are present in the actual electorate .
Since college graduates ’ voting behavior differs systematically from non-grads , that biases the polls — especially in the Midwest — toward Democrats .
These days , the better pollsters address this by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the actual education attainment of the population .
Not every pollster weights , and among those who do , there is some variance in exactly how they do it .
But education weighting is not a panacea .
National polling in 2018 was accurate , but national polling was accurate in 2016 as well .
On the state level , the 2018 polls underrated the GOP in Florida and the Midwest and overrated it in California and the Southwest .
The issue , pollsters tell me , is that educational attainment matters politically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ underlying differences in personality .
Poll samples are biased toward college graduates because non-graduates are more likely to have low social trust , which , among other things , makes them less likely to speak to pollsters .
And in recent cycles , low-trust voters have skewed toward Republicans .
But there are low-trust college graduates and high-trust non-graduates .
So while education is a convenient proxy , relying on it does not fully unbias the polls .
The continued issues with Midwestern polling got obscured to some extent in 2018 by the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But Debbie Stabenow and Gretchen Whitmer both underperformed their polls by about two points .
It was just a strong enough year for Democrats nationally that it didn ’ t matter .
The Electoral College is still tilted for Trump As long as Biden is up by about 10 points in the polls , the fact that he ’ s “ only ” up by 6 points in Pennsylvania doesn ’ t seem so significant .
But that 6-point lead in Pennsylvania represents a huge Electoral College disadvantage .
If instead Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pennsylvania , forecasters would be saying that Biden is a very narrow favorite .
Two-point polling errors are pretty common .
This huge Electoral College bias is why coverage of the 2020 race can end up giving you whiplash — either the polling looks like a landslide for Biden or else it ’ s a toss-up , with nothing in between .
That ’ s a reflection of the underlying reality of a situation in which Biden probably needs to win the national popular vote by a large margin to carry the Electoral @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contrast , the electoral map was tilted modestly in Obama ’ s favor , so it was possible for him to have something like a safe but narrow 3-point lead in the national polls .
Due to the polling problems discussed earlier , many observers believed that Clinton retained Obama ’ s Electoral College advantage during the 2016 race .
Because Michigan , Wisconsin , and Pennsylvania had voted for Al Gore and John Kerry even as they lost nationally , they were seen as a “ blue wall ” that could safeguard @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as she was able to secure wins in Virginia , Nevada , and Colorado , seen as swing states .
In retrospect , of course , that was not true .
Clinton won Virginia , Nevada , and Colorado while losing the “ blue wall ” states .
A modest 4- to 5-point national polling lead for Clinton never should have been seen as secure .
It was this misperception , more than anything else , that drove the misguided complacency about the campaign .
A candidate up 3 points in pre-election national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to win the national popular vote , which Clinton did .
But a candidate up 3 points and facing a 2-point Electoral College bias is at serious risk of losing the election — which she did .
The good news for Biden is his national polling lead really is a lot bigger than that .
The bad news is that the questions about the reliability of state polling have not vanished and the Electoral College bias does not appear to have diminished .
Biden ’ s national lead as is currently simply too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polling error or Electoral College bias .
But if it shrinks by only a few points — due to debates or news events or whatever else — the likely outcome could tip from potential landslide to a squeaker in the blink of an eye .
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The polls are pretty clear at this point — Joe Biden is in position to win the presidential election.
He’s up nationally, he’s up in Pennsylvania, he’s up in Florida, and he’s even up in North Carolina. He’s definitely up in Michigan and Wisconsin. If the states go the way the polls say, he’s going to win the election, and it won’t even be particularly close.
But many people remember reading popular poll aggregation sites four years ago and the confident predictions that Hillary Clinton would win: She had an 85 percent chance of winning, according to the New York Times, for example. Clinton, however, not only lost the key battlegrounds of Florida and Pennsylvania but even lost Wisconsin, where public polling had her so far ahead she didn’t bother to campaign in person.
Is it really different this time?
The answer is mostly yes. The extreme confidence in Clinton’s 2016 victory was despite a modest lead in the national polls. Forecasts in 2016 differed a lot in their assumptions. But there were generally two factors at play, on top of the state polling misses: a flawed way of thinking about how state-level races relate to one another, and a misperception of the electorate in key states in the Electoral College.
Today’s forecasts built in more GOP-friendly assessments of state dynamics. The main reason forecasters still think Biden has a very good chance of winning? His polling lead is just genuinely large. As of October 28, his chance of victory in the FiveThirtyEight forecast model (88 percent) is higher than Clinton’s was on Election Day in 2016 (72 percent).
Uncertainty remains primarily because even though Biden’s lead is big and has been remarkably stable, things could change and it could shrink — particularly in states key to winning the Electoral College. And if it does shrink, we’d see that a lot of things have not changed since 2016. It continues to be unclear if pollsters can more precisely gauge public opinion in the key Midwestern swing states, and the Electoral College has a large bias toward Republicans. Still, even as those factors remain constant, there have been some key changes over the past four years.
The modeling has improved
There are two distinct steps involved in poll-based election forecasting. First, they look at polls to try to assess the state of public opinion; second, they build a model, using the polls and sometimes other data, that goes from those polls to a prediction.
Common sense says a 5 percentage point lead is better than a 2-point lead and a lead in October is better than a lead in July. But to generate a precise forecast, you need to formalize those intuitions.
If you look back at the 2016 forecasts, some models were super-bullish on Hillary Clinton — but not all. On Election Day, she had an 85 percent chance of winning, according to the New York Times, and a 98 percent chance, according to the Huffington Post. Nate Silver and FiveThirtyEight, however, gave her a more restrained 72 percent chance. The main reason was a disagreement about modeling, not about what the polls said.
The Huffington Post looked at the election as 50 separate state races where deviation from the current polling could happen in each place, but would happen independently. So if Trump had a 35 percent chance of winning Pennsylvania, a 40 percent chance of winning North Carolina, a 40 percent chance of winning Florida, and a 45 percent chance of winning Georgia, etc., then the model assumed that added up to something like a 2 percent chance of Trump carrying enough battleground states.
The FiveThirtyEight model — to oversimplify — built in data from previous elections and also assumed that if the polls were off, they just might be off everywhere in the same direction. So in the moderately unlikely universe where Trump narrowly wins Pennsylvania, he is likely winning North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida.
Now, of course, you don’t want to model state election results as completely correlated with one another. Biden could probably boost his numbers in Wyoming by a point or two by running unanswered TV ads there, but this would have no implications for the national election. And effective outreach to Mexican American voters could help in Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas without moving the needle in Maine or Wisconsin.
But most everyone agrees now that Silver had the better of this argument. The current models all assume polling errors and swings in public opinion will be correlated. When the Economist says that Biden has a 93 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, it is making a methodologically sounder claim than the New York Times or Huffington Post did four years ago.
Silver, whose methods have not changed in this regard, appears significantly more confident in Biden’s chances than he was in Clinton’s.
All of which is to say that apples to apples, Biden has a bigger lead.
Biden has a larger, more stable polling lead
RealClearPolitics does a simple, naive polling average with no fancy math or house effects. It says Biden has an 8.6-point national polling lead, which is a bit bigger than Clinton’s lead was at the height of her 2016 convention bump. But Biden is not in the midst of a convention bump, and there are reasons to believe his lead will be more permanent:
Biden’s lead is bigger than Clinton’s lead was at any point in the 2016 campaign.
Biden’s big lead comes just two weeks before Election Day, so there is limited time for things to change.
While her lead was at its peak, Clinton was only polling in the low 40s with lots of undecideds and third party voters. Biden is above 50 percent in the RCP average.
The size of Biden’s lead is clearly good news for him. The significance of the stability of the lead is something modelers disagree about. One way of looking at it is that views of the incumbent are pretty locked in, as are views of the former vice president — and consequently, otherwise earth-shattering events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the mass protests following the police killing of George Floyd don’t move the polls very much.
Under those circumstances, it just looks incredibly unlikely that anything more dramatic is going to happen over the next week — which is one reason the Economist is so bullish on Biden.
One might note, though, that past performance is no guarantee of future results. We know that, historically, public opinion sometimes does exhibit sharp sudden moves. It’s unlikely that there will be a huge, last-minute swing toward Trump, but why rule anything out?
All this assumes that the polls are accurate.
Most pollsters have fixed a mistake
National polling averages said Clinton was up by a bit more than 3 points on the eve of Election Day, and she won the popular vote by about 2 points, a very modest one-point error that nobody would remember as a big deal had she actually become president.
But those same polling averages showed Clinton up 6 points in Wisconsin. That’s a fairly large error, a bit outside the normal variance you’d expect. One major culprit, in retrospect, is that pollsters’ samples turn out to include way more college graduates than are present in the actual electorate. Since college graduates’ voting behavior differs systematically from non-grads, that biases the polls — especially in the Midwest — toward Democrats.
These days, the better pollsters address this by “weighting” their sample to reflect the actual education attainment of the population. Not every pollster weights, and among those who do, there is some variance in exactly how they do it.
Education weighting is also not a panacea. National polling in 2018 was accurate, but national polling was accurate in 2016 as well. On the state level, the 2018 polls underrated the GOP in Florida and the Midwest and overrated it in California and the Southwest.
State polling was just as in 2018 as it was in 2016, while in both years national polling was about right pic.twitter.com/BOqqPuTsV7 — (((David Shor))) (@davidshor) March 1, 2020
The issue, pollsters tell me, is that educational attainment matters politically because it’s a proxy for underlying differences in personality. Poll samples are biased toward college graduates because non-graduates are more likely to have low social trust, which, among other things, makes them less likely to speak to pollsters. And in recent cycles, low-trust voters have skewed toward Republicans. But there are low-trust college graduates and high-trust non-graduates. So while education is a convenient proxy, relying on it does not fully eliminate bias in the polls.
The continued issues with Midwestern polling got obscured to some extent in 2018 by the fact that Democrats won the key races. But Debbie Stabenow and Gretchen Whitmer both underperformed their polls by about 2 percentage points. It was just a strong enough year for Democrats nationally that it didn’t matter.
The Electoral College is still tilted for Trump
As long as Biden is up by 8 to 10 points in the national polling, the fact that he’s “only” up by 5 or 6 points in Pennsylvania doesn’t seem so significant. But that 6-point lead in Pennsylvania represents a huge Electoral College disadvantage.
If instead Biden were up 6 nationally and 2 in Pennsylvania, forecasters would be saying that Biden is a very narrow favorite. Two-point polling errors are pretty common, though 6-point misses aren’t totally unheard of.
This huge Electoral College bias is why coverage of the 2020 race can end up giving you whiplash — either the polling looks like a landslide for Biden or else it’s a toss-up, with nothing in between. That’s a reflection of the underlying reality of a situation in which Biden probably needs to win the national popular vote by a large margin to carry the Electoral College.
Back in 2012, by contrast, the electoral map was tilted modestly in Obama’s favor, so it was possible for him to have something like a safe but narrow 3-point lead in the national polls.
Due to the polling problems discussed earlier, many observers believed that Clinton retained Obama’s Electoral College advantage during the 2016 race. Because Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania had voted for Al Gore and John Kerry even as they lost nationally, they were seen as a “blue wall” that could safeguard Clinton’s election, as long as she was able to secure wins in Virginia, Nevada, and Colorado, seen as swing states.
In retrospect, of course, that was not true. Clinton won Virginia, Nevada, and Colorado while losing the “blue wall” states. A modest 4- to 5-point national polling lead for Clinton never should have been seen as secure.
It was this misperception, more than anything else, that drove the misguided complacency about the campaign. A candidate up 3 points in preelection national polling averages is in fact very likely to win the national popular vote, which Clinton did. But a candidate up 3 points and facing a 2-point Electoral College bias is at serious risk of losing the election — which she did.
The good news for Biden is his national polling lead really is a lot bigger than that. The bad news is that the questions about the reliability of state polling have not vanished and the Electoral College bias does not appear to have diminished.
Biden’s national lead is currently simply too big to be plausibly overcome by state-specific polling error or Electoral College bias. But if it shrinks by only a few points — due to debates or news events or whatever else — the likely outcome could tip from potential landslide to a squeaker in the blink of an eye.


vox--2020-10-21--7 movies and TV shows that explain US elections, from gerrymandering to hanging chads

Voting in America : It ’ s complicated !
How you ’ re allowed to vote varies from place to place .
The methods are different .
The tabulation systems are different .
Why you fall into one district instead of another isn ’ t always clear .
How someone can get the most votes and still lose an election is confusing .
Why , and how , various people are prevented from voting is a subject of legal and political battles that stretch back to the country ’ s founding .
While it ’ s impossible to wrap every @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feature film , you can start to get an idea of how we got to where we are through documentaries , fiction films , and limited series that explore everything from voter suppression to gerrymandering to image-focused campaigns .
Big historical moments — like the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act , or the three-ring circus that was Bush v. Gore in 2000 — are worth revisiting , too .
And sometimes a film does what no article or textbook could do : Give you visuals that help explain matters that powerful @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oblique .
So here are five documentaries and two limited series that provide a window into how we vote in America .
They provide fodder for asking whether our electoral system is working as it should — and if not , for thinking through how it might be fixed .
Twenty years ago , Texas Gov .
George W. Bush was running for president against Vice President Al Gore , and the election wasn ’ t decided on election night .
It wasn ’ t decided the next day , or the next @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were still being counted in Florida .
Gore had definitely won the popular vote , but whether he ’ d carry the Electoral College as well came down to a handful of ballots in Miami-Dade County .
HBO ’ s 537 Votes — named for the number of votes that ultimately stood between Gore and the presidency — retells the events of the 2000 election in a rather jaunty and entertaining fashion .
The film is illuminating : It starts by examining the state of local Miami politics in 1999 and the role @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidential race , all before it moves on to how the recount became incredibly politicized and contested .
Through interviews with major players — GOP operatives , campaign staffers , historians , and Miami political figures — it builds a story that shows how local politics can seep into national politics and change the course of history .
And it ’ s a fast-paced , compelling look at a moment in history that could very well repeat itself in 2020 .
How to watch it : 537 Votes is available to stream on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
All In : The Fight for Democracy Calls to vote are everywhere , and vital — voting is a right that has a direct effect on the future .
But throughout US history and continuing in the present day , the right to vote has frequently been suppressed and voters disenfranchised , and Black Americans are often the ones who are prevented from making their voices heard at the polls .
All In : The Fight for Democracy tackles this issue through interviews with historians , politicians , and journalists , building @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are crucial issues facing our democracy .
Stacey Abrams , the votings rights activist and former Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia , serves as one of the film ’ s producers , and speaks in the film of her own experiences with disenfranchisement , as well as her family ’ s struggles to exercise their right to vote .
Other interviewees discuss the historical roots of suppression and political decisions that undermine voters ’ rights .
All In : The Fight for Democracy is a call to vote , but it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention to the decisions that courts and elected officials make that affect voting rights , and to not turn away from this incredibly pressing problem that shows no signs of going away .
How to watch it : All In : The Fight for Democracy is streaming for subscribers on Amazon Prime .
Administered by the American Legion , “ Boys State ” is an educational camp-style program that gathers more than a thousand 17-year-old boys each summer .
Over the course of one week , the boys form a representative government , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the goal is to learn about and experience firsthand how the American system of government works .
Boys State is an uplifting , funny , thrilling , and revealing peek into that program and what the boys learn about what it takes to get elected to US public office .
The teens come to Boys State with formed political ideas , but through debate , discussion , and defense of their stances , they come to understand the challenges of cultivating consensus and winning , as well as the strategies required to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ microcosmic look into the political process and a hint of the way future politics might unfold , in dismal and strangely hopeful ways .
How to watch it : Boys State is streaming for subscribers on Apple TV+ .
This July , the same weekend that civil rights pioneer John Lewis died from pancreatic cancer , a movie about his life was hitting theaters , drive-ins , and digital services .
John Lewis : Good Trouble traces the broad outlines of the respected congressman ’ s life and career through archival footage , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for colleagues like Stacey Abrams , and interviews with Lewis and many of his colleagues .
Lewis spoke at the March on Washington , marched from Selma to Montgomery , and began serving in the House of Representatives in 1987 .
In addition to introducing viewers to Lewis himself , John Lewis : Good Trouble serves as an excellent primer on the struggle for voting rights in America — which didn ’ t end with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965 .
The struggle was still on when Lewis passed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on now , just a few months later .
The film encourages viewers to carry on his legacy .
How to watch it : John Lewis : Good Trouble is available to digitally rent or purchase on services including Amazon , iTunes , Google Play , YouTube , and Vudu .
For a complete listing , see the film ’ s website .
Gerrymandering is a complex practice to execute , but it ’ s a simple one to understand .
Slay the Dragon lays out the details and history , giving the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and why it threatens our democracy .
The film is especially attentive to the resources that the GOP , which controls most gerrymandered states right now , has invested in redistricting , which effectively makes some citizens ’ votes count less than others .
Redistricting is often coupled with voter suppression efforts like voter ID laws , voter purges , and the rollback of initiatives intended to make voting more accessible to all citizens , particularly Black Americans .
Slay the Dragon doesn ’ t just provide information , though ; it tells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ successfully fought gerrymandering in their state , and calls for the audience to do the same .
That makes Slay the Dragon a rather thrilling and hopeful watch , particularly in an election year while the world is roiling with uncertainty — not to mention a census year , the results of which could change the way voters are divided into districts in many states .
And it presents a strong argument against the practice of gerrymanding altogether : In a democracy , voters ought to get to choose their legislators , not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ watch it : Slay the Dragon is available on a variety of cable and on-demand services ; check the film ’ s website for more information .
In 1988 , nobody named Jack Tanner was actually vying for the Democratic presidential nomination .
But HBO broadcast an 11-episode TV miniseries about the fictional Tanner anyhow , directed by Robert Altman and written by Doonesbury ’ s Garry Trudeau .
Tanner ( played by Michael Murphy ) is an idealistic Democratic congressman who ’ s on the campaign trail , accompanied by his 19-year-old @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The series blurs reality and fiction ; “ real ” people like Bob Dole , Pat Robertson , Ralph Nader , Gloria Steinem , and many others show up as themselves , and Tanner ’ s campaign staff is constantly talking about his competitors ( including Joe Biden , who was running for president back then , too ) .
It ’ s a brilliantly satirical series that skewers the process of running for political office more than political positions themselves , suggesting that what really matters in getting elected is theatrics .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 88 is available to stream on the Criterion Channel and on HBO Max .
It ’ s also available to digitally rent or purchase on Amazon Prime .
The folks behind Netflix ’ s Explained series — who are , yes , my colleagues here at Vox — make a show so good I ’ d watch it even if I didn ’ t work here .
So I was delighted to discover they were making a miniseries specifically focused on voting in America .
Each of the three episodes — “ The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ You Buy an Election ?
” and “ Whose Vote Counts ” — explores the state of electoral politics in the US today .
In typical Vox fashion , the series achieves this by examining studies ; talking to experts , politicians , and ordinary people with much at stake ; wading through data ; and trying to find the real story beneath the headlines .
With narration by Leonardo DiCaprio , Selena Gomez , and John Legend , Whose Vote Counts , Explained is definitely one of the most thoughtful and fun @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system that affects the lives of all Americans .
How to watch it : Whose Vote Counts , Explained is streaming on Netflix .
The first episode is also available for free on YouTube .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense of an increasingly chaotic world : Contribute today from as little as $ 3 .

Voting in America: It’s complicated! How you’re allowed to vote varies from place to place. The methods are different. The tabulation systems are different. Why you fall into one district instead of another isn’t always clear. How someone can get the most votes and still lose an election is confusing. Why, and how, various people are prevented from voting is a subject of legal and political battles that stretch back to the country’s founding.
While it’s impossible to wrap every question about American electoral politics into one feature film, you can start to get an idea of how we got to where we are through documentaries, fiction films, and limited series that explore everything from voter suppression to gerrymandering to image-focused campaigns. Big historical moments — like the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, or the three-ring circus that was Bush v. Gore in 2000 — are worth revisiting, too.
And sometimes a film does what no article or textbook could do: Give you visuals that help explain matters that powerful people are more than happy to leave oblique. So here are five documentaries and two limited series that provide a window into how we vote in America. They provide fodder for asking whether our electoral system is working as it should — and if not, for thinking through how it might be fixed.
537 Votes
Twenty years ago, Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for president against Vice President Al Gore, and the election wasn’t decided on election night. It wasn’t decided the next day, or the next one either. Weeks later, votes were still being counted in Florida. Gore had definitely won the popular vote, but whether he’d carry the Electoral College as well came down to a handful of ballots in Miami-Dade County.
HBO’s 537 Votes — named for the number of votes that ultimately stood between Gore and the presidency — retells the events of the 2000 election in a rather jaunty and entertaining fashion. The film is illuminating: It starts by examining the state of local Miami politics in 1999 and the role the Elián González saga played in the presidential race, all before it moves on to how the recount became incredibly politicized and contested. Through interviews with major players — GOP operatives, campaign staffers, historians, and Miami political figures — it builds a story that shows how local politics can seep into national politics and change the course of history. And it’s a fast-paced, compelling look at a moment in history that could very well repeat itself in 2020.
(If you prefer a more traditional star-studded, lightly fictionalized dramatization of the same sequence of events, the 2008 HBO original movie Recount, streaming on HBO and HBO Max, is also a good watch.)
How to watch it: 537 Votes is available to stream on HBO and HBO Max beginning October 21.
All In: The Fight for Democracy
Calls to vote are everywhere, and vital — voting is a right that has a direct effect on the future. But throughout US history and continuing in the present day, the right to vote has frequently been suppressed and voters disenfranchised, and Black Americans are often the ones who are prevented from making their voices heard at the polls. All In: The Fight for Democracy tackles this issue through interviews with historians, politicians, and journalists, building the case that voter suppression and disenfranchisement are crucial issues facing our democracy.
Stacey Abrams, the votings rights activist and former Democratic candidate for governor of Georgia, serves as one of the film’s producers, and speaks in the film of her own experiences with disenfranchisement, as well as her family’s struggles to exercise their right to vote. Other interviewees discuss the historical roots of suppression and political decisions that undermine voters’ rights. All In: The Fight for Democracy is a call to vote, but it’s also a call to pay close attention to the decisions that courts and elected officials make that affect voting rights, and to not turn away from this incredibly pressing problem that shows no signs of going away.
How to watch it: All In: The Fight for Democracy is streaming for subscribers on Amazon Prime.
Related What long voting lines in the US really mean
Boys State
Administered by the American Legion, “Boys State” is an educational camp-style program that gathers more than a thousand 17-year-old boys each summer. Over the course of one week, the boys form a representative government, complete with party platforms and campaigns; the goal is to learn about and experience firsthand how the American system of government works.
Boys State is an uplifting, funny, thrilling, and revealing peek into that program and what the boys learn about what it takes to get elected to US public office. The teens come to Boys State with formed political ideas, but through debate, discussion, and defense of their stances, they come to understand the challenges of cultivating consensus and winning, as well as the strategies required to do so. Their experiences provide both a microcosmic look into the political process and a hint of the way future politics might unfold, in dismal and strangely hopeful ways.
How to watch it: Boys State is streaming for subscribers on Apple TV+.
John Lewis: Good Trouble
This July, the same weekend that civil rights pioneer John Lewis died from pancreatic cancer, a movie about his life was hitting theaters, drive-ins, and digital services. John Lewis: Good Trouble traces the broad outlines of the respected congressman’s life and career through archival footage, scenes from his tireless trail of campaigning for colleagues like Stacey Abrams, and interviews with Lewis and many of his colleagues.
Lewis spoke at the March on Washington, marched from Selma to Montgomery, and began serving in the House of Representatives in 1987. In addition to introducing viewers to Lewis himself, John Lewis: Good Trouble serves as an excellent primer on the struggle for voting rights in America — which didn’t end with the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. The struggle was still on when Lewis passed away, and it’s still on now, just a few months later. The film encourages viewers to carry on his legacy.
How to watch it: John Lewis: Good Trouble is available to digitally rent or purchase on services including Amazon, iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, and Vudu. For a complete listing, see the film’s website.
Slay the Dragon
Gerrymandering is a complex practice to execute, but it’s a simple one to understand. Slay the Dragon lays out the details and history, giving the audience an understanding of what gerrymandering is and why it threatens our democracy. The film is especially attentive to the resources that the GOP, which controls most gerrymandered states right now, has invested in redistricting, which effectively makes some citizens’ votes count less than others. Redistricting is often coupled with voter suppression efforts like voter ID laws, voter purges, and the rollback of initiatives intended to make voting more accessible to all citizens, particularly Black Americans.
Slay the Dragon doesn’t just provide information, though; it tells a story of a citizen group that successfully fought gerrymandering in their state, and calls for the audience to do the same. That makes Slay the Dragon a rather thrilling and hopeful watch, particularly in an election year while the world is roiling with uncertainty — not to mention a census year, the results of which could change the way voters are divided into districts in many states. And it presents a strong argument against the practice of gerrymanding altogether: In a democracy, voters ought to get to choose their legislators, not the other way around.
How to watch it: Slay the Dragon is available on a variety of cable and on-demand services; check the film’s website for more information.
Tanner ’88
In 1988, nobody named Jack Tanner was actually vying for the Democratic presidential nomination. But HBO broadcast an 11-episode TV miniseries about the fictional Tanner anyhow, directed by Robert Altman and written by Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau. Tanner (played by Michael Murphy) is an idealistic Democratic congressman who’s on the campaign trail, accompanied by his 19-year-old daughter Alexandra (Cynthia Nixon).
The series blurs reality and fiction; “real” people like Bob Dole, Pat Robertson, Ralph Nader, Gloria Steinem, and many others show up as themselves, and Tanner’s campaign staff is constantly talking about his competitors (including Joe Biden, who was running for president back then, too). It’s a brilliantly satirical series that skewers the process of running for political office more than political positions themselves, suggesting that what really matters in getting elected is theatrics.
How to watch it: Tanner ’88 is available to stream on the Criterion Channel and on HBO Max. It’s also available to digitally rent or purchase on Amazon Prime.
Related The satirical HBO masterpiece that skewered political campaigns back in 1988
Whose Vote Counts, Explained
The folks behind Netflix’s Explained series — who are, yes, my colleagues here at Vox — make a show so good I’d watch it even if I didn’t work here. So I was delighted to discover they were making a miniseries specifically focused on voting in America.
Each of the three episodes — “The Right to Vote,” “Can You Buy an Election?” and “Whose Vote Counts” — explores the state of electoral politics in the US today. In typical Vox fashion, the series achieves this by examining studies; talking to experts, politicians, and ordinary people with much at stake; wading through data; and trying to find the real story beneath the headlines. With narration by Leonardo DiCaprio, Selena Gomez, and John Legend, Whose Vote Counts, Explained is definitely one of the most thoughtful and fun ways out there to learn about a system that affects the lives of all Americans.
How to watch it: Whose Vote Counts, Explained is streaming on Netflix. The first episode is also available for free on YouTube.


vox--2020-10-21--Pope Francis endorses same-sex civil unions for the first time

Pope Francis for the first time voiced support for civil unions for same-sex couples , in a documentary that premiered Wednesday .
“ Homosexual people have the right to be in a family , ” Francis said in an interview for the film Francesco , according to the Associated Press .
“ They are children of God.
” The comments made news after the documentary , about the pope ’ s approaches to a variety of world problems , premiered at the Rome Film Festival .
They are a departure from previous Vatican doctrine , which held that the Catholic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.
” The remarks also come at a pivotal time for LGBTQ rights in the United States , where the Senate is soon expected to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett .
Her confirmation would give conservatives on the Court a 6-3 majority and potentially the votes to overturn prior rulings on issues from marriage equality to employment discrimination against LGBTQ Americans .
( Barrett would also be one of six Catholics on the Court . )
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ US politics , the pope ’ s words are also sure to get attention among Catholic voters with the election less than two weeks away .
He may have stopped short of advocating that the church sanctify same-sex marriages , but his remarks were still groundbreaking , especially coming from a popular religious leader .
Pope Francis has a history of making ( somewhat ) progressive comments on LGBTQ rights Though the Catholic Church has historically opposed same-sex marriage and relationships , Francis has long taken less of a hard line than previous @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when he remarked in an interview , “ If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will , who am I to judge ?
” Later , in 2016 , he said that the church should apologize to gay people and ask forgiveness for its treatment of them .
But such comments haven ’ t been matched by actual Church policy , which still states that gay people are “ called to chastity ” because “ homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered , ” as Vox ’ s German Lopez reported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ comments in Francesco , directed by Evgeny Afineevsky , may be a departure from this doctrine .
“ You can ’ t kick someone out of a family , nor make their life miserable for this , ” Francis says in the film .
“ What we have to have is a civil union law ; that way they are legally covered.
” Some Catholic leaders who support LGBTQ rights have praised the comments .
“ The Pope ’ s speaking positively about civil unions also sends a strong message to places where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Rev .
James Martin , a priest who has worked to make connections between the church and LGBTQ communities , said in a statement to the AP .
Some are encouraging the pope to go further and recognize same-sex marriages within the church .
“ We urge Pope Francis to apply the same kind of reasoning to recognize and bless these same unions of love and support within the Catholic Church , too , ” Francis DeBernardo , executive director of the LGBTQ Catholic group New Ways Ministry , said in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a majority of American Catholics ( 61 percent ) already support same-sex marriage .
And the pope ’ s views may carry weight with those who don ’ t — 77 percent of US Catholics have a favorable opinion of him as of January 2020 , though Democrats like him more than Republicans do .
Meanwhile , it ’ s not the first time Francis has made a political stir .
During the 2016 presidential campaign , he said that then-candidate Donald Trump was “ not Christian ” in Trump ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ month , he issued an encyclical criticizing “ extremist , resentful and aggressive nationalism , ” which led David Gardner of the Financial Times to wonder if the pope might “ tacitly support Joe Biden ” for president .
However the pope feels about the upcoming US election , his words are likely to start conversations among Catholics , reigniting questions about what the church ’ s policies should be in countries — including the US — that don ’ t always protect LGBTQ rights .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ what ’ s happening in the news , from the coronavirus crisis to a racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
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Pope Francis for the first time as pontiff voiced clear support for civil unions for same-sex couples, in a documentary that premiered Wednesday.
“Homosexual people have the right to be in a family,” Francis said in an interview for the film Francesco, according to the Associated Press. “They are children of God.”
The comments made news after the documentary, about the pope’s approaches to a variety of world problems, premiered at the Rome Film Festival. It’s not clear when exactly the remarks were made, but they are a departure from Vatican doctrine, which holds that the Catholic Church’s teachings could not “lead in any way to approval of homosexual behavior or to legal recognition of homosexual unions.”
The remarks also come at a pivotal time for LGBTQ rights in the United States, where the Senate is soon expected to confirm Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. Her confirmation would give conservatives on the Court a 6-3 majority and potentially the votes to overturn prior rulings on issues from marriage equality to employment discrimination against LGBTQ Americans. (Barrett would also be one of six Catholics on the Court.)
Though far from a direct commentary on US politics, the pope’s words are also sure to get attention among Catholic voters with the election less than two weeks away. He may have stopped short of advocating that the church sanctify same-sex marriages, but his remarks were still groundbreaking, especially coming from a popular religious leader.
Pope Francis has a history of making (somewhat) progressive comments on LGBTQ rights
Though the Catholic Church has historically opposed same-sex marriage and relationships, Francis has long taken less of a hard line than previous popes. He made headlines in 2013 when he remarked in an interview, “If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?” He has also made remarks indicating possible support for civil unions in recent years.
And in 2016, Francis said that the church should apologize to gay people and ask forgiveness for its treatment of them. But such comments haven’t been matched by actual Church policy, which does not affirm rights for transgender people and still states that gay people are “called to chastity” because “homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered,” as Vox’s German Lopez reported in 2016. The pope has also said gay men should be heavily scrutinized if they want to join the priesthood: “If you have the slightest doubt, it’s better to refuse them.”
The pope’s comments in Francesco, directed by Evgeny Afineevsky, may be a departure from this doctrine.
“You can’t kick someone out of a family, nor make their life miserable for this,” Francis says in the film. “What we have to have is a civil union law; that way they are legally covered.”
Some Catholic leaders who support LGBTQ rights have praised the comments. “The Pope’s speaking positively about civil unions also sends a strong message to places where the church has opposed such laws,” Rev. James Martin, a priest who has worked to make connections between the church and LGBTQ communities, said in a statement to the AP.
Some are encouraging the pope to go further and recognize same-sex marriages within the church. “We urge Pope Francis to apply the same kind of reasoning to recognize and bless these same unions of love and support within the Catholic Church, too,” Francis DeBernardo, executive director of the LGBTQ Catholic group New Ways Ministry, said in a statement to the AP.
In general, a majority of American Catholics (61 percent) already support same-sex marriage. And the pope’s views may carry weight with those who don’t — 77 percent of US Catholics have a favorable opinion of him as of January 2020, though Democrats like him more than Republicans do.
It’s far from the first time Francis has made a political stir. During the 2016 presidential campaign, he said that then-candidate Donald Trump was “not Christian” in Trump’s comments about immigrants. And earlier this month, he issued an encyclical criticizing “extremist, resentful and aggressive nationalism,” which led David Gardner of the Financial Times to wonder if the pope might “tacitly support Joe Biden” for president.
However the pope feels about the upcoming US election, his words are likely to start conversations among Catholics, reigniting questions about what the church’s policies should be in countries — including the US — that don’t always protect LGBTQ rights.


vox--2020-10-21--How bad is your state’s Covid-19 outbreak?

America ’ s national Covid-19 epidemic continues , with the US ’ s daily new cases still higher than most developed nations and the country recently surpassing 220,000 deaths due to the disease .
At the state level , things can look even worse than the national picture .
Public health experts look at a few markers to determine how bad things are in each state : the number of daily new cases ; the infection rate , which can show how likely the virus is to spread ; and the percentage of tests that come back positive , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sufficient testing .
A Vox analysis indicates the vast majority of states report alarming trends across all three benchmarks for coronavirus outbreaks .
Most states still report a high — sometimes very high — number of daily new Covid-19 cases .
Most still have high infection rates .
And most have test positive rates that are too high , indicating they don ’ t have enough tests to track and contain the scope of their outbreaks .
Across these benchmarks , just one state — Maine — fares well on all three metrics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relatively under control for now .
America ’ s outbreaks , reaching from California to Florida , are the result of the public and the country ’ s leaders never taking the virus seriously enough and , to the extent they did , letting their guard down prematurely .
States , with the support of President Donald Trump , moved to reopen — often before they saw sizable drops in daily new Covid-19 cases , and at times so quickly they didn ’ t have time to see if each phase of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases .
The public embraced the reopenings , going out and often not adhering to recommended precautions like physical distancing and wearing a mask .
Even as cases began to fall later in the summer , America ’ s overall caseload remained very high .
And yet many states moved to reopen once again , with much of the public embracing the looser restrictions and subsequently going out .
It ’ s this mix of government withdrawal and public complacency that experts have cited in explaining why states continue to struggle with getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a situation that didn ’ t have to be , ” Jaime Slaughter-Acey , an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota , told me .
“ For almost three months , you had opportunities to be proactive with respect to mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic and to help normalize culture to adopt practices that would stem the tide of transmissions as well as the development of Covid-19 complications .
… It was not prioritized over the economy.
” The effects are felt not just in terms of more infections , critical illnesses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but in the long-term financial impact as the economy struggles , many people still refuse to go out , and businesses resist reopening during a pandemic .
“ Dead people don ’ t shop .
They don ’ t spend money .
They don ’ t invest in things , ” Jade Pagkas-Bather , an infectious diseases expert and doctor at the University of Chicago , told me .
“ When you fail to invest in the health of your population , then there are longitudinal downstream effects.
” The benchmarks tracked @ @ @ @ @ @ @ every important facet of the pandemic .
Hospital capacity was previously included among Vox ’ s metrics , but it ’ s been removed due to inconsistent data reporting .
The data for contact tracing , when “ disease detectives ” track down people who may have been infected and push them to quarantine , is also poor .
Some measures that are helpful for gauging if a state can safely start to reopen , like the total test count and whether cases have fallen in the previous two weeks , are excluded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ each state ’ s current Covid-19 outbreak .
Together , these three benchmarks help give an idea of how each state is doing in its fight against Covid-19 .
Nationwide , it ’ s pretty grim .
1 ) Most states have too many daily new Covid-19 infections What ’ s the goal ?
Fewer than four daily new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people per day , based on data from the New York Times and the Census Bureau .
Which states meet the goal ?
Maine and Vermont — just two states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most straightforward way to measure whether any place is experiencing a big coronavirus outbreak is to look at the number of daily new Covid-19 cases .
There ’ s no widely accepted metric for how many cases , exactly , is too many .
But experts told me that aiming for below four daily new cases per 100,000 is generally a good idea — a level low enough that a state can say it ’ s starting to get significant control over the virus .
A big caveat to this metric : It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state ’ s testing .
Cases can only get picked up if states are actually testing people for the virus .
So if a state doesn ’ t have enough tests , it ’ s probably going to miss a lot of cases , and the reported cases won ’ t tell the full story .
That ’ s why it ’ s important not to use this benchmark by itself , but to use it alongside metrics like the test positive rate .
Along those lines , the number of daily new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a Covid-19 outbreak .
If test results take a week to get reported to the state , then the count for daily new cases will really reflect the state of the outbreak for the previous week .
If testing is adequate in a state , though , the toll of daily new cases gives perhaps the best snapshot of how big a state ’ s Covid-19 outbreak is .
2 ) The coronavirus is spreading too quickly in most states What ’ s the goal ?
An effective reproduction number , or Rt @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Rt.live , a site created by two Instagram founders and a data analyst .
Which states meet the goal ?
California , Delaware , Maine , Mississippi , North Carolina , Oregon , Texas , and Washington — a total of eight states .
Washington , DC , did as well .
Why is this important ?
The Rt measures how many people are infected by each person with Covid-19 .
If the Rt is 1 , then an infected person will , on average , spread the coronavirus to one other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , then an infected person will spread it to two on average .
And so on .
It ’ s an attempt , then , to gauge how quickly a virus is spreading .
One way to think about it : Unlike the count for daily new cases , this gives you a snapshot not of a state ’ s Covid-19 outbreak today , but of where the outbreak is heading in the near future .
The goal is to get the Rt below 1 .
If each infection doesn ’ t lead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lead to zero new Covid-19 cases .
The estimated Rt can be very imprecise , with margins of error that make it hard to know for certain in any state if it ’ s really above or below 1 .
Different modelers can also come up with different estimates .
That ’ s , unfortunately , just the reality of using limited data to come up with a rough estimate of a disease ’ s overall spread .
The Rt also reflects an average .
If 10 people are infected with Covid-19 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and one spreads it to 10 , that adds up to an Rt of 1 .
But it masks the fact that individuals , for whatever reason , can still cause superspreading events — which seem of particular concern with the coronavirus .
Still , the Rt is one of the better measures we have for tracking a pathogen ’ s spread across the whole population .
When paired with the other metrics on this list , it can give us a sense of each state ’ s outbreak now and in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ positive rates for tests are too high What ’ s the goal ?
Below 5 percent of coronavirus tests coming back positive over the past week , based on data from the Covid Tracking Project .
Which states meet the goal ?
Alaska , California , Connecticut , Hawaii , Louisiana , Maine , Maryland , Massachusetts , Michigan , New Hampshire , New Jersey , New York , Ohio , Rhode Island , Vermont , Washington , and West Virginia — 17 states .
Washington , DC , did as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ properly track and contain coronavirus outbreaks , states need to have enough testing .
There are all sorts of proposals for how much testing is needed in the US , up to the tens of millions .
But one way to see if a state is testing enough to match its outbreak is the rate of tests that come back positive .
An area with adequate testing should be testing lots and lots of people , many of whom don ’ t have the disease or don ’ t show severe symptoms .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ with obvious symptoms are getting tested , so there ’ s not quite enough testing to match the scope of an outbreak .
The goal for the positive rate is , in an ideal world , zero percent , since that would suggest that Covid-19 is vanquished entirely .
More realistically , in a world going through a pandemic , the positive rate should be below 5 percent .
But even if a state reaches 5 percent , experts argue it should continue trying to push that number further down — to match @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and South Korea that have gotten their positive rates below 3 percent and even 1 percent — in order to truly get ahold of their outbreaks .
As long as a state is above 5 percent , chances are it ’ s still missing a significant number of Covid-19 cases .
And the higher that number is , the more cases that are very likely getting missed .
So even if your state is reporting a low number of daily new cases , a high positive rate should be a cause for alarm @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an outbreak that ’ s only hidden due to a lack of testing .
And if your state is reporting a high number of daily new cases and a high positive rate , that ’ s all the more reason for concern , suggesting the epidemic is even worse than the total case count indicates .
This article is updated weekly , typically on Wednesdays , with the most up-to-date data .
Help keep Vox free for all Millions turn to Vox each month to understand what ’ s happening in the news @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racial reckoning to what is , quite possibly , the most consequential presidential election of our lifetimes .
Our mission has never been more vital than it is in this moment : to empower you through understanding .
But our distinctive brand of explanatory journalism takes resources .
Even when the economy and the news advertising market recovers , your support will be a critical part of sustaining our resource-intensive work .
If you have already contributed , thank you .
If you haven ’ t , please consider helping everyone make sense @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today from as little as $ 3 .

America’s national Covid-19 epidemic continues, with the US’s daily new cases down from an early January peak but still higher than those of most developed nations — and the country recently surpassing 500,000 deaths due to the disease.
At the state level, things can look even worse than the national picture.
Public health experts look at a few markers to determine how bad things are in each state: the number of daily new cases; the infection rate, which can show how likely the virus is to spread; and the percentage of tests that come back positive, which should be low in a state with sufficient testing. Combined, these three benchmarks can tell you whether or not a state’s coronavirus outbreak is under control.
Vox’s analysis, updated weekly, shows the vast majority of states are reporting alarming trends for coronavirus cases based on these benchmarks. Only one state — Hawaii — fares well on all three metrics, suggesting the vast majority of states don’t have their outbreaks fully under control right now.
The US outbreaks are due to the failure of both the American public and the country’s leaders to take the virus seriously enough; to the extent they did, many let their guard down prematurely. With the support of former President Donald Trump, states moved to reopen — often before seeing sizable drops in daily new Covid-19 cases, and at times so quickly they weren’t able to tell whether each phase of their reopening plan was leading to too many new infections.
The public embraced the reopenings, resuming their usual day-to-day activities and often refusing to adhere to recommended precautions like physical distancing and mask-wearing.
Even as cases began to fall later in the summer, America’s overall caseload remained very high. Yet many states moved to reopen once more, with much of the public embracing the looser restrictions and subsequently going out.
It’s this mix of government withdrawal and public complacency that experts have cited in explaining why states continue to struggle with getting the coronavirus under control.
“It’s a situation that didn’t have to be,” Jaime Slaughter-Acey, an epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, previously told me, adding, “You had opportunities to be proactive with respect to mitigating the Covid-19 pandemic and to help normalize culture to adopt practices that would stem the tide of transmissions as well as the development of Covid-19 complications. … It was not prioritized over the economy.”
The effects are felt not just in terms of more infections, critical illnesses, new chronic conditions, and deaths, but in the long-term financial impact as the economy struggles, many people still refuse to go out, and businesses resist reopening during a pandemic.
“Dead people don’t shop. They don’t spend money. They don’t invest in things,” Jade Pagkas-Bather, an expert in infectious diseases and a doctor at the University of Chicago, previously told me. “When you fail to invest in the health of your population, then there are longitudinal downstream effects.”
With a Covid-19 vaccination campaign underway, a finish line to this crisis in finally visible. But until America reaches sufficient population protection — and, preferably, herd immunity — every day the coronavirus spreads means more illnesses, hospitalizations, and deaths.
As the country works toward vaccinating everyone, the three benchmarks tracked by Vox give an idea of how each state is doing in its fight against Covid-19 in the meantime. Nationwide, it’s pretty grim.
1) Most states have too many daily new Covid-19 infections
What’s the goal? Fewer than four daily new coronavirus cases per 100,000 people per day, based on data from the Covid Tracking Project and the Census Bureau.
Which states meet the goal? Just one — Hawaii.
Why is this important? The most straightforward way to measure whether any place is experiencing a big coronavirus outbreak is to look at the number of daily new Covid-19 cases.
There’s no widely accepted metric for how many cases, exactly, is too many. But experts told me that aiming for below four daily new cases per 100,000 is generally a good idea — a level low enough that a state can say it’s starting to get significant control over the virus.
A big caveat to this metric: It’s only as good as a state’s testing. Cases can only get picked up if states are actually testing people for the virus. So if a state doesn’t have enough tests, it’s probably going to miss a lot of cases, and the reported cases won’t tell the full story. That’s why it’s important not to use this benchmark by itself, but to use it alongside metrics like the test positive rate.
The number of daily new cases may also give a delayed snapshot of a Covid-19 outbreak. If test results take a week to get reported to the state, the count for daily new cases will really reflect the state of the outbreak for the previous week.
If testing is adequate in a state, though, the toll of daily new cases is perhaps the best insight as to how big a state’s Covid-19 outbreak is.
2) The coronavirus is spreading too quickly in some states
What’s the goal? An effective reproduction number, or Rt, below 1, based on data from the Centre for Mathematical Modeling of Infectious Diseases.
Which states meet the goal? All but Alaska, Minnesota, New Hampshire, North Dakota, and Wyoming — 45 states, as well as Washington, DC.
Why is this important? The Rt measures how many people are infected by each person with Covid-19. If the Rt is 1, then an infected person will, on average, spread the coronavirus to one other person. If it’s 2, then an infected person will spread it to two on average. And so on.
It’s an attempt, then, to gauge how quickly a virus is spreading. One way to think about it: Unlike the count for daily new cases, this gives you a snapshot not of a state’s Covid-19 outbreak today, but of where the outbreak is heading in the near future.
The goal is to get the Rt below 1. If each infection doesn’t lead to another, that would over time lead to zero new Covid-19 cases.
The estimated Rt can be very imprecise, with margins of error that make it hard to know for certain in any state if it’s really above or below 1. Different modelers can also come up with different estimates. That’s, unfortunately, just the reality of using limited data to come up with a rough estimate of a disease’s overall spread.
The Rt also reflects an average. If 10 people are infected with Covid-19, nine spread it to no one else, and one spreads it to 10, that adds up to an Rt of 1. But it masks the fact that individuals, for whatever reason, can still cause superspreading events — which seem of particular concern with the coronavirus.
And the Rt is only as good as the data that goes into calculating it. If a state’s data is poor quality or inconsistent, it might skew the picture. That can help explain why some states with bad and continuing outbreaks may fare better on this benchmark than others.
Still, the Rt is one of the better measures we have for tracking a pathogen’s spread across the whole population. When paired with the other metrics on this list, it can give us a sense of each state’s outbreak now and in the future.
3) Most states’ positive rates for tests are too high
What’s the goal? Less than 5 percent of coronavirus tests coming back positive over the previous week, based on data from the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center and the Covid Tracking Project.
Which states meet the goal? Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wisconsin — 24 states, as well as Washington, DC.
Why is this important? To properly track and contain coronavirus outbreaks, states need to have enough testing. There are all sorts of proposals for how much testing is needed in the US, up to the tens of millions.
But one way to see if a state is testing enough to match its outbreak is the rate of tests that come back positive. An area with adequate testing should be testing lots and lots of people, many of whom don’t have the disease or don’t show severe symptoms. High positive rates indicate that only people with obvious symptoms are getting tested, so there’s not quite enough testing to match the scope of an outbreak.
The goal for the positive rate is, in an ideal world, zero percent, since that would suggest that Covid-19 is vanquished entirely. More realistically, in a world going through a pandemic, the positive rate should be below 5 percent. But even if a state reaches 5 percent, experts argue it should continue trying to push that number further down — to match nations like Australia, New Zealand, and South Korea, which have gotten their positive rates below 3 percent or even 1 percent — in order to truly get ahold of their outbreaks.
As long as a state is above 5 percent, chances are it’s still missing a significant number of Covid-19 cases. And the higher that number is, the more cases that are very likely getting missed.
So even if your state is reporting a low number of daily new cases, a high positive rate should be a cause for alarm — a sign that there’s an outbreak that’s only hidden due to a lack of testing. And if your state is reporting a high number of daily new cases and a high positive rate, that’s all the more reason for concern, suggesting the epidemic is even worse than the total case count indicates.
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vox--2020-10-21--The stunning hypocrisy of the Trump family’s attacks on Hunter Biden

Donald Trump is the first president in modern history to refuse to divest from his business interests upon taking office .
As a result , he reportedly took in at least $ 73 million from foreign sources during his first two years in office , creating an unprecedented tangle of conflicts of interest with countries like the Philippines , India , and Turkey that are home to Trump-branded buildings .
Meanwhile , Trump ’ s adult sons — who said before his inauguration that they ’ d stay out of politics to avoid conflicts of interest — serve as key @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the family business , which has benefited from Trump ’ s presidency both directly and indirectly .
Somehow , none of this has stopped the president or his family from making his closing reelection case about corruption .
Not his , mind you , but the flimsily supported idea that Joe Biden committed crimes by letting Obama administration foreign policy be influenced by his son Hunter ’ s foreign business dealings .
Various aspects of these allegations have been debunked before ( more on that later ) , but Trump ’ s attacks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump .
“ The Biden family has spent decades in Washington , DC enriching themselves by selling access to Joe Biden ’ s taxpayer funded office .
Hunter Biden is corrupt .
Jim Biden is corrupt .
Joe Biden is corrupt , ” Trump Jr. tweeted last week , with Eric Trump making a similar attack on Tuesday .
Of course , the first rule of Trumpism seems to be to never let shame or hypocrisy get in the way of attacking your enemies , so it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trying to weaponize one of his weaknesses in a last-ditch effort to turn his flailing reelection campaign around .
But it ’ s still worth devoting some attention to the projection involved in Trump posturing as some sort of anti-corruption crusader .
Hunter Biden is back in the news following the New York Post ’ s October 14 piece about unverified emails found on a hard drive of dubious provenance .
The story suggests emails found on the drive indicate that while Biden was vice president , his son used his connections to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an executive from Burisma , a Ukrainian energy company Hunter served on the board of for $ 50,000 a month .
It ’ s not clear whether the meeting ever happened ( the Biden campaign says no one-on-one time ever did ) .
But the implication , conservatives say , is that the purported meeting led to Joe Biden abusing his office by pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who had been investigating a company that was paying his son .
While it ’ s unclear what qualifications Hunter had for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last name , the accusation that his role on Burisma ’ s board somehow compromised the Obama administration ’ s Ukraine policy has been long debunked .
For one , the prosecutor in question , Viktor Shokin , was widely regarded as corrupt , and his ouster in March 2016 had broad international support .
As Parker Molloy recently wrote for Media Matters , “ Biden ’ s role in carrying out that internationally supported action actually made it more likely that Burisma would face increased legal scrutiny , not less.
” Secondly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his probe was reportedly dormant at the time Biden advocated for his ouster .
In short , there ’ s no there there .
So it tracks that , according to reporting from the New York Times , Post staffers were unwilling to put their names on the October 14 piece .
The article was ultimately co-bylined by Emma-Jo Morris , a former staffer for Sean Hannity ’ s Fox News show who had never bylined a piece for the Post before , and Gabrielle Fonrouge , who reportedly “ learned that her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it was published.
” “ Many Post staff members questioned whether the paper had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive ’ s contents , said five people with knowledge of the tabloid ’ s inner workings , ” the Times wrote .
“ Staff members also had concerns about the reliability of its sources and its timing , the people said.
” As a result , Trump acolytes who have been pushing the Burisma story — including Rudy Giuliani — have already moved the goalposts from “ Biden is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if the premise of the Post story is false , the American people deserve to see the contents of Hunter Biden ’ s laptop.
” Trump and his acolytes have also accused Hunter Biden of selling his name and connections in China .
“ He ’ s like a vacuum cleaner — he follows his father around collecting , ” Trump said on October 16 .
“ What a disgrace .
It ’ s a crime family.
” But as the New York Times detailed in a story on Tuesday that , ironically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ account Trump has in China , there ’ s no evidence Hunter did anything wrong here either : Even if Hunter Biden were as shady as the president ’ s circle is alleging , the Trump family should still probably sit this one out .
From “ drain the swamp ” to being the swamp Very few people would argue that there isn ’ t something unseemly about Hunter Biden seemingly cashing in on his family name while his father was still serving as vice president .
But if there ’ s anybody @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s the Trump children .
Since Trump ’ s inauguration , Don Jr. and Eric have been responsible for the Trump Organization , which sprawls across more than 30 countries and about 500 business entities , and , according to Trump , generated about $ 9.5 billion in revenue annually before he took office .
And while Trump and his family insist that they ’ ve honored the promise Trump made before his inauguration not to do any new foreign deals while he ’ s in office , the business @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cash in since January 2017 : • In January 2019 , Eric Trump took a business trip to Uruguay to visit a Trump property , and taxpayers ended up spending more than $ 80,000 on Eric ’ s Secret Service protection .
• In September 2019 , Donald Trump Jr. met in New York City with about 100 purchasers of Trump-branded condos in India , and told an Indian newspaper that “ India is a market that we would be very interested post politics.
” • In October 2019 , Eric Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ commander in chief of this country , we got out of all international business ” — but days later , the Trump Organization refuted Eric ’ s claim by publicly touting a new deal to expand the Trump Doonbeg project in Ireland .
As I wrote last February , shortly after the Washington Post broke news about the Secret Service spending more than $ 500,000 at Trump properties since he took office , the Trump family has become the swamp that Donald Trump once promised to drain : All of this comes on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he still owns and profits from more than 500 times while in office , according to a count kept by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington ( CREW ) , which found last month that Trump has racked up 3,403 conflicts of interest while in office .
Not only that , but on numerous occasions Trump has used White House events to promote his businesses , such as the following free ad for Trump National Doral Miami he cut last year during his failed push to hold the G7 there .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accused Hunter Biden of cashing in in China .
But as the New York Times detailed last year , a $ 1.7 billion Trump Organization project in Indonesia received a $ 500 billion infusion from a state-owned Chinese construction company .
And it ’ s not just Eric and Don Jr. ; Ivanka Trump , despite working in the White House , continues to do business in China as well .
Donald Jr. and Eric may be two of their father ’ s key campaign surrogates and regularly appear on Fox News to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their pre-inauguration promise to stay out of their father ’ s administration while running the family business ) , but Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner actually work in the White House .
Their most recent financial disclosure indicates that politics has been lucrative for them , as they reported at least $ 36.2 million in income in 2019 .
And in 2018 , Kushner received a massive cash infusion from Qatar .
As Robert Maguire , research director for CREW , told Vox , “ one way to think about this is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time during the Obama administration working to sustain and promote a business that not only he profited from , but Joe Biden did also .
Then , on top of that , imagine that Joe Biden himself spent day after day in office openly and single-mindedly promoting that same business , in his official capacity , through glowing statements and hundreds of visits to the business , resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money being spent there — along with special-interest and foreign money.
” “ If all of that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t be as corrupt as what we ’ ve seen over four years of the Trump administration , ” Maguire added .
With Trump trailing Biden by a robust margin in the polls and few of his attacks on his challenger landing , it seems his campaign is basically trying to recreate some of the conditions that helped propel him to an unlikely victory in October 2016 — ginning up an email scandal in hopes of tarnishing Biden as corrupt in the eyes of voters .
But one problem with this approach is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Biden/Burisma “ scandal ” than there was to Hillary Clinton ’ s emails .
Trump on some level seems to recognize this , as in recent days he ’ s started berating the media for not covering the Hunter Biden scandal , such as it is , instead of trying to highlight the scandal itself .
Secondly , as Republican Frank Luntz told Fox News this week , in a country being ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic in both human and economic terms , voters just don ’ t seem to care @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , during a Fox & Friends interview on Tuesday , Trump pleaded with Attorney General Bill Barr to appoint a special prosecutor before the election to investigate Biden .
That echoed comments Trump made almost exactly a year ago when he publicly pleaded with the Ukrainian and Chinese governments to investigate the Bidens .
And in another sign of how desperate Trumpworld has become , Trump acolyte Sen. Ron Johnson ( R-WI ) went on Fox News last weekend and made baseless insinuations that child pornography was found on Hunter Biden ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to serious accusations of this sort is beside the point for Trump and his Republican enablers — what matters is creating the appearance that Biden and/or those close to him are guilty of wrongdoing .
After all , if Trump really cared about corruption , he would have done what every other modern president did before taking office and divested from his business before taking office .
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Donald Trump is the first president in modern history to refuse to divest from his business interests upon taking office. As a result, he reportedly took in at least $73 million from foreign sources during his first two years in office, creating an unprecedented tangle of conflicts of interest with countries like the Philippines, India, and Turkey that are home to Trump-branded buildings.
Meanwhile, Trump’s adult sons — who said before his inauguration that they’d stay out of politics to avoid conflicts of interest — serve as key political surrogates for their father while running the family business, which has benefited from Trump’s presidency both directly and indirectly.
Somehow, none of this has stopped the president or his family from making his closing reelection case about corruption. Not his, mind you, but the flimsily supported idea that Joe Biden committed crimes by letting Obama administration foreign policy be influenced by his son Hunter’s foreign business dealings.
Trump, projecting, claims "the Biden family is a criminal enterprise" pic.twitter.com/YQNwj2A43t — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 16, 2020
Various aspects of these allegations have been debunked before (more on that later), but Trump’s attacks have nevertheless been echoed by his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump.
“The Biden family has spent decades in Washington, DC enriching themselves by selling access to Joe Biden’s taxpayer funded office. Hunter Biden is corrupt. Jim Biden is corrupt. Joe Biden is corrupt,” Trump Jr. tweeted last week, with Eric Trump making a similar attack on Tuesday.
The Biden Corruption Scandal Isn’t About Hunter, It’s About Joe
"The Hunter Biden scandal indicates that Joe Biden, while vice president of the United States, knowingly allowed his son to sell access to the Obama administration, then lied about it."
https://t.co/Uweml0yBuM — Eric Trump (@EricTrump) October 20, 2020
Of course, the first rule of Trumpism seems to be to never let shame or hypocrisy get in the way of attacking your enemies, so it’s not necessarily surprising that Trump is trying to weaponize one of his weaknesses in a last-ditch effort to turn his flailing reelection campaign around. But it’s still worth devoting some attention to the projection involved in Trump posturing as some sort of anti-corruption crusader.
The thin Hunter Biden “scandal,” briefly explained
Hunter Biden is back in the news following the New York Post’s October 14 piece about unverified emails found on a hard drive of dubious provenance. The story suggests emails found on the drive indicate that while Biden was vice president, his son used his connections to get the vice president to meet with an executive from Burisma, a Ukrainian energy company Hunter served on the board of for $50,000 a month.
It’s not clear whether the meeting ever happened (the Biden campaign says no one-on-one time ever did). But the implication, conservatives say, is that the purported meeting led to Joe Biden abusing his office by pressuring the Ukrainian government to fire a prosecutor who had been investigating a company that was paying his son.
While it’s unclear what qualifications Hunter had for that gig beyond having Biden as a last name, the accusation that his role on Burisma’s board somehow compromised the Obama administration’s Ukraine policy has been long debunked.
For one, the prosecutor in question, Viktor Shokin, was widely regarded as corrupt, and his ouster in March 2016 had broad international support. As Parker Molloy recently wrote for Media Matters, “Biden’s role in carrying out that internationally supported action actually made it more likely that Burisma would face increased legal scrutiny, not less.” Secondly, while Shokin had investigated Burisma, his probe was reportedly dormant at the time Biden advocated for his ouster.
In short, there’s no there there. So it tracks that, according to reporting from the New York Times, Post staffers were unwilling to put their names on the October 14 piece. The article was ultimately co-bylined by Emma-Jo Morris, a former staffer for Sean Hannity’s Fox News show who had never bylined a piece for the Post before, and Gabrielle Fonrouge, who reportedly “learned that her byline was on the story only after it was published.”
“Many Post staff members questioned whether the paper had done enough to verify the authenticity of the hard drive’s contents, said five people with knowledge of the tabloid’s inner workings,” the Times wrote. “Staff members also had concerns about the reliability of its sources and its timing, the people said.”
As a result, Trump acolytes who have been pushing the Burisma story — including Rudy Giuliani — have already moved the goalposts from “Biden is guilty of wrongdoing” to “even if the premise of the Post story is false, the American people deserve to see the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop.”
Trump personal attorney Rudy Giuliani argued that the American public deserved to see reports based off material from Hunter Biden’s laptop “even if it isn’t accurate” https://t.co/d6KD6j5UY7 — The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) October 20, 2020
Trump and his acolytes have also accused Hunter Biden of selling his name and connections in China.
“He’s like a vacuum cleaner — he follows his father around collecting,” Trump said on October 16. “What a disgrace. It’s a crime family.”
But as the New York Times detailed in a story on Tuesday that, ironically, is about a previously undisclosed bank account Trump has in China, there’s no evidence Hunter did anything wrong here either:
In a misleading claim amplified by surrogates like his son Donald Trump Jr. and his lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president has said the younger Mr. Biden “walked out of China” with $1.5 billion after accompanying his father on an official trip in 2013. Numerous news articles and fact-checking sites have explained that the huge figure was actually a fund-raising goal set by an investment firm in which Hunter Biden obtained a 10 percent stake after his father left office. The firm did receive financial backing from a large state-controlled bank, but it is not clear the fund-raising target was ever met, and there is no evidence Hunter Biden received a large personal payout.
Even if Hunter Biden were as shady as the president’s circle is alleging, the Trump family should still probably sit this one out.
From “drain the swamp” to being the swamp
Very few people would argue that there isn’t something unseemly about Hunter Biden seemingly cashing in on his family name while his father was still serving as vice president. But if there’s anybody who should refrain from making that case, it’s the Trump children.
Since Trump’s inauguration, Don Jr. and Eric have been responsible for the Trump Organization, which sprawls across more than 30 countries and about 500 business entities, and, according to Trump, generated about $9.5 billion in revenue annually before he took office. And while Trump and his family insist that they’ve honored the promise Trump made before his inauguration not to do any new foreign deals while he’s in office, the business has still provided the family multiple chances to cash in since January 2017:
In January 2019, Eric Trump took a business trip to Uruguay to visit a Trump property, and taxpayers ended up spending more than $80,000 on Eric’s Secret Service protection.
In September 2019, Donald Trump Jr. met in New York City with about 100 purchasers of Trump-branded condos in India, and told an Indian newspaper that “India is a market that we would be very interested post politics.”
In October 2019, Eric Trump claimed that “when my father became commander in chief of this country, we got out of all international business” — but days later, the Trump Organization refuted Eric’s claim by publicly touting a new deal to expand the Trump Doonbeg project in Ireland.
Thrilled to announce that we have granted planning permission to expand the incredible @TrumpDoonbeg! The development will include a new ballroom, pool, spa, leisure facilities, 235 additional resort rooms, gate house and much more https://t.co/g4g8r4zNwS pic.twitter.com/08cmfQmO6a — Trump Golf (@TrumpGolf) October 30, 2019
As I wrote last February, shortly after the Washington Post broke news about the Secret Service spending more than $500,000 at Trump properties since he took office, the Trump family has become the swamp that Donald Trump once promised to drain:
The irony is that the Trump children have made a fortune from foreign dealings, and not just before their dad took office. In October, Forbes reported that Eric and Donald Jr. have sold more than $100 million of the family’s real estate since the January 2017 inauguration — including a $3.2 million deal in the Dominican Republic in 2018 that is “the clearest violation of their father’s pledge to do no new foreign deals while in office.” Foreign money has also poured into the Trump International Hotel, located just blocks from the White House, which the president’s most recent financial disclosure indicated made him $41 million in 2018 alone.
All of this comes on top of President Trump having visited properties he still owns and profits from more than 500 times while in office, according to a count kept by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), which found last month that Trump has racked up 3,403 conflicts of interest while in office.
Not only that, but on numerous occasions Trump has used White House events to promote his businesses, such as the following free ad for Trump National Doral Miami he cut last year during his failed push to hold the G7 there.
"It's a beautiful place. It's been totally rebuilt. It's new" -- here's the President of the United States obliviously using the White House to promote a business he still owns and profits from amid a scandal about him using the presidency to enrich himself. pic.twitter.com/I9UieZuwtb — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 21, 2019
In addition to Ukraine, the Trumps have accused Hunter Biden of cashing in in China. But as the New York Times detailed last year, a $1.7 billion Trump Organization project in Indonesia received a $500 million infusion from a state-owned Chinese construction company. And it’s not just Eric and Don Jr.; Ivanka Trump, despite working in the White House, continues to do business in China as well.
I’m old enough to remember November of 2018 when we learned Ivanka Trump received 16 trademarks from China, including some for voting machines, that she had long sought. She received more in Jan of 2019 as trade negotiations intensified. https://t.co/ecnkD85LOL — Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) October 3, 2019
Donald Jr. and Eric may be two of their father’s key campaign surrogates and regularly appear on Fox News to discuss politics (making a mockery of their pre-inauguration promise to stay out of their father’s administration while running the family business), but Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner actually work in the White House. Their most recent financial disclosure indicates that politics has been lucrative for them, as they reported at least $36.2 million in income in 2019. And in 2018, Kushner received a massive cash infusion from Qatar.
As Robert Maguire, research director for CREW, told Vox, “one way to think about this is: Imagine if Hunter Biden passed his time during the Obama administration working to sustain and promote a business that not only he profited from, but Joe Biden did also. Then, on top of that, imagine that Joe Biden himself spent day after day in office openly and single-mindedly promoting that same business, in his official capacity, through glowing statements and hundreds of visits to the business, resulting in hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer money being spent there — along with special-interest and foreign money.”
“If all of that were true, it still wouldn’t be as corrupt as what we’ve seen over four years of the Trump administration,” Maguire added.
Desperate times call for desperate measures
With Trump trailing Biden by a robust margin in the polls and few of his attacks on his challenger landing, it seems his campaign is basically trying to recreate some of the conditions that helped propel him to an unlikely victory in October 2016 — ginning up an email scandal in hopes of tarnishing Biden as corrupt in the eyes of voters.
But one problem with this approach is that there’s even less to the Biden/Burisma “scandal” than there was to Hillary Clinton’s emails. Trump on some level seems to recognize this, as in recent days he’s started berating the media for not covering the Hunter Biden scandal, such as it is, instead of trying to highlight the scandal itself.
"You're a criminal for not reporting it. You are a criminal for not reporting it." -- Trump calls @jeffmason1 "a criminal" for not reporting on Hunter Biden's emails pic.twitter.com/k9f7sTHm93 — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 19, 2020
Secondly, as Republican Frank Luntz told Fox News this week, in a country being ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic in both human and economic terms, voters just don’t seem to care that much about Hunter Biden.
Nonetheless, during a Fox & Friends interview on Tuesday, Trump pleaded with Attorney General Bill Barr to appoint a special prosecutor before the election to investigate Biden. That echoed comments Trump made almost exactly a year ago when he publicly pleaded with the Ukrainian and Chinese governments to investigate the Bidens.
And in another sign of how desperate Trumpworld has become, Trump acolyte Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) went on Fox News last weekend and made baseless insinuations that child pornography was found on Hunter Biden’s computer.
Ron Johnson is on Fox News suggesting there's child pornography on the computer that purportedly belongs to Hunter Biden pic.twitter.com/rwvyL1UH4i — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) October 18, 2020
Whether there’s merit to serious accusations of this sort is beside the point for Trump and his Republican enablers — what matters is creating the appearance that Biden and/or those close to him are guilty of wrongdoing. After all, if Trump really cared about corruption, he would have done what every other modern president did before taking office and divested from his business before taking office.
Correction, October 23: An earlier version of this story misstated the amount the Trump Organization project in Indonesia received from a Chinese construction company. The amount was $500 million.