dailykos--2020-06-16--How to Defeat Donald Trump in November: What You Need To Do Right Now

“ The one thing that the pandemic has taught us is that I was right.
” President Donald Trump , Interview with the New York Post , May 4 , 2020 .
With under five months until the November elections , you and every American citizen who sees the peril in reelecting President Donald Trump needs to play an active role in defeating him .
While Donald Trump ’ s presidency threatens U.S. institutions and democratic norms , his dangerous mix of incompetence and unwillingness to learn from mistakes puts your security at risk .
Among the many reasons to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-preservation may well be the most important .
Some years ago , before the heyday of social media , a clip of NFL football coach Denny Green went viral .
The usually mild-mannered Green , furious that his team had let an overrated opponent off the hook , laced into his team in a memorable profanity-filled tirade , proclaiming : “ They are who we thought they were.
” As COVID-19 spread and the US economy went into a tailspin , President Donald Trump has been exactly who we thought he was .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ coronavirus , didn ’ t take the virus seriously , expected it to disappear , valued loyalty over competence , downplayed or dismissed scientific expertise , shifted his messages daily , made states compete for vital supplies , put unqualified family members in charge of the supply chain , bragged about high television ratings , ignored and dismissed the rising death toll , failed to unify the country , and finally decided to pass the buck almost entirely to the nation ’ s governors .
COVID-19 has changed the way candidates are campaigning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vote .
The protests and civil unrest triggered by the police killing of George Floyd , the impact of high unemployment , and other probable shocks to come are likely to make the final months of the 2020 campaign the most volatile of recent times .
This post focuses on how smaller donors can contribute most strategically .
Raising money has always been the mother ’ s milk of politics .
Regrettably , in the wake of Citizens United , it has become even more pivotal .
Better-funded campaigns usually win .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ competitiveness as shorthand for viability .
Unsettled times magnify the importance of cash on hand .
Money in the bank makes it easier for a campaign to adapt to shifting circumstances and harder for trailing candidates to get traction .
Since voter suppression is also a key part of the GOP playbook , contributing to organizations that are fighting these tactics is also critical .
In this presidential election , the Constitution is at stake .
The future of a multi-ethnic democracy is at stake .
The rule of law in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ balance of the planet is at stake .
Thanks to Donald Trump ’ s unique combination of power , hubris , and mistaken self-belief , your security also is at stake .
Pundits often tell you to vote as if your life depended on it .
It is almost always hyperbole .
This time , it is the truth .
The section below lays out specific steps you can take to defeat Trump and his enablers .
If you are curious about how and why Trump ’ s presidency poses an existential threat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To Do Right Now Please donate whatever you can possibly afford to Democratic candidates , and to Joe Biden in particular , since traditional canvassing will be heavily disrupted and perhaps even curtailed so long as the coronavirus threat persists .
Having superior financial resources on hand is even more important than usual because the historically strong Democratic ground game , which is especially important for turning out irregular voters , will be handicapped .
Lots of campaigns up and down the ballot are doing an excellent job of running a digital operation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this effectively .
Giving directly to Biden , who has far less cash on hand than President Trump even after merging his campaign fundraising with the Democratic National Committee , is the number one priority .
While outside PACs will help Biden , the candidate ’ s controlling his own resources and keeping his campaign ’ s excellent ads on the air as widely as possible is critical .
I ’ d recommend giving first to particular candidates and to turnout-boosting organizations but if you have extra cash it is worth supporting Democratic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cycle .
( Here is an excellent description of what they do and how they differ . )
I ’ m a fan of the new direction that Tom Perez has brought to the Democratic National Committee ( DNC ) , and in particular their recent initiatives , which include Battleground Build-Up 2020 , which funds organizers , offices , and staff in twelve swing states ; Organizing Corps 2020 , which is focusing on communities of color , and a thoroughly revamped voter file and database .
And the Democratic Legislative Campaign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the “ farm team ” for candidates , vital to a 50 state strategy , and because maximum success in state legislatures will create more leverage for the next round of redistricting , following the disaster for Democrats of 2010 .
Far more Republican Senate seats are in play than Democratic ones .
As the map continues to expand for Democrats ( only two sitting Democratic Senators are in truly competitive races , and both are heavily favored ) the chance for Democrats of taking back the Senate continues to improve .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ been spent so far has been on a few marquee races and to book television time in those states .
If the GOP has to defend actively in multiple states that once seemed entirely safe they will have even more trouble funding their must-win races .
Democrats have fielded an exceptional slate of candidates across the country ( including Mike Espy , who almost certainly won ’ t win in Mississippi but could come close ) .
Although this isn ’ t usually the case it is worth contributing to just about any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans further on the defensive .
The Democratic candidates are listed on the left below with their current estimated probability of winning , in percentage terms ( estimates based on my day job as a political consultant ) .
In the most likely scenario , Colorado and Alabama switch parties , leaving Democrats needing +3 to win the Senate with the Presidency and +4 if they do not .
Retaking the Senate for the Democrats , a goal which once seemed almost insurmountable , would be an enormous boost for enacting key parts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ delivering a successful Biden presidency .
At the moment , it looks like North Carolina and Montana are the most likely tipping point races .
If the Democrats don ’ t take Arizona and Maine , they won ’ t recapture the Senate , and if the GOP loses Iowa , it won ’ t hold its majority whatever else happens .
In a number of these states , polls show the Democratic candidate for Senate with a wider lead than Vice President Biden , mainly reflecting the fact that President Trump is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This raises the possibility that the Senate could change parties while an incumbent President is re-elected for the first time ( I think ) since 1948 , but while this would be of great interest to political junkies let ’ s be sure the Democrats win both .
While Democrats are currently favored to retake the House , ensuring this result is a vital backstop should the bottom fall out in the Presidential and Senate races .
The Democrats picked up forty seats in 2018 as turnout rose substantially relative to previous midterms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of those seats are in districts that lean Republican by registration , so even a modest shift in the generic ballot toward the GOP could bring them further into play .
Moreover , the quality of the GOP candidates in House races , in general , is superior to that of the leading Republican Senate incumbents and candidates .
Democrats have many more competitive House seats to defend than Republicans , so holding anything close to the current margin in seats would be a big success .
The Cook Report is a good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a useful way to figure out which candidates most need your support the most .
Any races on the list are good targets—whether listed as “ Likely , ” “ Lean , ” or “ Tossup , ” since House polls are less frequent and less reliable than Senate or Presidential polling .
Listed below are a baker ’ s dozen of the races that look either especially tight or a guide as to how things will play out nationally .
Many of these districts include multiple “ pivot ” counties that went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ majority for Obama in 2008 and 2012 .
If Democrats break even in these select races taking back the House will be virtually impossible for the GOP .
Clearly the goal is running the table if possible .
Because of the disruption of normal campaign cycles , the second quarter fundraising results that end in June will be extremely important .
A big edge for certain Democratic candidates could take out of play a few of the races that are on the cusp of being competitive .
( Josh Harder in CA-10 is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ elections usually mean higher turnout which tends to favor Democrats , but with the pandemic and Trump on the ballot and the uncertainty of which states will be allowing vote-by-mail , all bets are off .
Kara Eastman , NE-3 -- There are several disconcerting ways that the presidential race could end in a 269-269 Electoral College tie : in that case , Donald Trump would probably be re-elected as the tiebreaker is the number of states with majority House state legislations by party -- not the overall House majority -- which favors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Electoral College vote conceivably could make the difference , and the result of Neb-3 is the most likely to swing that one vote .
In addition to the race ’ s potential national significance , Eastman is an excellent progressive candidate who lost to the same opponent last time by just two percent of the vote .
Along with IL-13 it is one of the best Democratic chances to defeat a GOP incumbent .
Ben McAdams—UT-1—the former Mayor of Salt Lake County seeks a second term : he won by less than 700 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 13—This is probably the best chance in the country for a Democratic candidate to unseat a GOP incumbent , in this case Rodney Davis .
Londrigan lost by only 2000 votes in 2018 and is running a relentless campaign .
T.J. Cox—CA-21 .
Cox was the most unlikely Democratic winner in California in 2018 , winning the seat far into overtime from mail-in votes , after trailing on Election Day , in this reliably red Central Valley district .
Former representative David Valadao is running again and triumphed in the spring primary ; @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s large haul of local and national support .
Lucy McBath—GA-6 .
The first Democrat to win this district since it was redrawn in 1993 , by a razor-thin margin , is in a tossup with Karen Handel , her previous opponent .
Xochitl Torres Small—NM-2 .
Another rematch in a little-polled district that Torres Small , an environmental lawyer , won in a nail-biter in 2018 .
Susie Lee -- NV 3—Lee , a school reformer , in a classic swing district , is opposed by former pro wrestler Dan Rodimer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Heart recipient Rose won this district in 2018 in a district that still is majority Republican , and he squares off against the former incumbent .
Abigail Spanberger ( VA-7 ) —Like most of these races , the 7th is a district held by a Democrat but won by Donald Trump in 2016 .
J.D .
Scholten ( IA-04 ) —This seat , once eyed as a good chance for a Democratic pickup , is now thought to be likely Republican since longtime GOP Congressman and white nationalist Steve King was defeated in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a strong campaigner and a good bet to overachieve .
Joe Cunningham ( SC-1 ) —In Mark Sanford ’ s former seat , Cunningham took this district blue for the first time since 1981 .
He is up against a formidable first-time candidate in Nancy Mace , the first woman to graduate from the Citadel , and is a slight underdog .
Elissa Slotkin—MI-8 Slotkin unexpectedly won back this seat in 2018 and will face another tough test : she has been stalwart during the “ Liberate ” protests in Michigan .
Under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ formerly held by Debbie Stabenow .
Cindy Axne ( IA-3 ) This district includes most of Des Moines and much of southwest Iowa .
Axne defeated two-term representative David Young by just 7,000 votes in 2018 , and he is back for a rematch .
This will be one of the closest races of the cycle .
Discouraging likely Democratic voters from going to the polls or having their votes count has been a longtime GOP strategy , although what was once cloaked in the rhetoric of preventing voter fraud and improving the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most part an undisguised power play .
As the GOP ’ s increasingly common tactic of rolling back the powers of governors and other executives after Democrats win election shows most vividly , much of the modern GOP and its voters believe that only Republicans should be able to exercise power and view Democratic executives and legislators as illegitimate .
Paul Weyrich , who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and was a pivotal figure in the rise of the Christian Right , said flatly in 1980 that “ I don ’ t want everyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a majority of people .
They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now .
As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.
” President Trump , echoing Weyrich ’ s sentiment , remarked earlier this year that if voting were made easier “ You ’ d never have a Republican elected in this country again.
” There is a virtually unanimous academic consensus that there is a minuscule amount of voting fraud in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ballot box or in vote-by-mail settings .
Honest media coverage from all sides of the political spectrum have reported this fact .
Out of a billion votes examined in one study , just 31 credible cases of voter impersonation were found .
Likewise , just four of 136 million votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were found definitively to be tainted .
However , studies also found that the growth in the rolls was 1.7 percent lower in Wisconsin , which introduced a variety of voting changes and restrictions , compared to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was another key factor in Hillary Clinton ’ s narrow loss in the state .
Voter suppression tactics include extreme gerrymandering , cutting back early voting , limiting the number and hours of polling places , closing polls altogether , purging voter rolls of those who haven ’ t voted in recent elections , tightening voter ID requirements , challenging the right of ex-felons to reclaim the franchise , discouraging college students from registering in the place they attend school , prohibiting same-day registration and other restrictions , using “ poll watchers ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ non-English speaking voters , and creating commissions to “ investigate ” virtually nonexistent voter fraud .
Many GOP-led states intensified these tactics after the Supreme Court ’ s bad decision in Shelby v. Holder ( 2013 ) , which hollowed out the Voting Rights Act .
A court in North Carolina found that one voter ID law would “ target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.
” Numerous organizations are attempting to raise Democratic voter turnout and to combat voter suppression .
Several listed here have strong leadership , clear aims , and a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fight—Headed by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams , this organization has been especially successful in fights to prevent and redress purging of voters from the rolls , and on encouraging vote-by-mail .
Move On—Tremendously effective in boosting turnout and in particular through their voter texting projects .
National Democratic Redistricting Committee—Led by former Obama attorney general Eric Holder , this group has been a leader in fighting gerrymandering and urging that maps be drawn by independent statewide commissions .
Their grassroots advocacy arm is called All on the Line .
Progressive Turnout @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with strong grassroots outreach to voters in swing states .
The focus of this post is on making your donations effective .
Of course direct interaction with voters also can be tremendously helpful .
Two initiatives that stand out are Postcards to Voters and Text Out the Vote .
Each election I reach out personally to at least one ( supposedly ) undecided swing state voter or non-voter— often a relative , sometimes an acquaintance -- and try to stay connected with him or her .
It can be easier to register scores @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one non-voter to go to the polls and stick with that person to Election Day .
Finding out what someone outside the political arena knows about the process is always instructive .
If everyone tries to find one such voter it will help considerably .
Especially if you have a personal contact in one of these pivotal counties .
Please give generously , don ’ t obsess about the polls , and keep in mind what is riding on November .
The Trump presidency has reinforced rather than contradicted many of the main @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the increasing polarization of the American electorate and the reliance of political professionals on negative partisanship , the emphasis on motivating voters through dislike of their opponents rather than a preference for their own candidate , or his or her policies .
What this means is that voters more than ever think of their parties as sports teams and root and vote accordingly .
Voters who disliked both Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 broke decisively in Trump ’ s direction ( at present , such voters are leaning sharply towards Biden ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fewer persuadable voters , and politics is more than ever a matter of getting one ’ s own team out to the polls .
A handful of actual independents remain ; getting their votes in swing states is critical .
Polarization guarantees that presidential elections likely will be close , at least in the popular vote , regardless of the underlying economic or political circumstances .
The Electoral College skew in favor of rural voters means that Democrats , in their present coalition , have a big uphill climb ; compared to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organized , further apart ideologically , and assembling a winning coalition requires bringing aboard at least a sliver of more moderate and even conservative voters in certain states .
Incumbent U.S. presidents usually win a second term .
On the two most recent occasions when they have not ( 1980 and 1992 ) , a strong third-party candidate was in the race .
This won ’ t happen in 2020 .
In terms of his job approval ratings and the current state of the economy , Trump fits the mold of a one-term @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump would have been vulnerable on paper , as his overall approval rating has never topped 50 percent .
In a good economy , he would have been an odds-on favorite to win .
The impact of the coronavirus and the shelter-in-place shutdowns on the economy have shifted the narrative , however .
Trump ’ s predictably tone-deaf and autocratic response to the massive protests against police brutality and systemic racism has also done him few favors , at least in the short run .
What was shaping up originally as a replay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election , with some similar factors in play -- an overheated but decent economy , a Republican incumbent seeking a second term , and popular discontent over Iraq , now leans in Biden ’ s direction .
Biden holds a consistent national lead and is at or near the pivotal 50 percent threshold , and he has a smaller but significant lead in swing states .
As conventional a Republican presidency as Trump ’ s has been in many respects , except for his imposition of tariffs , the President ’ s approach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politicians who eked out a victory by 80,000 votes or so and lost the popular vote would have doubled down on a strategy of base consolidation rather than pivoting toward the center .
Had his temperament allowed him to pivot , Trump probably would have had at least a 65 percent approval rating before the onset of the coronavirus , even in a highly polarized electorate .
Instead , unlike any other modern President , Trump has remained in campaign mode throughout his term in office , cultivating a base united by ethnocultural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ briefly after the government shutdown , after the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act ( downwards ) , and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic ( upwards ) , his approval numbers have been eerily steady , virtually impervious to events , usually around 42 percent on average .
Trump is employing a kind of rope-a-dope strategy , but this is different from a President with ratings in free-fall .
His negatives are all built in , but his favorables are unlikely to fall much lower either .
Were Trump able @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , his reelection chances would rise .
But these chances remain not insubstantial .
He draws upon many advantages .
The Trump campaign has a large bankroll , roughly twice that of Joe Biden in terms of cash-on-hand ( 184 million versus 98 million at the end of April ) .
He dominates the airwaves , always exploiting the P.T .
Barnum principle that no publicity is bad publicity , and comfortably works any crisis into his familiar frame of division , recrimination , and assignment of blame .
He lowers expectations and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ day and hour to hour ( in Steve Bannon ’ s memorable phrase , “ flooding the zone with s-t ” ) .
While traditionally voters blame incumbents for bad times , chaos is Trump ’ s natural environment .
And since the modern GOP under Trump has turned into a permanent insurgency , what many voters see as government competence in action—such as public health encouragement of contact tracing and the wearing of masks to combat the spread of the coronavirus—is deeply resented and resisted by many Republican voters .
Democrats are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state propaganda apparatus in Fox News , Sinclair-owned television stations , the even more extreme niche broadcasters such as One America News Network ( OANN ) , and much of talk radio .
Trump is also backed by a well-honed and superior digital operation .
Trump ’ s ability to lie shamelessly and change his positions on the fly is a kind of superpower , since—as the philosopher Hannah Arendt poignantly noted -- lies often appear to have the ring of truth because they are less messy than reality : “ Lies are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reason , than reality , since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear .
He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible , whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected , for which we were not prepared.
” -On Lying in Politics , 1972 .
Trump has tapped into a massive wave of cultural resentment , founded on a wave of white identity politics and religious nationalism which most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are less concerned with piety or even the issues of the “ culture wars , ” apart from abortion , than in claiming and using the power of the state to their advantage .
While Trump ’ s aggregate approval numbers have barely budged , something is happening , at least at the margin .
The GOP ( or at least Trump ’ s GOP ) is losing a modest number of college-educated white men and women , especially suburban women , and Trump is consolidating and enlarging his already substantial base of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for whom white identity is pivotal .
As an example , the number of white Protestants who believe literally that President Trump is anointed by God rose from just under 30 percent in 2019 among regular churchgoers to almost 50 percent in 2020 .
The latter figure includes all of those who go to church often , not only evangelicals or mainline Protestants .
These voters hate secular liberalism passionately .
They feel that the 2020 election , and the Trump presidency , represents their last chance to preserve , as they see @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Christian principles grounded in custom and law , with an emphasis on white racial preeminence and gender hierarchy .
GOP voters may have a slightly smaller footprint than in 2016 but are driven if anything with even greater intensity this time around .
( And as one commentator puts it , fairly , “ Elections are not won by passive majorities but by mobilized minorities.
” ) The good news for Democrats is that a considerable number of the Trump voters who are leaving are suburbanites concentrated in swing districts , largely women @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House in 2018 .
The bad news—from the standpoint of progressive Democrats— is that many of these “ converts ” are anti-Trump but still conservative , relatively speaking , on policy issues .
Trump is trying to redefine the pandemic and the protests along racial and identity lines— his main go-to move— for his base while persuading this breakaway group of suburbanites that Democratic leadership will mean social disorder and that progressive policies are too radical .
While he has bungled his early efforts to portray himself as a defender of “ law @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protests for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd murder , he will keep trying to revive this strategy .
At even 45 percent of the national vote or a bit more , Trump has a chance , as in 2016 , to eke out an Electoral College victory .
With an effective voter suppression campaign , the potential for Russian interference , a billion dollar misinformation campaign on social media , a growing economy , and a more sophisticated appeal to the fears of white voters ( e.g .
misrepresenting the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the police ” ) , he retains a path to winning .
It isn ’ t surprising that the Democratic race fell in Joe Biden ’ s direction , given Biden ’ s early frontrunner status , but the speed with which primary voters coalesced was breathtaking , given that Biden had been poor at raising money , had run a lackluster campaign , and did nothing especially memorable on the campaign trail .
Like voters picking a stock , most Democrats made their decisions based on what they thought other Americans were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ woman , or for a socialist ) and which direction African-American voters would turn .
The 2020 election was certain to be a referendum on Donald Trump under any circumstances .
The upheavals of the first six months of 2020 have made Biden an even better foil : competence and a perception of basic decency and empathy are the right characteristics to defang attacks from Trump and his surrogates .
( Those attacks , designed to whip up negative partisanship , included in a recent single week charges that Biden was involved , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political crime in modern history , had committed sexual assault , had engaged in nepotism , and was possibly a pedophile . )
A Biden presidency will fulfill the wish of many Americans not to have politics in their face 24/7 .
That may be his single greatest attribute , electorally speaking .
Biden has proven that he can bring out vast numbers of voters without campaigning at all ( as with Trump , lowering expectations has been part of the Biden brand ) .
That the coronavirus effectively shortens the campaign cycle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other Democratic candidate was nearly as well-known and not having to introduce himself during a massive period of national distraction has been a big advantage .
For many , Biden serves the role of “ generic ” or “ least-common-denominator ” Democrat ” — someone who can reliably bring out the disparate wings of the party to vote even if they have reservations about him .
However , his recent fine speech in Philadelphia and his good performance on Trevor Noah raise the genuine possibility that he could be much more than that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ racial justice and empathy for the plight of the unemployed , along with his policies related to student debt and climate change , can bring progressives and younger Americans on board .
Biden also needs to make sure that the elements of the fragile Democratic coalition know they are being heard and represented .
Hillary Clinton ’ s platform and agenda were the most progressive in the history of the Democratic party ; GOP voters for the most part were well aware of this , but Democrats—thanks in part to online disinformation campaigns—surprisingly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be alert for last minute election surprises and have a strategy in place to counter them .
It wasn ’ t only James Comey ’ s e-mail investigation announcement that tipped the 2016 election to Trump but several other things as well , including the late October release of an upward surge in Obamacare premiums .
Last-minute surprises could include a late positive jobs report , a coronavirus vaccine announcement , a provocation to violence , or a foreign crisis .
Biden also should remind voters of the abysmal record of recent second-term @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a failed war in Iraq , and economic collapse .
At root however the most successful Democratic message is likely to be the expectation of low-key competence in office combined with decency and a commitment to ending corruption and pursuing justice .
This , by the way , is not inconsistent with bringing about sweeping change once the election is won , since it is the provoking of liberal anger that acts as the rocket fuel for right-wing populists and their supporters .
Methodical and successful governing aimed at reforming inequities is their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nicely puts it : How about someone who knows how to run the government and who can attract a quality staff for the Executive Branch ?
Sure , I miss intelligence and curiosity and grace and class and humility and self-deprecating wit and humanity and the ability to move me to tears with a speech and sing and dance and be a baby whisperer and who kids adore , but right now I just want someone who won ’ t rob me blind and who won ’ t kill me from neglect and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with good intentions and strong institutions , it is possible to be caught flat-footed in a pandemic .
To be sure , the Trump administration ignored numerous early warnings from inside and outside government , dismantled the administration ’ s pandemic response team , literally threw away the pandemic playbook left them by their predecessors , and defunded the position of the CDC expert who had been embedded in China specifically to look out for coronavirus outbreaks .
Still , even in the aftermath of such bad decisions , a little slack is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when it works well , it is always on the fiscal chopping block when the memory of the most recent scare subsides .
South Korea was out front during this crisis largely because the country was burned badly during the last SARS outbreak .
And Australia ’ s conservative prime minister acted fast in large part because of his poor response to the nation ’ s recent wildfires .
Since there is a lag time between the onset of an infectious disease and uncontrolled community spread , especially when a disease is new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ act decisively when there is little to see .
This demands a public that believes in science and a great deal of social trust in authorities , two things that are not the strong suit of Americans even in sunnier times .
However , President Trump and his team ’ s dereliction of duty principally rests on what he did , and principally did not do , after receiving numerous intelligence assessments and stark warnings from CDC and outside epidemiologists once COVID-19 had already begun to spread .
You can read the details @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and here .
He blamed the messengers , downplayed the potential scope of the crisis , repeatedly applauded his decision to shut down entry to the U.S. from China ( even though at least forty thousand Chinese entered the U.S. after the policy was adopted ) , ignored the shortage of N-95 protective masks , and worried primarily about the impact on the stock market .
As one White House source told The Financial Times , Trump ’ s son-in-law “ had been arguing that testing too many people , or ordering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ markets and so we just shouldn ’ t do it .
That advice worked far more powerfully on him than what the scientists were saying.
” Trump downplayed the coronavirus threat in the face of mounting and alarming public evidence , let alone repeated presidential intelligence briefings .
On January 21st he said “ We have it totally under control .
It ’ s one person coming in from China…It ’ s going to be just fine.
” On February 26th Trump noted that the U.S. had fifteen cases , “ and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to be down to close to zero , that ’ s a pretty good job we ’ ve done.
” On March 10th he observed “ It will go away .
Just stay calm…It ’ s really working out.
” After a half-hearted week or so of acknowledging the threat in mid-March , he returned to dismissing epidemiology , blaming China , touting unproven and potentially dangerous treatments , representing himself as the primary victim of the crisis , and taking victory laps as the death toll climbed , even as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans and the disease was not contained .
The critical issue of testing is a microcosm of President Trump ’ s failed approach to the coronavirus crisis .
Virtually every country that has contained or crushed COVID-19—an increasingly large and diverse group of countries that includes Germany , New Zealand , South Korea , Taiwan , Slovenia , Greece , Vietnam , and Iceland—combined early diagnostic testing with contact tracing to keep down infections and to assess the extent of community spread .
The need for massive early testing , followed by contact @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recommended from the start by virtually every public health expert , regardless of political leaning .
The failure to test early hinders containment and forces lifesaving follow-up measures to be more drastic -- in this case the shelter-in-place rules adopted by most American states .
As Senator and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney put it , addressing coronavirus testing czar Admiral Brett Giroir , “ I understand that politicians are going to frame data in a way that is most positive politically .
Of course , I don ’ t expect that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that South Korea accomplished their [ tests ] at the beginning of the outbreak , while we treaded water during February and March .
I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever.
” The CDC ’ s initial test for COVID-19 was flawed in practice .
HHS decided not to seek out the possibility of using a test developed by the World Health Organization , and it was slow to authorize the use of tests developed by state labs .
Regulations were kept in place that stopped private and university labs from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CDC in Atlanta on March 6th , Trump remarked that “ Anybody right now and yesterday , anybody that needs a test , they ’ re there .
And the tests are beautiful.
” This was untrue , then and for many weeks to come .
And even after enough test kits were procured , the federal government did not secure enough swabs and reagents needed to make them work .
Later , Trump from time to time would boast that the U.S. had done the most testing in the world ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , though still not even close on a national per capita basis ) .
For the most part , however , his skepticism of testing for COVID-19 verged on medical nihilism .
On May 14th , at a medical supply distributor in Allentown , Pennsylvania , he opined that “ It could be that testing is , frankly , overrated .
… When you test , you have a case .
When you test , you find something is wrong with people .
If we didn ’ t do any testing , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In a March 13th Rose Garden press conference with technology leaders present , Trump offered a vision of nationwide , even international screening and testing : “ Google is helping to develop a website .
It is going to be very quickly done , unlike websites of the past , to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location .
“ We have many , many locations behind us , by the way .
We cover the — this country and a large part of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ re not talking about the world right now .
But we cover very — very strongly our country , stores in virtually every location .
Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now.
” Despite indignant White House denials , this scenario largely was made up out of whole cloth , from the scope of the website to the reach of the project even to the actual company involved ( it was Verily , Google ’ s parent , and with just a handful of engineers ) .
The process resulted @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was not even up and running when the President was extolling it , that steered practitioners ( not patients ) to potential testing sites only in the Bay Area .
When asked at the same press conference whether he took responsibility for not having better COVID-19 testing capabilities in place , Trump said “ I take no responsibility at all.
” The U.S. leads the world in coronavirus deaths and overall cases , both by a large margin .
As of this writing in mid-June , the death toll from COVID-19 is at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases are being diagnosed daily , though the positive rate of tests is falling in most states .
Beyond policy and ideology , we select a President for his ability to lead in a crisis -- for real-time decision-making and good judgment in situations where important choices must be made quickly and especially where ambiguity is present .
Even if we magically suffered no more deaths from COVID-19 and the economy revived , Trump ’ s failures of decision-making in a time of crisis should disqualify his reelection hopes .
When others have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ criticize their leadership .
In November 2013 , he tweeted “ Leadership : Whatever happens , you ’ re responsible .
If it doesn ’ t happen , you ’ re responsible.
” In 2015 , he excoriated President George W. Bush for supposedly failing to anticipate and prevent the 9/11 attacks .
His capacity for hypocrisy and projection are boundless .
In October 2014 , in response to the Ebola scare , he wrote : “ If this doctor , who so recklessly flew into New York from West Africa , has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American people & resign !
” That doctor , who was in fact positive for Ebola , recovered .
Ebola claimed just two lives in the U.S , both of whom had contracted the disease overseas .
Likewise , Trump wrongly claimed that the Obama administration ignored the swine flu ( H1N1 ) pandemic of 2009 ( “ It was like they didn ’ t know it was here ” ) when in fact Obama declared a public health emergency when only twenty H1N1 cases had been diagnosed , promptly secured funding from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vaccine , and received bipartisan praise for his response .
Trump has long been incapable even of performing the layup elements of the Presidency , like laying wreaths on war memorials , congratulating sports teams , speaking to Boy Scouts , hosting Easter Egg hunts , or showing ( rote ) compassion , let alone genuine compassion .
This flaw has been magnified during the coronavirus crisis .
Repeatedly painting himself as the victim of the situation , he has only assigned blame and appropriated credit .
He has shown not the slightest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an unappealing character trait and to some extent a form of political calculation , but it goes beyond that .
The president ’ s narcissism and partisanship has meant that calling for national unity , either in the face of coronavirus or civil unrest , is beyond him .
Bill Clinton , by contrast , effectively salvaged his presidency with a stirring call for national unity in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing .
Dozens of other countries in the world , including those with stark political divisions , largely set aside @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump and his administration , by contrast , viewed the crisis through a partisan lens , repeatedly singling out Democratic governors for criticism and withholding or granting state requests for emergency medical equipment based on perceived loyalty or personal patronage .
The president even scorched former President George W. Bush after he issued an anodyne call for national unity in the face of the virus , tweeting “ He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax [ e.g .
Trump ’ s impeachment by the House ] in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that the U.S. has led the world in fighting the virus , the opposite has taken place .
For the first time in the past century , the U.S. has been a bystander during a global crisis .
Fintan O ’ Toole , a writer for the Irish Times , wrote in wonderment , “ Over more than two centuries , the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world : love and hatred , fear and hope , envy and contempt , awe and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that has never been directed towards the US until now : pity.
” In public health and across most agencies , Trump ’ s distrust of expertise has decimated the American civil service .
He has installed a parade of venal and ineffectual staff in key federal positions .
In his revolving door administration , over eighty-five percent of his top staff have departed during his first term , more than the total of the five previous presidencies combined at this point .
Trump has had four chiefs of staff and three press @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conventional press conferences in over a year on the job ) .
Acting officials , who don ’ t require Senate confirmation , have already served more days in office than during the entire two-term Obama administration .
Just over one-third of the top staff positions in the Department of Homeland Security are currently filled .
Immigration specialist Steven Miller and son-in-law Jared Kushner apparently drafted Trump ’ s disastrous speech at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis .
Even an executive with matchless logistical skills would find it hard to succeed with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and lack of continuity in the ranks .
The two most competent remaining members of the Trump administration , Miller and attorney general William Barr , are pursuing their own complementary agendas .
Barr , a conservative Catholic whom in an earlier stint as attorney general said that “ today ’ s secularists ” are “ clearly fanatics ” and called for moral renewal under “ God ’ s law , ” is attempting to fuse the theory of a unfettered executive with a Biblical mandate justifying kingship .
As the remainder of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have accelerated .
With a big assist from Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society , Mitch McConnell ’ s Senate has been confirming judges at an historic clip : by the end of Trump ’ s first term , the Senate will have confirmed over two hundred federal judges , the second most in presidential history over this span .
Rehearsal for Catastrophe ?
Nuclear Threats , and Others Trump deserves rejection , no doubt , for his upheaval of the rule of law , his boundless corruption , his lack of basic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the environment , education , and other areas .
However , simple lack of competence , combined with lethal arrogance , is his basic flaw .
The main problem is not even that Trump has made mistakes but that he is utterly incapable of acknowledging them and learning from experience .
He has a studied inability to listen to facts that he doesn ’ t want to hear .
Even Richard Nixon expressed some perfunctory regret after the disclosures that eventually led to his resignation over Watergate .
Trump , by contrast , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ self-defense ( aptly dubbed by one critic the “ Pettysburg Address ” ) demonstrates most vividly .
What this means is that as bad as the Trump administration ’ s response to COVID-19 has been , it may only be a warning .
At the outset of the Trump presidency , Michael Lewis ’ s prescient book The Fifth Risk warned about the danger of electing a President who distrusted expertise , starved the civil service , overvalued his own opinion , and made decisions based on personal interest .
( Or , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ French diplomat Talleyrand , Trump ’ s election was worse than a crime—it was a mistake . )
With Trump ’ s failed response to the coronavirus , we now have real-life confirmation that his hubris and mistrust of expertise is a lethal combination .
( Many Puerto Ricans would say that the Trump administration ’ s inadequate response to Hurricane Maria was a harbinger of the current crisis . )
The range of catastrophic possibilities is considerable : pandemics of a different kind , cyberattacks , chemical or biological accidents -- such @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , such as carfentanil -- or a string of natural catastrophes .
As tensions rise with China , how deftly would Trump handle an escalation of events that could culminate in military conflict ?
Or an actual shooting war with a determined and powerful adversary ?
Given what we have seen , how well would the go-to Trump strategy -- ignoring the problem , abdicating responsibility , and deflecting the blame -- work out ?
The coronavirus crisis is a slow-motion affair that has done great damage to individuals and families and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if left unchecked .
By contrast , Donald Trump ’ s absolute authority over the launch of nuclear weapons gives him , or any President , the power to annihilate the globe either by accident or design .
Though Trump has said many temperate things in public about the threat of nuclear weapons , his fascination with their destructive power , combined with his characteristic overconfidence in his abilities to handle them , should give pause .
In an interview during the mid-1980s with the Washington Post , Trump said that “ It @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there is to learn about [ nuclear ] missiles…I think I know most of it anyway.
” He has alluded to the possibility of annihilating Afghanistan to “ win that war , ” and mused on other occasions about wielding the “ ultimate ” power , presumably nuclear .
In private , apparently , he has wondered why nuclear weapons can not be used and has pondered dropping them into hurricanes to alter weather patterns .
That the Trump administration has ended or backed away from many existing nuclear treaties , or declined @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the strong possibility of a new nuclear arms race between the United States , the Soviet Union , and China .
In addition to exiting the Iran accords , the administration has or is likely to abandon the INF agreement and the Open Skies treaty with Moscow , and to let the START agreement lapse .
Trump ’ s decision to pursue personal talks with Kim Jong Un appears to have given the North Korean leader massive legitimacy and a propaganda victory rather than denuclearization .
And in the face of strong opposition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to conduct its first nuclear tests since 1992 .
As one recent article headlined , “ A New Nuclear Arms Race Taking Shape Amid a Pandemic and Economic Crisis : What Could Go Wrong ?
” No elected official should possess absolute launch authority in a setting that may reduce the time for judgment to minutes .
But with his capacity to rationalize mass death and the unaccountable power of a “ nuclear monarch , ” Trump is singularly unsuited to making these potentially devastating split-second decisions .
To be clear , defeating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sufficient .
Bringing together “ the house divided ” —a schism that has been with us from the country ’ s founding , though in sharper relief now because of demographic change , a “ fully sorted ” two-party system , the crumbling of traditional elites , the impact of social media , the decline of mediating institutions , the poisoned chalice of meritocracy , and the vicious spiral of wealth inequality in the absence of policy mitigation , to name a few factors—will be the work of generations , though not an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the short-term menace of Trump is all too easily lost amidst his familiarity .
The potentially disastrous consequences of his extreme rhetoric and unfounded self-assurance can be too easy to overlook among his daily affronts to democratic values and racial justice .
Optimism bias that we can avoid the worst is natural , but with Trump there is no bottom .
Fortunately , pointing out Trump ’ s threat to our very existence is most likely to expand the coalition that opposes him rather than to force a potential choice , for some @ @ @ @ @ @

“The one thing that the pandemic has taught us is that I was right.”
President Donald Trump, Interview with the New York Post, May 4, 2020.
With under five months until the November elections, you and every American citizen who sees the peril in reelecting President Donald Trump needs to play an active role in defeating him.
While Donald Trump’s presidency threatens U.S. institutions and democratic norms, his dangerous mix of incompetence and unwillingness to learn from mistakes puts your security at risk. Among the many reasons to vote Trump out of office, simple self-preservation may well be the most important.
Some years ago, before the heyday of social media, a clip of NFL football coach Denny Green went viral. The usually mild-mannered Green, furious that his team had let an overrated opponent off the hook, laced into his team in a memorable profanity-filled tirade, proclaiming: “They are who we thought they were.”
As COVID-19 spread and the US economy went into a tailspin, President Donald Trump has been exactly who we thought he was. He ignored repeated warnings about the novel coronavirus, didn’t take the virus seriously, expected it to disappear, valued loyalty over competence, downplayed or dismissed scientific expertise, shifted his messages daily, made states compete for vital supplies, put unqualified family members in charge of the supply chain, bragged about high television ratings, ignored and dismissed the rising death toll, failed to unify the country, and finally decided to pass the buck almost entirely to the nation’s governors.
COVID-19 has changed the way candidates are campaigning and will affect the way many Americans vote. The protests and civil unrest triggered by the police killing of George Floyd, the impact of high unemployment, and other probable shocks to come are likely to make the final months of the 2020 campaign the most volatile of recent times.
This post focuses on how smaller donors can contribute most strategically. Raising money has always been the mother’s milk of politics. Regrettably, in the wake of Citizens United, it has become even more pivotal. Better-funded campaigns usually win. The media uses a campaign’s financial competitiveness as shorthand for viability. Unsettled times magnify the importance of cash on hand. Money in the bank makes it easier for a campaign to adapt to shifting circumstances and harder for trailing candidates to get traction. Since voter suppression is also a key part of the GOP playbook, contributing to organizations that are fighting these tactics is also critical.
In this presidential election, the Constitution is at stake. The future of a multi-ethnic democracy is at stake. The rule of law in the United States is at stake. The ecological balance of the planet is at stake. Thanks to Donald Trump’s unique combination of power, hubris, and mistaken self-belief, your security also is at stake. Pundits often tell you to vote as if your life depended on it. It is almost always hyperbole. This time, it is the truth.
The section below lays out specific steps you can take to defeat Trump and his enablers. If you are curious about how and why Trump’s presidency poses an existential threat, read on.
What You Need To Do Right Now
Please donate whatever you can possibly afford to Democratic candidates, and to Joe Biden in particular, since traditional canvassing will be heavily disrupted and perhaps even curtailed so long as the coronavirus threat persists.
Having superior financial resources on hand is even more important than usual because the historically strong Democratic ground game, which is especially important for turning out irregular voters, will be handicapped. Lots of campaigns up and down the ballot are doing an excellent job of running a digital operation but they need the funds to do this effectively.
Giving directly to Biden, who has far less cash on hand than President Trump even after merging his campaign fundraising with the Democratic National Committee, is the number one priority. While outside PACs will help Biden, the candidate’s controlling his own resources and keeping his campaign’s excellent ads on the air as widely as possible is critical.
I’d recommend giving first to particular candidates and to turnout-boosting organizations but if you have extra cash it is worth supporting Democratic organizations which are doing yeoman work this cycle. (Here is an excellent description of what they do and how they differ.)
I’m a fan of the new direction that Tom Perez has brought to the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and in particular their recent initiatives, which include Battleground Build-Up 2020, which funds organizers, offices, and staff in twelve swing states; Organizing Corps 2020, which is focusing on communities of color, and a thoroughly revamped voter file and database. And the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee(DLCC), because it is the “farm team” for candidates, vital to a 50 state strategy, and because maximum success in state legislatures will create more leverage for the next round of redistricting, following the disaster for Democrats of 2010.
Senate Races:
Far more Republican Senate seats are in play than Democratic ones. As the map continues to expand for Democrats (only two sitting Democratic Senators are in truly competitive races, and both are heavily favored) the chance for Democrats of taking back the Senate continues to improve.
Most of the GOP money that has been spent so far has been on a few marquee races and to book television time in those states. If the GOP has to defend actively in multiple states that once seemed entirely safe they will have even more trouble funding their must-win races. Democrats have fielded an exceptional slate of candidates across the country (including Mike Espy, who almost certainly won’t win in Mississippi but could come close). Although this isn’t usually the case it is worth contributing to just about any of the candidates listed below to put Republicans further on the defensive.
The Democratic candidates are listed on the left below with their current estimated probability of winning, in percentage terms (estimates based on my day job as a political consultant). In the most likely scenario, Colorado and Alabama switch parties, leaving Democrats needing +3 to win the Senate with the Presidency and +4 if they do not.
Retaking the Senate for the Democrats, a goal which once seemed almost insurmountable, would be an enormous boost for enacting key parts of the party’s agenda and delivering a successful Biden presidency. At the moment, it looks like North Carolina and Montana are the most likely tipping point races. If the Democrats don’t take Arizona and Maine, they won’t recapture the Senate, and if the GOP loses Iowa, it won’t hold its majority whatever else happens.
In a number of these states, polls show the Democratic candidate for Senate with a wider lead than Vice President Biden, mainly reflecting the fact that President Trump is more popular than the GOP candidate. This raises the possibility that the Senate could change parties while an incumbent President is re-elected for the first time (I think) since 1948, but while this would be of great interest to political junkies let’s be sure the Democrats win both.
Michigan Gary Peters 90 John James
New Hampshire Jeanne Shaheen 90 Don Bolduc
Colorado John Hickenlooper 75 Cory Gardner
Arizona Mark Kelly 65 Martha McSally
Maine Sara Gideon 60 Susan Collins
North Carolina Cal Cunningham 55 Thom Tillis
Montana Steve Bullock 50 Steve Daines
Iowa Theresa Greenfield 35 Joni Ernst
Georgia Jon Ossoff 35 David Perdue
Georgia (spec) Lieberman/Warnock 25 Collins/ Loeffler
Kansas Barbara Bollier 25/35 Roger Marshall/ Kris Kobach
Kentucky Amy McGrath 15 Mitch McConnell
Alabama Doug Jones 10 Tom Tuberville
South Carolina Jaime Harrison 8 Lindsay Graham
Texas M.J. Hegar 5 John Cornyn
Mississippi Mike Espy 3 Cindy Hyde-Smith
House Races
While Democrats are currently favored to retake the House, ensuring this result is a vital backstop should the bottom fall out in the Presidential and Senate races.
The Democrats picked up forty seats in 2018 as turnout rose substantially relative to previous midterms, especially among younger voters. Many of those seats are in districts that lean Republican by registration, so even a modest shift in the generic ballot toward the GOP could bring them further into play. Moreover, the quality of the GOP candidates in House races, in general, is superior to that of the leading Republican Senate incumbents and candidates. Democrats have many more competitive House seats to defend than Republicans, so holding anything close to the current margin in seats would be a big success.
The Cook Report is a good guide and researching money on hand is a useful way to figure out which candidates most need your support the most. Any races on the list are good targets—whether listed as “Likely,” “Lean,” or “Tossup,” since House polls are less frequent and less reliable than Senate or Presidential polling.
Listed below are a baker’s dozen of the races that look either especially tight or a guide as to how things will play out nationally. Many of these districts include multiple “pivot” counties that went for Trump in 2016 after delivering a majority for Obama in 2008 and 2012.
If Democrats break even in these select races taking back the House will be virtually impossible for the GOP. Clearly the goal is running the table if possible. Because of the disruption of normal campaign cycles, the second quarter fundraising results that end in June will be extremely important. A big edge for certain Democratic candidates could take out of play a few of the races that are on the cusp of being competitive. (Josh Harder in CA-10 is a good example.)
Presidential year elections usually mean higher turnout which tends to favor Democrats, but with the pandemic and Trump on the ballot and the uncertainty of which states will be allowing vote-by-mail, all bets are off.
Kara Eastman, NE-3 --There are several disconcerting ways that the presidential race could end in a 269-269 Electoral College tie: in that case, Donald Trump would probably be re-elected as the tiebreaker is the number of states with majority House state legislations by party--not the overall House majority-- which favors the GOP.
Nebraska’s split Electoral College vote conceivably could make the difference, and the result of Neb-3 is the most likely to swing that one vote. In addition to the race’s potential national significance, Eastman is an excellent progressive candidate who lost to the same opponent last time by just two percent of the vote. Along with IL-13 it is one of the best Democratic chances to defeat a GOP incumbent.
Ben McAdams—UT-1—the former Mayor of Salt Lake County seeks a second term: he won by less than 700 votes in 2018.
Betsy Dirksen Londrigan—IL 13—This is probably the best chance in the country for a Democratic candidate to unseat a GOP incumbent, in this case Rodney Davis. Londrigan lost by only 2000 votes in 2018 and is running a relentless campaign.
T.J. Cox—CA-21. Cox was the most unlikely Democratic winner in California in 2018, winning the seat far into overtime from mail-in votes, after trailing on Election Day, in this reliably red Central Valley district. Former representative David Valadao is running again and triumphed in the spring primary; Cox needs every dollar to match Valadao’s large haul of local and national support.
Lucy McBath—GA-6. The first Democrat to win this district since it was redrawn in 1993, by a razor-thin margin, is in a tossup with Karen Handel, her previous opponent.
Xochitl Torres Small—NM-2. Another rematch in a little-polled district that Torres Small, an environmental lawyer, won in a nail-biter in 2018.
Susie Lee--NV 3—Lee, a school reformer, in a classic swing district, is opposed by former pro wrestler Dan Rodimer.
Max Rose—NY-11 Bronze Star and Purple Heart recipient Rose won this district in 2018 in a district that still is majority Republican, and he squares off against the former incumbent.
Abigail Spanberger (VA-7)—Like most of these races, the 7th is a district held by a Democrat but won by Donald Trump in 2016.
J.D. Scholten (IA-04)—This seat, once eyed as a good chance for a Democratic pickup, is now thought to be likely Republican since longtime GOP Congressman and white nationalist Steve King was defeated in the GOP primary, but Scholten is a strong campaigner and a good bet to overachieve.
Joe Cunningham (SC-1)—In Mark Sanford’s former seat, Cunningham took this district blue for the first time since 1981. He is up against a formidable first-time candidate in Nancy Mace, the first woman to graduate from the Citadel, and is a slight underdog.
Elissa Slotkin—MI-8 Slotkin unexpectedly won back this seat in 2018 and will face another tough test: she has been stalwart during the “Liberate” protests in Michigan. Under a different configuration this is a seat formerly held by Debbie Stabenow.
Cindy Axne (IA-3) This district includes most of Des Moines and much of southwest Iowa. Axne defeated two-term representative David Young by just 7,000 votes in 2018, and he is back for a rematch. This will be one of the closest races of the cycle.
Countering Voter Suppression and Boosting Turnout
Discouraging likely Democratic voters from going to the polls or having their votes count has been a longtime GOP strategy, although what was once cloaked in the rhetoric of preventing voter fraud and improving the integrity of elections is now for the most part an undisguised power play.
As the GOP’s increasingly common tactic of rolling back the powers of governors and other executives after Democrats win election shows most vividly, much of the modern GOP and its voters believe that only Republicans should be able to exercise power and view Democratic executives and legislators as illegitimate.
Paul Weyrich, who co-founded the Heritage Foundation and was a pivotal figure in the rise of the Christian Right, said flatly in 1980 that “I don’t want everyone to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.”
President Trump, echoing Weyrich’s sentiment, remarked earlier this year that if voting were made easier “You’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”
There is a virtually unanimous academic consensus that there is a minuscule amount of voting fraud in the United States, either at the ballot box or in vote-by-mail settings. Honest media coverage from all sides of the political spectrum have reported this fact. Out of a billion votes examined in one study, just 31 credible cases of voter impersonation were found. Likewise, just four of 136 million votes cast in the 2016 presidential election were found definitively to be tainted.
However, studies also found that the growth in the rolls was 1.7 percent lower in Wisconsin, which introduced a variety of voting changes and restrictions, compared to neighboring states which did not. This was another key factor in Hillary Clinton’s narrow loss in the state.
Voter suppression tactics include extreme gerrymandering, cutting back early voting, limiting the number and hours of polling places, closing polls altogether, purging voter rolls of those who haven’t voted in recent elections, tightening voter ID requirements, challenging the right of ex-felons to reclaim the franchise, discouraging college students from registering in the place they attend school, prohibiting same-day registration and other restrictions, using “poll watchers” to intimidate, scrapping language assistance for non-English speaking voters, and creating commissions to “investigate” virtually nonexistent voter fraud.
Many GOP-led states intensified these tactics after the Supreme Court’s bad decision in Shelby v. Holder (2013), which hollowed out the Voting Rights Act. A court in North Carolina found that one voter ID law would “target African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”
Numerous organizations are attempting to raise Democratic voter turnout and to combat voter suppression. Several listed here have strong leadership, clear aims, and a track record worthy of support:
Fair Fight—Headed by former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, this organization has been especially successful in fights to prevent and redress purging of voters from the rolls, and on encouraging vote-by-mail.
Move On—Tremendously effective in boosting turnout and in particular through their voter texting projects.
National Democratic Redistricting Committee—Led by former Obama attorney general Eric Holder, this group has been a leader in fighting gerrymandering and urging that maps be drawn by independent statewide commissions. Their grassroots advocacy arm is called All on the Line.
Progressive Turnout Project – a well-run, data-driven PAC with strong grassroots outreach to voters in swing states.
The focus of this post is on making your donations effective. Of course direct interaction with voters also can be tremendously helpful. Two initiatives that stand out are Postcards to Voters and Text Out the Vote.
Each election I reach out personally to at least one (supposedly) undecided swing state voter or non-voter— often a relative, sometimes an acquaintance--and try to stay connected with him or her. It can be easier to register scores of people to vote than to persuade one non-voter to go to the polls and stick with that person to Election Day. Finding out what someone outside the political arena knows about the process is always instructive. If everyone tries to find one such voter it will help considerably. Especially if you have a personal contact in one of these pivotal counties. Please give generously, don’t obsess about the polls, and keep in mind what is riding on November.
Why Trump Remains Dangerous (Politically Speaking)
The Trump presidency has reinforced rather than contradicted many of the main trends in modern politics. This includes the increasing polarization of the American electorate and the reliance of political professionals on negative partisanship, the emphasis on motivating voters through dislike of their opponents rather than a preference for their own candidate, or his or her policies.
What this means is that voters more than ever think of their parties as sports teams and root and vote accordingly. Voters who disliked both Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 broke decisively in Trump’s direction (at present, such voters are leaning sharply towards Biden). In short, there are ever fewer persuadable voters, and politics is more than ever a matter of getting one’s own team out to the polls. A handful of actual independents remain; getting their votes in swing states is critical.
Polarization guarantees that presidential elections likely will be close, at least in the popular vote, regardless of the underlying economic or political circumstances. The Electoral College skew in favor of rural voters means that Democrats, in their present coalition, have a big uphill climb; compared to the GOP, Democratic voters are more loosely organized, further apart ideologically, and assembling a winning coalition requires bringing aboard at least a sliver of more moderate and even conservative voters in certain states.
Incumbent U.S. presidents usually win a second term. On the two most recent occasions when they have not (1980 and 1992), a strong third-party candidate was in the race. This won’t happen in 2020.
In terms of his job approval ratings and the current state of the economy, Trump fits the mold of a one-term president. Even in a best-case scenario Trump would have been vulnerable on paper, as his overall approval rating has never topped 50 percent. In a good economy, he would have been an odds-on favorite to win. The impact of the coronavirus and the shelter-in-place shutdowns on the economy have shifted the narrative, however. Trump’s predictably tone-deaf and autocratic response to the massive protests against police brutality and systemic racism has also done him few favors, at least in the short run.
What was shaping up originally as a replay of the 2004 George W. Bush-John Kerry election, with some similar factors in play--an overheated but decent economy, a Republican incumbent seeking a second term, and popular discontent over Iraq, now leans in Biden’s direction. Biden holds a consistent national lead and is at or near the pivotal 50 percent threshold, and he has a smaller but significant lead in swing states.
As conventional a Republican presidency as Trump’s has been in many respects, except for his imposition of tariffs, the President’s approach to reelection has been unorthodox. Few politicians who eked out a victory by 80,000 votes or so and lost the popular vote would have doubled down on a strategy of base consolidation rather than pivoting toward the center.
Had his temperament allowed him to pivot, Trump probably would have had at least a 65 percent approval rating before the onset of the coronavirus, even in a highly polarized electorate. Instead, unlike any other modern President, Trump has remained in campaign mode throughout his term in office, cultivating a base united by ethnocultural unity and shared religious beliefs. Except briefly after the government shutdown, after the attempt to repeal the Affordable Care Act (downwards), and at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (upwards), his approval numbers have been eerily steady, virtually impervious to events, usually around 42 percent on average. Trump is employing a kind of rope-a-dope strategy, but this is different from a President with ratings in free-fall. His negatives are all built in, but his favorables are unlikely to fall much lower either.
Were Trump able even to fake being a unifying president, his reelection chances would rise. But these chances remain not insubstantial. He draws upon many advantages. The Trump campaign has a large bankroll, roughly twice that of Joe Biden in terms of cash-on-hand (184 million versus 98 million at the end of April). He dominates the airwaves, always exploiting the P.T. Barnum principle that no publicity is bad publicity, and comfortably works any crisis into his familiar frame of division, recrimination, and assignment of blame. He lowers expectations and relentlessly changes the subject from day to day and hour to hour (in Steve Bannon’s memorable phrase, “flooding the zone with s-t”).
While traditionally voters blame incumbents for bad times, chaos is Trump’s natural environment. And since the modern GOP under Trump has turned into a permanent insurgency, what many voters see as government competence in action—such as public health encouragement of contact tracing and the wearing of masks to combat the spread of the coronavirus—is deeply resented and resisted by many Republican voters.
Democrats are fighting, in effect, a massive state propaganda apparatus in Fox News, Sinclair-owned television stations, the even more extreme niche broadcasters such as One America News Network (OANN), and much of talk radio. Trump is also backed by a well-honed and superior digital operation.
Trump’s ability to lie shamelessly and change his positions on the fly is a kind of superpower, since—as the philosopher Hannah Arendt poignantly noted-- lies often appear to have the ring of truth because they are less messy than reality: “Lies are often much more plausible, more appealing to reason, than reality, since the liar has the great advantage of knowing beforehand what the audience wishes or expects to hear. He has prepared his story for public consumption with a careful eye to making it credible, whereas reality has the disconcerting habit of confronting us with the unexpected, for which we were not prepared.” -On Lying in Politics, 1972.
Trump has tapped into a massive wave of cultural resentment, founded on a wave of white identity politics and religious nationalism which most liberals and Democrats still underestimate—many religious voters are less concerned with piety or even the issues of the “culture wars,” apart from abortion, than in claiming and using the power of the state to their advantage.
While Trump’s aggregate approval numbers have barely budged, something is happening, at least at the margin. The GOP (or at least Trump’s GOP) is losing a modest number of college-educated white men and women, especially suburban women, and Trump is consolidating and enlarging his already substantial base of voters who attend church regularly and those for whom white identity is pivotal.
As an example, the number of white Protestants who believe literally that President Trump is anointed by God rose from just under 30 percent in 2019 among regular churchgoers to almost 50 percent in 2020. The latter figure includes all of those who go to church often, not only evangelicals or mainline Protestants. These voters hate secular liberalism passionately. They feel that the 2020 election, and the Trump presidency, represents their last chance to preserve, as they see it, a United States based on Christian principles grounded in custom and law, with an emphasis on white racial preeminence and gender hierarchy.
GOP voters may have a slightly smaller footprint than in 2016 but are driven if anything with even greater intensity this time around. (And as one commentator puts it, fairly, “Elections are not won by passive majorities but by mobilized minorities.”)
The good news for Democrats is that a considerable number of the Trump voters who are leaving are suburbanites concentrated in swing districts, largely women, who fueled the gains in the House in 2018. The bad news—from the standpoint of progressive Democrats— is that many of these “converts” are anti-Trump but still conservative, relatively speaking, on policy issues.
Trump is trying to redefine the pandemic and the protests along racial and identity lines— his main go-to move— for his base while persuading this breakaway group of suburbanites that Democratic leadership will mean social disorder and that progressive policies are too radical. While he has bungled his early efforts to portray himself as a defender of “law and order” in the wake of protests for racial justice after the murder of George Floyd murder, he will keep trying to revive this strategy.
At even 45 percent of the national vote or a bit more, Trump has a chance, as in 2016, to eke out an Electoral College victory. With an effective voter suppression campaign, the potential for Russian interference, a billion dollar misinformation campaign on social media, a growing economy, and a more sophisticated appeal to the fears of white voters (e.g. misrepresenting the substance of the call to “defund the police”), he retains a path to winning.
It isn’t surprising that the Democratic race fell in Joe Biden’s direction, given Biden’s early frontrunner status, but the speed with which primary voters coalesced was breathtaking, given that Biden had been poor at raising money, had run a lackluster campaign, and did nothing especially memorable on the campaign trail. Like voters picking a stock, most Democrats made their decisions based on what they thought other Americans were unlikely to do (vote for a woman, or for a socialist) and which direction African-American voters would turn.
The 2020 election was certain to be a referendum on Donald Trump under any circumstances. The upheavals of the first six months of 2020 have made Biden an even better foil: competence and a perception of basic decency and empathy are the right characteristics to defang attacks from Trump and his surrogates. (Those attacks, designed to whip up negative partisanship, included in a recent single week charges that Biden was involved, with Barack Obama, in the greatest political crime in modern history, had committed sexual assault, had engaged in nepotism, and was possibly a pedophile.)
A Biden presidency will fulfill the wish of many Americans not to have politics in their face 24/7. That may be his single greatest attribute, electorally speaking.
Biden has proven that he can bring out vast numbers of voters without campaigning at all (as with Trump, lowering expectations has been part of the Biden brand). That the coronavirus effectively shortens the campaign cycle is largely to his benefit. No other Democratic candidate was nearly as well-known and not having to introduce himself during a massive period of national distraction has been a big advantage.
For many, Biden serves the role of “generic” or “least-common-denominator” Democrat”— someone who can reliably bring out the disparate wings of the party to vote even if they have reservations about him. However, his recent fine speech in Philadelphia and his good performance on Trevor Noah raise the genuine possibility that he could be much more than that. Biden’s genuine sensitivity to racial justice and empathy for the plight of the unemployed, along with his policies related to student debt and climate change, can bring progressives and younger Americans on board.
Biden also needs to make sure that the elements of the fragile Democratic coalition know they are being heard and represented. Hillary Clinton’s platform and agenda were the most progressive in the history of the Democratic party; GOP voters for the most part were well aware of this, but Democrats—thanks in part to online disinformation campaigns—surprisingly less so. Biden also needs to be alert for last minute election surprises and have a strategy in place to counter them. It wasn’t only James Comey’s e-mail investigation announcement that tipped the 2016 election to Trump but several other things as well, including the late October release of an upward surge in Obamacare premiums. Last-minute surprises could include a late positive jobs report, a coronavirus vaccine announcement, a provocation to violence, or a foreign crisis. Biden also should remind voters of the abysmal record of recent second-term GOP presidencies: Watergate, Iran-Contra, a failed war in Iraq, and economic collapse.
At root however the most successful Democratic message is likely to be the expectation of low-key competence in office combined with decency and a commitment to ending corruption and pursuing justice. This, by the way, is not inconsistent with bringing about sweeping change once the election is won, since it is the provoking of liberal anger that acts as the rocket fuel for right-wing populists and their supporters. Methodical and successful governing aimed at reforming inequities is their kryptonite.
As one Daily Kos blogger nicely puts it:
anon004/flavor411
May 16, 2020
How about someone who knows how to run the government and who can attract a quality staff for the Executive Branch? Sure, I miss intelligence and curiosity and grace and class and humility and self-deprecating wit and humanity and the ability to move me to tears with a speech and sing and dance and be a baby whisperer and who kids adore, but right now I just want someone who won’t rob me blind and who won’t kill me from neglect and incompetence and greed and cronyism.
Why Trump Endangers You
Failing the Coronavirus Test
Even with good intentions and strong institutions, it is possible to be caught flat-footed in a pandemic. To be sure, the Trump administration ignored numerous early warnings from inside and outside government, dismantled the administration’s pandemic response team, literally threw away the pandemic playbook left them by their predecessors, and defunded the position of the CDC expert who had been embedded in China specifically to look out for coronavirus outbreaks.
Still, even in the aftermath of such bad decisions, a little slack is warranted. Because public health is invisible when it works well, it is always on the fiscal chopping block when the memory of the most recent scare subsides. South Korea was out front during this crisis largely because the country was burned badly during the last SARS outbreak. And Australia’s conservative prime minister acted fast in large part because of his poor response to the nation’s recent wildfires.
Since there is a lag time between the onset of an infectious disease and uncontrolled community spread, especially when a disease is new and not well understood, leaders must act decisively when there is little to see. This demands a public that believes in science and a great deal of social trust in authorities, two things that are not the strong suit of Americans even in sunnier times.
However, President Trump and his team’s dereliction of duty principally rests on what he did, and principally did not do, after receiving numerous intelligence assessments and stark warnings from CDC and outside epidemiologists once COVID-19 had already begun to spread. You can read the details here, here, here, here, and here. He blamed the messengers, downplayed the potential scope of the crisis, repeatedly applauded his decision to shut down entry to the U.S. from China (even though at least forty thousand Chinese entered the U.S. after the policy was adopted), ignored the shortage of N-95 protective masks, and worried primarily about the impact on the stock market.
As one White House source told The Financial Times, Trump’s son-in-law “had been arguing that testing too many people, or ordering too many ventilators, would spook the markets and so we just shouldn’t do it. That advice worked far more powerfully on him than what the scientists were saying.”
Trump downplayed the coronavirus threat in the face of mounting and alarming public evidence, let alone repeated presidential intelligence briefings. On January 21st he said “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China…It’s going to be just fine.” On February 26th Trump noted that the U.S. had fifteen cases, “and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that’s a pretty good job we’ve done.” On March 10th he observed “It will go away. Just stay calm…It’s really working out.”
After a half-hearted week or so of acknowledging the threat in mid-March, he returned to dismissing epidemiology, blaming China, touting unproven and potentially dangerous treatments, representing himself as the primary victim of the crisis, and taking victory laps as the death toll climbed, even as the death toll from the disease exceeded 100,000 Americans and the disease was not contained.
The critical issue of testing is a microcosm of President Trump’s failed approach to the coronavirus crisis. Virtually every country that has contained or crushed COVID-19—an increasingly large and diverse group of countries that includes Germany, New Zealand, South Korea, Taiwan, Slovenia, Greece, Vietnam, and Iceland—combined early diagnostic testing with contact tracing to keep down infections and to assess the extent of community spread.
The need for massive early testing, followed by contact tracing and isolating infected Americans, was recommended from the start by virtually every public health expert, regardless of political leaning. The failure to test early hinders containment and forces lifesaving follow-up measures to be more drastic--in this case the shelter-in-place rules adopted by most American states.
As Senator and 2012 GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney put it, addressing coronavirus testing czar Admiral Brett Giroir, “I understand that politicians are going to frame data in a way that is most positive politically. Of course, I don’t expect that from admirals. …You ignored the fact that South Korea accomplished their [tests] at the beginning of the outbreak, while we treaded water during February and March. I find our testing record nothing to celebrate whatsoever.”
The CDC’s initial test for COVID-19 was flawed in practice. HHS decided not to seek out the possibility of using a test developed by the World Health Organization, and it was slow to authorize the use of tests developed by state labs. Regulations were kept in place that stopped private and university labs from stepping into the breach. Speaking at the CDC in Atlanta on March 6th, Trump remarked that “Anybody right now and yesterday, anybody that needs a test, they’re there. And the tests are beautiful.” This was untrue, then and for many weeks to come. And even after enough test kits were procured, the federal government did not secure enough swabs and reagents needed to make them work.
Later, Trump from time to time would boast that the U.S. had done the most testing in the world (this was eventually true in absolute terms, though still not even close on a national per capita basis). For the most part, however, his skepticism of testing for COVID-19 verged on medical nihilism. On May 14th, at a medical supply distributor in Allentown, Pennsylvania, he opined that “It could be that testing is, frankly, overrated. … When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didn’t do any testing, we would have very few cases,”
In a March 13th Rose Garden press conference with technology leaders present, Trump offered a vision of nationwide, even international screening and testing:
“Google is helping to develop a website. It is going to be very quickly done, unlike websites of the past, to determine whether a test is warranted and to facilitate testing at a nearby convenient location.
“We have many, many locations behind us, by the way. We cover the — this country and a large part of the world. By the way, we’re not talking about the world right now. But we cover very — very strongly our country, stores in virtually every location. Google has 1,700 engineers working on this right now.”
Despite indignant White House denials, this scenario largely was made up out of whole cloth, from the scope of the website to the reach of the project even to the actual company involved (it was Verily, Google’s parent, and with just a handful of engineers). The process resulted in an unremarkable website, one that was not even up and running when the President was extolling it, that steered practitioners (not patients) to potential testing sites only in the Bay Area.
When asked at the same press conference whether he took responsibility for not having better COVID-19 testing capabilities in place, Trump said “I take no responsibility at all.”
The U.S. leads the world in coronavirus deaths and overall cases, both by a large margin. As of this writing in mid-June, the death toll from COVID-19 is at least 117,000, and roughly 20,000 new cases are being diagnosed daily, though the positive rate of tests is falling in most states.
(Any credit for slowing the spread of the pandemic, relatively speaking, should properly go to health care responders, essential workers, Governors, a Congress that acted with relative speed, and the remaining professionals in the administration and in the states who continue to do their jobs in the face of misinformation, much of it deliberately spread, and ideological hostility. And especially the solidarity of those who sheltered in place once the virus was spreading and not contained, which is a public health strategy of last resort.)
Failure of Leadership
Beyond policy and ideology, we select a President for his ability to lead in a crisis-- for real-time decision-making and good judgment in situations where important choices must be made quickly and especially where ambiguity is present. Even if we magically suffered no more deaths from COVID-19 and the economy revived, Trump’s failures of decision-making in a time of crisis should disqualify his reelection hopes.
When others have stumbled, Trump has been swift to criticize their leadership. In November 2013, he tweeted “Leadership: Whatever happens, you’re responsible. If it doesn’t happen, you’re responsible.” In 2015, he excoriated President George W. Bush for supposedly failing to anticipate and prevent the 9/11 attacks.
His capacity for hypocrisy and projection are boundless. In October 2014, in response to the Ebola scare, he wrote: “If this doctor, who so recklessly flew into New York from West Africa, has Ebola then Obama should apologize to the American people & resign!” That doctor, who was in fact positive for Ebola, recovered. Ebola claimed just two lives in the U.S, both of whom had contracted the disease overseas. Likewise, Trump wrongly claimed that the Obama administration ignored the swine flu (H1N1) pandemic of 2009 (“It was like they didn’t know it was here”) when in fact Obama declared a public health emergency when only twenty H1N1 cases had been diagnosed, promptly secured funding from Congress, oversaw the development of a vaccine, and received bipartisan praise for his response.
Trump has long been incapable even of performing the layup elements of the Presidency, like laying wreaths on war memorials, congratulating sports teams, speaking to Boy Scouts, hosting Easter Egg hunts, or showing (rote) compassion, let alone genuine compassion. This flaw has been magnified during the coronavirus crisis. Repeatedly painting himself as the victim of the situation, he has only assigned blame and appropriated credit. He has shown not the slightest ability to mourn.
This is both an unappealing character trait and to some extent a form of political calculation, but it goes beyond that. The president’s narcissism and partisanship has meant that calling for national unity, either in the face of coronavirus or civil unrest, is beyond him. Bill Clinton, by contrast, effectively salvaged his presidency with a stirring call for national unity in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing.
Dozens of other countries in the world, including those with stark political divisions, largely set aside these divisions to fight the coronavirus. Trump and his administration, by contrast, viewed the crisis through a partisan lens, repeatedly singling out Democratic governors for criticism and withholding or granting state requests for emergency medical equipment based on perceived loyalty or personal patronage. The president even scorched former President George W. Bush after he issued an anodyne call for national unity in the face of the virus, tweeting “He was nowhere to be found in speaking up against the greatest Hoax [e.g. Trump’s impeachment by the House] in American History.”
While Trump frequently boasts that the U.S. has led the world in fighting the virus, the opposite has taken place. For the first time in the past century, the U.S. has been a bystander during a global crisis. Fintan O’Toole, a writer for the Irish Times, wrote in wonderment, “Over more than two centuries, the United States has stirred a very wide range of feelings in the rest of the world: love and hatred, fear and hope, envy and contempt, awe and anger. But there is one emotion that has never been directed towards the US until now: pity.”
Destroying Administrative Capacity
In public health and across most agencies, Trump’s distrust of expertise has decimated the American civil service. He has installed a parade of venal and ineffectual staff in key federal positions. In his revolving door administration, over eighty-five percent of his top staff have departed during his first term, more than the total of the five previous presidencies combined at this point. Trump has had four chiefs of staff and three press secretaries (one of whom held no conventional press conferences in over a year on the job). Acting officials, who don’t require Senate confirmation, have already served more days in office than during the entire two-term Obama administration. Just over one-third of the top staff positions in the Department of Homeland Security are currently filled. Immigration specialist Steven Miller and son-in-law Jared Kushner apparently drafted Trump’s disastrous speech at the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis. Even an executive with matchless logistical skills would find it hard to succeed with so many vacancies, acting officials, and lack of continuity in the ranks.
The two most competent remaining members of the Trump administration, Miller and attorney general William Barr, are pursuing their own complementary agendas. Barr, a conservative Catholic whom in an earlier stint as attorney general said that “today’s secularists” are “clearly fanatics” and called for moral renewal under “God’s law,” is attempting to fuse the theory of a unfettered executive with a Biblical mandate justifying kingship. As the remainder of the civil service languishes, court appointments have accelerated. With a big assist from Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society, Mitch McConnell’s Senate has been confirming judges at an historic clip: by the end of Trump’s first term, the Senate will have confirmed over two hundred federal judges, the second most in presidential history over this span.
Rehearsal for Catastrophe? Nuclear Threats, and Others
Trump deserves rejection, no doubt, for his upheaval of the rule of law, his boundless corruption, his lack of basic decency, and his destructive policies on the environment, education, and other areas. However, simple lack of competence, combined with lethal arrogance, is his basic flaw.
The main problem is not even that Trump has made mistakes but that he is utterly incapable of acknowledging them and learning from experience. He has a studied inability to listen to facts that he doesn’t want to hear. Even Richard Nixon expressed some perfunctory regret after the disclosures that eventually led to his resignation over Watergate. Trump, by contrast, regrets nothing--as his rambling post-impeachment self-defense (aptly dubbed by one critic the “Pettysburg Address”) demonstrates most vividly.
What this means is that as bad as the Trump administration’s response to COVID-19 has been, it may only be a warning. At the outset of the Trump presidency, Michael Lewis’s prescient book The Fifth Risk warned about the danger of electing a President who distrusted expertise, starved the civil service, overvalued his own opinion, and made decisions based on personal interest. (Or, to paraphrase a saying attributed to the French diplomat Talleyrand, Trump’s election was worse than a crime—it was a mistake.)
With Trump’s failed response to the coronavirus, we now have real-life confirmation that his hubris and mistrust of expertise is a lethal combination. (Many Puerto Ricans would say that the Trump administration’s inadequate response to Hurricane Maria was a harbinger of the current crisis.)
The range of catastrophic possibilities is considerable: pandemics of a different kind, cyberattacks, chemical or biological accidents--such as an accident involving super-lethal synthetic opioids, such as carfentanil --or a string of natural catastrophes. As tensions rise with China, how deftly would Trump handle an escalation of events that could culminate in military conflict? Or an actual shooting war with a determined and powerful adversary? Given what we have seen, how well would the go-to Trump strategy--ignoring the problem, abdicating responsibility, and deflecting the blame--work out?
The coronavirus crisis is a slow-motion affair that has done great damage to individuals and families and the economy but will spare most people even if left unchecked. By contrast, Donald Trump’s absolute authority over the launch of nuclear weapons gives him, or any President, the power to annihilate the globe either by accident or design.
Though Trump has said many temperate things in public about the threat of nuclear weapons, his fascination with their destructive power, combined with his characteristic overconfidence in his abilities to handle them, should give pause. In an interview during the mid-1980s with the Washington Post, Trump said that “It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about [nuclear] missiles…I think I know most of it anyway.” He has alluded to the possibility of annihilating Afghanistan to “win that war,” and mused on other occasions about wielding the “ultimate” power, presumably nuclear. In private, apparently, he has wondered why nuclear weapons cannot be used and has pondered dropping them into hurricanes to alter weather patterns.
That the Trump administration has ended or backed away from many existing nuclear treaties, or declined to try to salvage them, raises the strong possibility of a new nuclear arms race between the United States, the Soviet Union, and China. In addition to exiting the Iran accords, the administration has or is likely to abandon the INF agreement and the Open Skies treaty with Moscow, and to let the START agreement lapse. Trump’s decision to pursue personal talks with Kim Jong Un appears to have given the North Korean leader massive legitimacy and a propaganda victory rather than denuclearization. And in the face of strong opposition, Trump has pushed for the U.S. to conduct its first nuclear tests since 1992.
As one recent article headlined, “A New Nuclear Arms Race Taking Shape Amid a Pandemic and Economic Crisis: What Could Go Wrong?” No elected official should possess absolute launch authority in a setting that may reduce the time for judgment to minutes. But with his capacity to rationalize mass death and the unaccountable power of a “nuclear monarch,” Trump is singularly unsuited to making these potentially devastating split-second decisions.
To be clear, defeating Donald Trump is necessary, though hardly sufficient. Bringing together “the house divided”—a schism that has been with us from the country’s founding, though in sharper relief now because of demographic change, a “fully sorted” two-party system, the crumbling of traditional elites, the impact of social media, the decline of mediating institutions, the poisoned chalice of meritocracy, and the vicious spiral of wealth inequality in the absence of policy mitigation, to name a few factors—will be the work of generations, though not an impossible lift.
The problem is that the short-term menace of Trump is all too easily lost amidst his familiarity. The potentially disastrous consequences of his extreme rhetoric and unfounded self-assurance can be too easy to overlook among his daily affronts to democratic values and racial justice. Optimism bias that we can avoid the worst is natural, but with Trump there is no bottom. Fortunately, pointing out Trump’s threat to our very existence is most likely to expand the coalition that opposes him rather than to force a potential choice, for some, between expedience and principle.