Donald Trump may say that the corona virus is going away but that is a lie. The election is a referendum on the president’s management of the pandemic. Doctor Anthony Fauci has warned that things could get a lot worse Trump’s response is he doesn’t like what the doctor has said an might fire him.
Great leadership Mr. President.
Graph of New Reported Cases in the U.S. from the New York Times.
Once again I believe most of the pollsters have it wrong. I’m not happy about this outcome but three pieces of evidence are may well be bell weather indicators.
1. Hundreds of Trump supporters rallied in Beverly Hills on Saturday reported the Los Angeles Times. Beverly Hills has the reputation of being a major Democratic Party stronghold.
2. The Trafalgar Group’s Rob Cahaly — who predicted Trump’s 2016 victory — claims most Americans dislike responding to polls consisting of 25 or more questions. He is now predicting Trump will win.
3. The ‘Enthusiasm Factor’ could lead to another Trump win because there is a lack of it for Biden. How many of those people who said in the polls they support Joe Biden will actually cast their vote for him? A platoon of Trump fans floated in New Jersey’s Barnegat Bay on Sept. 15. They had their Trump support banners on their boats.
Sadly I believe this will be the end of the Republic of the United States if Donald Trump wins this election.
Compliments of the New York Times
‘Covid, covid covid’ – Trump says opponents are using the pandemic to make him look bad. His opponents are correct. And Yes his opponents and the news media has every right to report the facts to the public. His handling of the virus has been a disaster. By Trump’s own admission to Bob Woodward in February he knew that the disease was going to have a disastrous impact on the public but wanted to ‘play it down.’
THE NYT notes that there have been 500,000 cases recorded this week, and “half of U.S. counties saw new cases peak during the past month. Almost a third saw a record in the past week.” TAKE A LOOK at the hardest-hit areas, and they line up with some of the most critical areas for the presidential contest: vast swaths of Midwestern swing states.
WaPo’s JULIE ZAUZMER notes: “The daily rate of new coronavirus cases in DC rose above 10 per 100,000 residents today for the first time in months. Today’s rate is the highest since June 8. On Sept. 30, we were at 5.1 per 100,000.”
Mismanagement of controlling the virus spread provides another message. Donald Trump does not function well in an emergency. He turns everything into an opportunity to remake the government in his image.
We have now had 27 hurricanes hitting the Gulf coast this year. The Atlantic hurricane season is the period in a year from June through November. We could experience more this year. Hope is not a strategy. “The Trump administration has recently removed the chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the nation’s premier scientific agency, installed new political staff who have questioned accepted facts about climate change and imposed stricter controls on communications at the agency.”
As I post this commentary early afternoon in California the number of new corona virus exceeds 67,000 today. Yes, ‘Covid, covid covid’ should be topic one!
Donald Trump’s final campaign argument is that everything is wonderful.
We have turned the corner fighting the corona virus. The number of cases is in decline. Go ahead and social distance if you want to but it really isn’t necessary. The vaccine will available in weeks thank to Operation Warp Speed. The number of new cases reached an all time high of 101,461 today according to Worldometer’s COVID-19 data and the Washington Post report says the number today was nearly 100,000.
Asked Wednesday about when he expects the FDA will greenlight use of the first vaccines, Anthony Fauci moved the administration’s stated goalpost. “Could be January, could be later. We don’t know,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an online interview with JAMA editor Howard Bauchner.
A new health plan will be unveiled shortly after the election a series of executive orders he said are aimed at protecting Americans with pre-existing conditions, ending surprise billing and introducing more affordable public options.
We are now experiencing a super V economic recovery and very soon unemployment number will return to 3.5% and possibly lower. The Wall Street Journal reported “several large companies have announced they’re eliminating tens of thousands of jobs in the coming weeks due to a steep fall in consumer demand stemming from the pandemic. Among them are Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MGM Resorts. United Airlines and Delta say their layoffs will be permanent unless they receive another infusion of federal aid.”
We are bringing back manufacturing jobs “Trump has been all in on this huge resurgence of manufacturing employment, and that has not materialized.” Mark Muro, Brookings economist. But the White House’s trade wars kicked the sector into another slump in 2019, with Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Pennsylvania facing declines or plateaus in manufacturing employment even back in February — well before Covid-19 forced layoffs at dozens of plants. As of July — the most recent month for which data is available — each state is down between 20,000 and 40,000 workers from pre-pandemic levels.
White supremacist? They don’t exist. All of those people are decent law abiding Christians.
Like this ostrich, Donald Trump prefers to hide from reality.
The selloff of the stock market today follows Monday’s sharp decline as the president tries to make a closing argument with voters that rings hollow.
Trump’s argument for his re-election makes no sense. 40% of Americans don’t have $400 in the bank for emergency expense says the Federal Reserve.
But for discussion:
Closing words of Donald Trump at the second presidential debate. “We are on the road to success. But I’m cutting taxes and he wants to raise everybody’s taxes. And he wants to put new regulations on everything. He will kill it. If he gets in, you will have a depression, the likes of which you’ve never seen. Your 401K’s will go to hell and it’ll be a very, very sad day for this country.”
For perspective the average 401(k) balance is $92,148, according to a 2019 Vanguard analysis of over 5 million 401(k) plans issued by the company. But most people don’t have that amount of retirement savings. The median 401(k) balance is $22,217, a better indicator of what the majority of Americans have saved for retirement. That is not enough to buy a car.
The S&P 500 reached a peak of 3544.71 on October 12 but today it has dropped to 3295. The Dow slides more than 800 points today. My 401K investment is in a fund based on those averages. How about Apple shares? Down 10%.
Donald Trump is out of touch with most Americans. Most of us are concerned with sufficient income to put food on the table, pay the rent, the car payment, and affordable health care.
Americans are notorious for voting the political party nominees for every same party nominee on their ballots. They are called the down ballot candidates. Most people simply believe that whoever their party has selected is the best person for the job.
The political party message is Don’t think just mark your ballot as we have instructed.
In other words, if you are voting for Donald Trump the right thing to do is vote for every Republican candidate – senators – congress representatives – governors – etc. even if they are not qualified for the job.
The consequence happened in Los Angeles and it is about to happen again.
Sheriff Alex Villanueva, a Democrat, was the party’s choice over incumbent Jim McDonnell, a Republican. The public elected Villanueva because he has a Hispanic name and he was a Democrat even though he had a checkered past. Shortly after entering the office he reinstated a deputy who had been fired by his predecessor for violating department policies regarding domestic violence and lying. The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors will consider a motion Tuesday seeking options for removing Villanueva, who in recent weeks has faced growing calls to step down because of what many describe as his resistance to oversight and transparency.
Jackie Lacey has served as the District Attorney of Los Angeles County since December 3, 2012. She is the first woman, and first African-American to serve in that position since it was created in 1850. She is a Democrat. Now another Democrat, George Gascón is challenging her the in the County district attorney race. He has obtained endorsements of the mayor and many council members as well as the Los Angeles Times all because of his claims of being more concerned about the welfare of those charged with a crime. The race is seen as a referendum on what 21st century criminal justice should look like, one that’s been exacerbated after a summer that saw large-scale opposition to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the shooting of Jacob Blake. Lacey has been faulted by activists for her perceived hesitance to charge police in controversial killings, but Gascón has faced questions about his own record of not filing such charges during his eight years in San Francisco.
After you have read this you are most likely to ignore my plea to think about your choices.
From history.com Heading into Election Day on November 2, 1948, it seemed like Thomas Dewey had the U.S. presidency in the bag. Numerous polls and pundits predicted a win for the Michigan native, New York governor and prominent gang-busting attorney. But, as a now-famous photograph would show, everyone—including the editors of the Chicago Tribune—got it wrong. The surprise victory of the plain-spoken Democratic nominee, Harry S Truman, would become one of the biggest upsets in U.S. presidential history—and it would forever be memorialized, thanks to an embarrassing newspaper gaffe.
On the Saturday before the election in 2016, the Princeton Election Consortium said Clinton had a 99% chance of winning. While other people’s speculations were less extreme — and Nate Silver’s election-eve estimate that Trump stood a 28% chance was probably about right; some unlikely things still had to happen, but everybody has gotten wet when there was a 28% chance of rain.
So where will Joe Biden be in the last seven days of this campaign? The Hill reports “Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Monday defended his light travel and campaign schedule, saying he’ll embark on a swing-state blitz this week and that he regularly keeps 12 hour days even when he has no public appearances on the docket. Biden did not have any events on his schedule for Monday, but in the late afternoon, he made an unscheduled trip from his home in Wilmington, Del. to Chester, Pa., which is 15 miles away.”
Is this any way to conduct a campaign? Maybe his campaign’s polling has him convinced he has a win in the bag. Has he spoken to Hillary Clinton?
One fourth of all COVID-19 cases and deaths in the world have been in the United States but America accounts for only 4% of the world’s population. The U.S. recorded more than 83,000 new coronavirus cases for the second day in a row on Saturday amid a surge as the weather turns colder. Experts have warned that cases could continue to rise as the weather gets colder in the coming months.
“We are not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas,” Mark Meadows told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”
“Media is doing everything possible to create fear prior to November 3rd,” Trump tweeted. “The Cases are up because TESTING is way up, by far the most, and best, in the world. Mortality rate is DOWN 85% plus!”
Donald Trump refuses to recognize reality. The last president facing similar re-election troubles like Donald Trump’s was Jimmy Carter in 1980. Injured by recession and taking no action against Iran (Fifty-two American diplomats and citizens were held hostage for more than a year), Carter lost big.
Americans know when enough is enough but does political party loyalty Trump reality?
When asked if he understood the gravity of “the talk” that Black parents are too often forced to have with their children, Trump simply answered, “Yes, I do.” Then he pivots to attacking Biden and says “I’m the least racist person in this room,”
Really? I thought. Charlottesville and his words “stand back- standby” in his denunciation of white supremacists came to mind.
Washington Post White House bureau chief Philip Rucker reacted by describing Trump as the “president who has repeatedly made racist comments, spread a racist lie about Obama to build a national political profile and has refused at times (such as the last debate) to condemn white supremacists.”
Trump has a long history of racist controversies.
Here’s a breakdown of Trump’s history, taken largely from Dara Lind’s list for Vox and an op-ed by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times:
• 1973: The US Department of Justice — under the Nixon administration, out of all administrations — sued the Trump Management Corporation for violating the Fair Housing Act. Federal officials found evidence that Trump had refused to rent to Black tenants and lied to Black applicants about whether apartments were available, among other accusations. Trump said the federal government was trying to get him to rent to welfare recipients. In the aftermath, he signed an agreement in 1975 agreeing not to discriminate to renters of color without admitting to previous discrimination.
• 1980s: Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, accused another one of Trump’s businesses of discrimination. “When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Brown said. “It was the eighties, I was a teenager, but I remember it: They put us all in the back.”
• 1989: In a controversial case that’s been characterized as a modern-day lynching, four Black teenagers and one Latino teenager — the “Central Park Five” — were accused of attacking and raping a jogger in New York City. Trump immediately took charge in the case, running an ad in local papers demanding, “BRING BACK THE DEATH PENALTY. BRING BACK OUR POLICE!” The teens’ convictions were later vacated after they spent seven to 13 years in prison, and the city paid $41 million in a settlement to the teens. But Trump in October 2016 said he still believes they’re guilty, despite the DNA evidence to the contrary.
• 1991: A book by John O’Donnell, former president of Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino in Atlantic City, quoted Trump’s criticism of a Black accountant: “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys that wear yarmulkes every day. … I think that the guy is lazy. And it’s probably not his fault, because laziness is a trait in blacks. It really is, I believe that. It’s not anything they can control.” Trump later said in a 1997 Playboy interview that “the stuff O’Donnell wrote about me is probably true.”
• 1992: The Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino had to pay a $200,000 fine because it transferred Black and women dealers off tables to accommodate a big-time gambler’s prejudices.
• 1993: In congressional testimony, Trump said that some Native American reservations operating casinos shouldn’t be allowed because “they don’t look like Indians to me.”
• 2000: In opposition to a casino proposed by the St. Regis Mohawk tribe, which he saw as a financial threat to his casinos in Atlantic City, Trump secretly ran a series of ads suggesting the tribe had a “record of criminal activity [that] is well documented.”
• 2004: In season two of The Apprentice, Trump fired Kevin Allen, a Black contestant, for being overeducated. “You’re an unbelievably talented guy in terms of education, and you haven’t done anything,” Trump said on the show. “At some point you have to say, ‘That’s enough.’”
• 2005: Trump publicly pitched what was essentially The Apprentice: White People vs. Black People. He said he “wasn’t particularly happy” with the most recent season of his show, so he was considering “an idea that is fairly controversial — creating a team of successful African Americans versus a team of successful whites. Whether people like that idea or not, it is somewhat reflective of our very vicious world.”
• 2010: In 2010, there was a huge national controversy over the “Ground Zero Mosque” — a proposal to build a Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, near the site of the 9/11 attacks. Trump opposed the project, calling it “insensitive,” and offered to buy out one of the investors in the project. On The Late Show With David Letterman, Trump argued, referring to Muslims, “Well, somebody’s blowing us up. Somebody’s blowing up buildings, and somebody’s doing lots of bad stuff.”
• 2011: Trump played a big role in pushing false rumors that Obama — the country’s first Black president — was not born in the US. He claimed to send investigators to Hawaii to look into Obama’s birth certificate. Obama later released his birth certificate, calling Trump a “carnival barker.” The research has found a strong correlation between birtherism, as the conspiracy theory is called, and racism. But Trump has reportedly continued pushing this conspiracy theory in private.
• 2011: While Trump suggested that Obama wasn’t born in the US, he also argued that maybe Obama wasn’t a good enough student to have gotten into Columbia or Harvard Law School, and demanded Obama release his university transcripts. Trump claimed, “I heard he was a terrible student. Terrible. How does a bad student go to Columbia and then to Harvard?”
To many of the commentator’s surprise Donald Trump behaved like a mensch. That made the debate rather boring.
Trump needed to impress viewers that he has done an excellent job in his first four years and deserves another term. He did not make the case.
The two issues that are front and center for most Americans are COVID-19 and health care.
1) Trump repeated what he has said at his rallies that the disease would go away and added that we will have a vaccine by the end of the year (scientists in the know say a vaccine won’t be available until late in 2021 at the earliest).
2) Trump has a health plan that is far better than Obamacare (that plan has been promised ever since Trump was inaugurated in January 20, 2017).
Joe Biden has not made an overwhelming case for his election. Donald Trump has not delivered protection against the virus nor presented a new health plan.
This election is not a choice. It is a referendum on Donald Trump. Trump knows that fact.
Red states are likely to remain red and blue states remain blue. If Trump can win all the states he won in 2016 he will be in office for another term. However, if polls are to be believed Trump will not be inaugurated on January 20, 2020 for second term. Just remember that almost all the polls predicted Hillary Clinton would win four years ago.
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