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Notes On 2020 - From this morning’s Politico: “For the establishment, I think it’s Joe or bust,” said Simon Rosenberg, NDN president, who served as a senior strategist for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018. “Biden is the only one who has a path to defeat Bernie. It would involve him winning South Carolina and then performing well enough in the early March states to keep the race competitive,” Rosenberg said. “I don’t think Bloomberg can recover quickly enough from the hits he’s taken in recent days to remain competitive or win the nomination.”  Implicit in this argument is our take that while Mayor Pete and Senator Warren have done well, they haven’t done well enough to be competitive after the early March states.  But at this point one of them staying in the hunt is far more likely than Bloomberg getting himself back into a race he should never have entered in the first place. 

Defeating Bernie at this point will not be easy but it’s not impossible.  A thorough vetting of Bernie has only just begun, and his disastrous 60 Minutes interview last night is a good sign of how rough it’s going to be for him now. He insultingly couldn’t explain how the basics of his health and economic plans would work, and showed an admiration for the Cuban Castro regime that was just jawdropping.  Dr. Rob Shapiro has a smart look at how little reality there is to what Bernie is promising to do, and Ron Brownstein also has a good take on Bernie’s fantasy promises. 

Bernie’s covering up of potentially disqualifying health issues and his long history of pro-gun, anti-immigrant politics are also sure to come to light in the coming days.  That Trump, Russia, and Fox News are all promoting his candidacy remains an extraordinary concern, as does his leadership role in the Socialist Workers Party in 1980, an American affiliate of the Communist Party in the days the Soviet Union still existed. 

If Biden wants to win he will also have to quickly overhaul his strategy and his campaign.  He is ceding way too much of the under 45 vote to Bernie, and got into the digital organizing part of modern politics way too late.  He should address the youth problem by immediately appointing a youth strategy team which should be co-chaired by Rep. Abby Finkenauer among others. 

New polling shows why the stakes of the Democratic Primary are so high – Trump is losing the 2020 election right now, and the GOP’s hold on the Senate has shown real signs of erosion in recent weeks.  Trump’s job approval sits about where it sat on election day 2018 when GOPers lost by 8.6 points in the House, and using Real Clear Politics Biden leads in every battleground state right now including Arizona, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, and Wisconsin (MI and PA are gone for Trump, Texas is very close to being competitive).

In the Senate, new polls have McSally trailing Mark Kelly 46-39 in Arizona and Collins trailing Sara Gideon 43-42 in Maine. In North Carolina, a new poll which did not test D/R head to heads has Trump’s job approval at 45-52, while Senator Tillis’ approval rate is only 38% - taken together these three polls suggest that the Democratic quest to take the Senate back is within reach.    

As for the battle to prevent our Mad King from doing further harm to our Republic, Simon’s new piece lays out four ideas for what the House and Democrats can be doing now to more aggressively challenge the escalating lawlessness of the Trump regime.    

Recession Fears Resurface As Coronavirus Batters The Global Economy - Over the past week, the S&P 500 has fallen by almost 5%, the yield curve - considered a reliable recession indicator by the Fed - has inverted to its weakest level since October, and a key survey of the manufacturing and service sectors has dropped to its lowest level since October 2013. All of a sudden, the tepid economic recovery since late last year has ground to a halt. Two key factors underlie this startling new trend. The first, of course, is the emergence of the coronavirus epidemic, which has ground the Chinese economy to a halt with major knock-on effects for the rest of the world. The rapid spread of the virus in recent days to Italy and Iran, the first major outbreaks in countries not neighboring China, have in particular sparked fears that the epidemic will last longer than expected. The second factor, however, is that the US economy was in a weak structural condition even before coronavirus began affecting global markets. While swift action by the Fed likely forestalled a recession in 2019 or early 2020, growth was still forecast at 2% or lower for 2020 and manufacturing remained mired in a deep recession.

Much of this pre-coronavirus stagnation is due to the fact that, even with the phase 1 trade deal with China, Trump's trade wars are very much still alive and running. The average US tariff on Chinese imports is still today at 19.3%, compared to just 3.1% when the trade war began in March 2018 (and Chinese tariffs average 20.3% today, compared to 8% in March 2018). Furthermore, steel and aluminum tariffs are still in place on the EU and Japan, and the President continues to habitually float imposing major auto tariffs on the Europeans. As a result, if the Administration wants to cushion the likely significant impact of coronavirus on the US economy this year, it would be wise to also de-escalate its ongoing trade wars which have harmed American jobs, growth, and wages. For more on NDN's work on economic and trade policy under the Trump administration, please click here.

Best,

Simon, Chris, and the rest of the NDN team

 

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