Top Lines: US Economy And Trade Policy | 2020 Election And Political Analysis | Coronavirus Crisis | Protecting Our Elections And Disinformation | Immigration And The Border | Countering Illiberalism's Rise
Upcoming Events – We’ve established Wednesdays, 2 pm ET, as the time we will take a weekly in-depth look at the 2020 elections. These sessions will alternate each week between two presentations. This week we will do our deep dive on 2020 polling, looking at everything from Trump’s job approval to the 2020 battleground Presidential states to the very latest in the 11 Senate races, which will determine control this November.
Next week our “With Democrats Things Get Better” presentation returns. Be sure to check out Mike Tomasky’s discussion of “With Dems” in his new Daily Beast column – he has very kind words for this important new project from NDN.
Each presentation uses fresh, live data, so they are new each time we give them – so bookmark this time and come talk 2020 with us each week on Wednesdays, 2 pm ET.
Fridays at 2 pm are our more policy oriented talks of the week. We will be off this Friday, but thanks to those who joined us for our recent sessions with Reps. Eshoo and Kilmer, and Atlantic magazine writer Frank Foer. Keep checking back as we will be adding more events soon.
You can get a full schedule of all our upcoming events and register for anyone here. And folks can sign up to receive these updates on our events, while also subscribing to our new Thursday 2020 Poll Roundup, here.
Getting COVID Right – The data doesn’t lie. COVID here in the US, never tamed, is spreading again at too fast a rate in too many states for the US govt to pretend it isn’t happening or for it not to act. Because the federal government has done so little to combat COVID (allowing us to have infection rates up there with exemplars Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Sweden), there is much the President could do now to help the country re-open safely – support a national testing and tracing regime, start a big conversation about the need to mask and physically distance, challenge America’s young people to do their part and avoid risky behavior. Our strategy for combatting COVID has failed; the cost to the US in lives, jobs, and our well-being has been immense; it is time now for the President to recognize the magnitude of his failure and course correct.
For all the early mistakes the President made, the most significant mistake he may have made has come in recent days – urging the country to re-open without having the proper tools and protocols in place to lessen the chance of a new surge. The President has time now to correct that mistake and stop asking the entire country to, in essence, sign a waiver absolving him for responsibility for what is happening. The easiest way to do this is for the President and his team to lead a conversation with the American people about the need to maintain physical distancing and mask. These are inexpensive solutions which if widely deployed, could do a great deal to contain the virus and allow us to live “new normal” lives without returning to lockdowns. The President’s attacks on masking and prudent measures by the states have been dangerous, profoundly stupid, and reckless.
What remains so hard to understand is that with the President and his party seeing truly ruinous 2020 polling numbers, why isn’t the President changing course on COVID? He has clear evidence that the GOP governors who’ve been tough on COVID saw their job approval numbers skyrocket. He has a smart, clear, and well-trodden path to follow. Why, for the good of the nation and for his party, won’t he follow it?
At this point, given the very carnage we’ve seen, and the collapse of the GOP’s brand this spring, we are running out of charitable explanations for the President’s refusal to mount a national campaign to tame COVID. One should note the contrast of the President’s recent intense mobilization of the US military and other federal resources to combat a “terror threat,” which didn’t exist to his dogged refusal to mount such an effort to combat the virus. The President didn’t leave our economic response to COVID to the states, or the response to his invented terror threat. Why he thinks it isn’t the responsibility of the federal government to lead a response to a pandemic which affects every American will be the stuff of discussions, books and seminars for a very long time – for it may be the single most destructive set of governing decisions in all of American history.
Best,
Simon, Georgia, and the rest of the NDN team
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