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NDN News: COVID notes, 2 Events This Week, Biden’s strong polling

COVID Notes– important news, new areas for debate discussion:

Infection rates plummeting– we are in the midst of the most dramatic reduction in COVID infection, hospitalization and death rates since the pandemic began. It’s important we mark this progress, and use it to rally the American people to finish the job of defeating COVID in the days ahead.

Should seniors be prioritized for vaccination now? We say yes.

Should we move to a one dose strategy in the short term, two over the longer term? This idea remains very much worth considering. Watch this video for a compelling argument for moving to one dose in the short term. The question of whether we can/should implement a universal antibody screen before vaccination is also something worth reviewing, discussing, as a growing body of evidence suggests those already with COVID may only need one shot of Moderna/Pfizer, not two. Would be another way of getting more vaccine coverage to more people swiftly.

Obviously any big changes in the vaccine strategy will be hard, given how “dumb” and distributed the Trump Administration left the system. But if the variants are going to be a problem, we may have to at least try to make some changes to accelerate and re-prioritize the vaccinations of Americans to help ensure the variants don’t get a meaningful toe hold here in the coming months.

2 Events This Week: Ari Berman on the war on voting Tuesday, With Dems Friday– We have a great event Tuesday on a big 2021 issue – the GOP’s effort to restrict voting across the country (more info, register). And a fresh With Democrats Things Get Better returns Friday at 2 pm ET (more info, register).

Be sure to check out our robust scheduling of coming public events, and watch our in-depth discussions with Reps. Ruben Gallego and Scott Peters, noted historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat and NBC legal analyst Glenn Kirschner.

Biden Strong Job Approval– Want to dwell on Biden’s strong job approval numbers for a minute. In today’s 538 tracker Biden starts at 55.6 approve, 38.2 disapprove. This means in practical terms that 62% of the country does not disapprove of what Biden is doing right now. 9% of the US voted for Trump and is not disapproving of Biden now – this is almost one in five of Trump’s own supporters.

A strong majority of the country, even a big chunk of Trump supporters, are giving Biden a chance to move on his agenda. It is why he should seize the moment, and go for it. It is what 60% plus – an extraordinary numbers – want him to do right now.

And it has to be noted that as Biden is +18 in his job approval today, Trump was only +2-+3 for a few days of his Presidency; was net negative the rest of his Presidency; and never broke 50% job approval one time, the only President in the history of polling to not get to 50% during their Presidency. So we are really looking a dramatically different Presidency, one where opposition to Biden is nothing like the opposition to Trump. A majority of the US is giving Biden a chance. Trump never had the country behind him, was never popular, or seen as effective. And this matters as the Republicans try to figure out what to do next. For Trump was both a disastrous President and historically unpopular – why would they ever want to return to that politics?

The Growing Importance of the Southwest to Democrats – In 2004 Republicans held 6 of 8 Senate seats in AZ/CO/NM/NV and won all the region’s Electoral College votes. With important wins in AZ and CO this last election, Democrats now hold all 8 of the region’s Senate seats and have claimed all of its 31 Electoral College votes.

The modern Democratic coalition is much more Western than in the past, something you can now see now in its leadership – a VP and Speaker, HHS Secretary, DGA/DSCC/DCCC Chairs. 4 of the 6 Senate seats won by Democrats in the last 2 elections have come from AZ/CO/NV. See our new analysis for just how important the heavily Mexican-American parts of the US have become to the national Democratic Party. It includes a link to our recent interview with Rep. Ruben Gallego, one of the architects of the political transformation we’ve seen in Arizona.

Sincerely,

Simon, Georgia and the rest of the NDN team

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