Coronavirus Spikes, Trump Flails, Georgia Fails
President Donald Trump’s sagging poll numbers are tied to voter perceptions of failures in handling the twin crises of COVID-19 and rising anger over racism.
If his handlers can keep him from too much crazytown tweeting, they hope to flip these liabilities into assets by combining them, saying the increase is tied to recent protests, even though evidence points to the relaxation of health-related restrictions.
Whatever the cause, a second wave of COVID-19 infections is upon us. Twenty states have seen the rate of infections rise in the past week. Texas, Florida, Arizona, and North Carolina have seen the biggest increases.
Only a few states — namely Connecticut, New Jersey, New York and South Dakota — are trending in the right direction on measures such as declining case count and robust testing platforms, according to CovidExitStrategy.org.
Mark Sumner at Daily Kos asserts that the main reason for the perceived slowdown in new infections in May was based on improving numbers for just one state: New York.
Where the United States is now is almost exactly where it was on March 31. That was a day that also saw just over 1,000 deaths. What happened from there is that the number of deaths continued up. Then up. Because on March 31, most states had either just issued a statewide lockdown, or had yet to issue such a plan. When the growth in new cases in the United States was first arrested, then began to slow around the end of April, it was specifically because of the use of social distancing efforts put in place a month earlier.
Those governors who were anxious to reopen, and those people who were in a hurry to eat in a restaurant, or gather at the beach, or have a big party felt safe enough because … things were better, right? And they’re still feeling basically okay now. Mostly.
But where we are now is just like March 31. Only no state is prepared to issue new lockdown guidelines. More people are already hospitalized, meaning that fewer beds—and specifically fewer ICU beds—are available to absorb any fresh surge of patients. The coronavirus task force is not appearing on television every day and the media is not leading every news cast with concerns over the virus. Across the country, hospital beds are already occupied with patients who have yet to recover from the disease, as well as those still staggering in. And COVID-19 is far more widely and generally disseminated now, with millions of cases in the U.S. alone.
As the President readies plans to resume rallies, the White House is trying to lower the profile of concern over the spread of COVID-19.
From Politico:
“Cases are rising, including from cases in congregate settings,” said Luciana Borio, who led pandemic preparedness for the National Security Council from 2017 to 2019. “We still have a pandemic.”
Nine current and former administration officials, as well as outside experts, further detailed how the White House is steadily ramping down the urgency to fight a threat that continues to sicken more than 100,000 Americans per week and is spiking in more than 20 states.
Greg Sargent at the Washington Post thinks the administration is getting ready to point the finger at recent protests as the source of the latest surge.
Blaming the protests for any future resurgences could deflect blame from the president and right-wing media figures who scoffed at fears that recklessly reopening the economy quickly could lead to future spikes.
It would also seek to cast a vague pall over the protests themselves, depicting them as more sinister and dangerous than advertised (which Trump has tried to accomplish in many other ways), while pushing the ugly idea that the coronavirus is a threat that originated in other places.
https://twitter.com/IngrahamAngle/status/1270666078616764416?s=20
If you’re wondering how the president’s team can critique the protests and claim it’s safe to attend a Trump rally, you simply haven’t been drinking the kool-aid.
https://twitter.com/mmpadellan/status/1270753851444953088?s=20
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The other part of the Trump campaign’s efforts to flip the script on his negative approval numbers involves an all-out assault on people of color’s perception of reality.
Somehow I don’t think it will work. The pitch is simple: Donald Trump and is Republican friends are the best thing that ever happened to Black people.
This begins with the ultimate in perversity, namely a proposed major speech on ‘race relations’ by the President. And it’s being written by Stephen Miller, the administration’s leading white supremacist.
From Essence:
Though details of a race relations speech have not been confirmed, The Dallas Morning News reports that Trump does plan to visit Dallas for a fundraising dinner on Thursday and discuss “holistic revitalization and recovery.” Ahead of that event he expects to sit down with faith leaders, law enforcement officials and small business owners to discuss “solutions to historic economic, health, and justice disparities in American communities.”
Republicans have tapped their only Black Senator, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, to assist in the creation of legislation on police reform.
I shudder as my mind hears Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s statement to the Washington Post on the decision, “The best way is to listen to one of our own who has had these experiences.”
I’m assuming that means inclusion of Scott’s 2015 bill requiring states to keep a database of officer-involved deadly shootings of civilians, at the risk of losing federal grant funding, since it went nowhere despite the viral video of the police shooting of Walter Scott, who was shot in the back and killed while fleeing police in South Carolina.
That bill died, as will this sham effort. But you can expect a lot of TV news coverage of the GOP’s “concern,” even as they throw a Democratic House bill with actual reforms in the trash.
I’m not sure if this avalanche of rhetoric will go very far, since news of the horrible experiences Georgia voters had this week is spreading like wildfire.
Yeah, this isn’t on Trump, but the whole voter suppression thing is foundational to his reelection campaign.
https://twitter.com/MsLaToshaBrown/status/1270590009809276929?s=20
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Lead image: Jernej Furman / Flickr