COVID-19 Leads in Early Balloting; Trump Cancels Victory Party
President Trump’s decision to cancel an election night victory party at his Washington hotel is the clearest sign yet of impending doom for Republicans at the ballot box.
UPDATE: Reports now say while the party will happen, the President will not appear as advertised.
Last weekend the Trump campaign sent fundraiser emails to donors announcing a drawing that would give one winner, along with a guest, the chance to be flown to the nation’s capital, where they would stay for free and attend the Nov. 3 party at Trump International as VIPs.
“November 3rd will go down in history as the night we won FOUR MORE YEARS. It will be absolutely EPIC, and the only thing that could make it better is having YOU there,” read one pitch that included an image of Mr. Trump and the first lady, Melania Trump, under the words “Join us on election night.”
The victory party is now over before it even started.
The public reasoning for this election eve change coming from the White House is split between saying there was concern about the president commingling official business with a campaign event (really?) and/or a concern about Washington DC’s restrictions on indoor gatherings.
Riiiight.
At three am this morning the President was tweeting, apparently seeking to preemptively place blame on the Supreme Court should he lose reelection. The likely trigger for his anger were a handful of rulings by the Supreme Court in cases involving deadlines for mail-in ballots in the 2020 elections.
According to the Center for Public Integrity, Republicans and their allies have invested $20 million in more than 300 court fights across the country either to strike down election rules that encourage higher voter turnout or to fight lawsuits aimed at easing voting, Thus far, their return on investment has yielded scant results, with the possible exception of an Eighth Circuit ruling concerning ballots received post-election day in Minnesota.
His reelection campaign has essentially come down to hoping for free media coverage of large public gatherings of supporters. Money is tight. The Trump campaign is spending 77 cents on fundraising for every dollar it brings in. TV ad buys have been cancelled or rescheduled
In the final days of the campaign, Democrats are set to spend $142 million on advertising, outspending the Republicans by more than 2-to-1.
While the President’s ego may be stoked by boisterous rallies, they aren’t helping his cause with the general public.
From USA Today:
...as Trump and Biden embrace strikingly different approaches to campaigning during the coronavirus pandemic, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll finds that nearly two-thirds of likely voters prefer Biden’s low-key strategy to Trump's raucous fanfare.
Nearly six in 10 Americans disapprove of Trump's decision to continue to hold large rallies during the pandemic, according to the poll, while nearly 64% approve of Biden's decision to jettison big events in favor of much smaller gatherings.
Trump has held more than two dozen rallies since recovering from his own bout with COVID-19 this month – and he is expected to hold at least a dozen more before Tuesday's election. The rallies are held outdoors, usually at airports, and supporters are packed in tight. While some rallygoers wear masks, many do not and Trump himself does not wear one.
The Trump campaign’s hope of shifting attention away from the COVID-19 pandemic with ginned up revelations about Hunter Biden has failed to resonate with voters.
Claims about a lost and found laptop and batches of emails failed to convince the Wall Street Journal, as a hyped bombshell story didn’t work out because there were just too many issues with the credibility of the accusers and the evidence they claimed to possess.
The final blow to the Hunter Biden story came after Fox News’ Tucker Carlson went on the air claiming that incriminating printed documents had been stolen while in transit.
Alas, UPS found the missing envelope and the trove of evidence transformed from paper to a thumb drive, which was allegedly still missing. (Why would somebody ship a thumb drive, when more secure methods (dropbox/encryption) are safer and faster?)
And then, out of nowhere, Tucker Carlson was on the air saying that perhaps it was time to lay the whole scandal to rest.
The Fox News show host might have changed his tune in response to some reporting via NBC News:
One month before a purported leak of files from Hunter Biden's laptop, a fake "intelligence" document about him went viral on the right-wing internet, asserting an elaborate conspiracy theory involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son and business in China.
The document, a 64-page composition that was later disseminated by close associates of President Donald Trump, appears to be the work of a fake "intelligence firm" called Typhoon Investigations, according to researchers and public documents.
The author of the document, a self-identified Swiss security analyst named Martin Aspen, is a fabricated identity, according to analysis by disinformation researchers, who also concluded that Aspen's profile picture was created with an artificial intelligence face generator. The intelligence firm that Aspen lists as his previous employer said that no one by that name had ever worked for the company and that no one by that name lives in Switzerland, according to public records and social media searches.
And then there’s the simple fact that even if every email from the laptop was legit, there was no proof of any wrongdoing, beyond what was inferred by right wingers. And those inferences were based on… the fake report uncovered by NBC.
None of Trump’s bluster, lies, and bravado on the campaign trail has eclipsed public concern over the coronavirus.
His much publicized rallies, which Democrats are now calling “superspreaders”, increased new coronavirus cases 82% of the time in counties hosting 17 events during August and September. The infection rate in those counties had also climbed at a faster clip than the overall rate for their state, according to CNN’s Sanjay Gupta..
Meanwhile, over at Fox News:
https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1322007936370167808?s=20
On Thursday, nearly 90,000 new coronavirus infections were reported in the United States, a record, as cases are surging in every swing state that will be crucial to next week’s presidential election.
Daily deaths from COVID-19 passed the one thousand mark yesterday, continuing an upward trend.
Almost nothing, indeed.
***
Some Good News:
https://twitter.com/Redistrict/status/1322160084651266048?s=20
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Lead image via Tim Bezeau