State of the Race: The biggest poll number you’ve never seen, plus our new Electoral College snapshot

By Robert A Vella

The focus for this Sunday is on the state of the U.S. presidential election. We’ll closely examine a key polling number comparing the attitudes of suburban voters from 2016 to 2020 which many readers probably haven’t seen yet. We’ll also take a look at an op-ed on the mood of the American people by a prominent public policy expert along with dire warnings and party infighting from notable Republicans, a report on President Trump’s opposition to more COVID-19 testing resources, and an editorial on Trump’s hostility towards environmental regulations in Alaska. We’ll finish with some headlines on John Lewis and the fight for racial justice.

But first, here’s my new Electoral College snapshot map that I launched last month. To review, it is a simplified projection which weighs the quality and consistency of state polls, which incorporates voter turnout/registration trends and the effectiveness of voter suppression efforts (by Republicans), which moves some states that currently look competitive but which historically favor one party over the other (e.g. Georgia and Texas) to their traditional color, and which decides two states that split their electoral votes (i.e. Maine and Nebraska) to their dominant political party. The only change from June is the move of North Carolina and Florida from swing-state status to the Democratic side. This was done because of the strength and steadiness of the polls favoring Joe Biden over Donald Trump. Only Iowa and Ohio remain in the toss-up category even though a few red-states (e.g. Georgia and Texas) are now showing Democrats running competitively against incumbent Republicans. However, I’ll reiterate that this map is just a snapshot in time, that there is still 3 ½ months before the election, and that unpredictable events could alter the current political landscape.

From: New polls show Joe Biden is winning suburbanites by a historic margin

He leads President Donald Trump 55% to 40% among registered voters. (It’s a slightly tighter 54% to 44% among likely voters). The poll comes on top of other surveys last week from NBC News/Wall Street Journal and Quinnipiac University giving Biden a double-digit advantage.

Biden’s advantage in the polls is most evident in the suburbs, where he is earning a historic amount of support for a Democrat.

Biden is up by a 52% to 43% margin among suburban voters in the ABC News/Washington Post poll.

Other polls in the last month show Biden doing even better among suburban voters. The latest Quinnipiac University poll has Biden ahead by a 56% to 34% margin with suburbanites. The NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll has Biden beating Trump 60% to 35% among suburban voters. Fox News has Biden with a similar 55% to 33% lead.

[…]

Biden’s lead in the suburbs is reflective of him doing significantly better than Hillary Clinton. Four years ago at this time, Trump was beating Clinton by a 45% to 35% margin in the ABC/Washington Post poll among suburban voters.

From: Donald Trump has unified America – against him by former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich who is a public policy professor at UC Berkeley, a columnist for Guardian US, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few, and The Common Good, and The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It

Donald Trump is on the verge of accomplishing what no American president has ever achieved – a truly multi-racial, multi-class, bipartisan political coalition so encompassing it could realign US politics for years to come.

Unfortunately for Trump, that coalition has come into existence to prevent him from having another term in office.

[…]

Even many former Trump voters are appalled by Trump’s racism, as well as his overall moral squalor. According to a recent New York Times/Sienna College poll, more than 80% of people who voted for Trump in 2016 but won’t back him again in 2020 think he “doesn’t behave the way a president ought to act” – a view shared by 75% of registered voters across battleground states which will make all the difference in November.

A second big unifier has been Trump’s attacks on our system of government. Americans don’t particularly like or trust government but almost all feel some loyalty toward the constitution and the principle that no person is above the law.

Trump’s politicization of the justice department, attacks on the rule of law, requests to other nations to help dig up dirt on his political opponents, and evident love of dictators – especially Vladimir Putin – have played badly even among diehard conservatives.

[…]

The third big unifier has been Trump’s catastrophic mishandling of the pandemic. Many who might have forgiven his personality defects and authoritarian impulses can’t abide his bungling of a public health crisis that threatens their lives and loved ones.

[…]

The tempting analogy is to the election of 1932, in the midst of another set of crises. The public barely knew Franklin D Roosevelt, whom critics called an aristocrat without a coherent theory of how to end the Great Depression. But after four years of Herbert Hoover, America was so desperate for coherent leadership it was eager to support FDR and follow wherever he led.

From: Ted Cruz’s 2020 warning to Texas Republicans: ‘This is a real race’

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz delivered a dire message to Texas Republican activists on Saturday about the danger President Donald Trump faces in November here.

“This is a real race,” Cruz told the Republican Party’s convention audience, pointing to five consecutive polls that show Trump and Democrat Joe Biden neck-and-neck in the state.

And Cruz would know. In 2018, Cruz survived the fight of his political life, narrowly defeating El Paso Democrat Beto O’Rourke by less than 3 percentage points in what was the closest a Democrat has come to winning a U.S. Senate seat in Texas since Sen. Lloyd Bentsen carried the state in 1988. Cruz told the audience that what happened to him is a “warning sign” of the tough road that lays ahead.

“Let me tell you right now, every one of those crazed leftists that showed up in 2018 are showing up in 2020,” Cruz said. “And they are even angrier.”

From: White House seeks to block funds for coronavirus testing and tracing in relief bill, report says

The White House is trying to block billions of dollars for coronavirus testing and contact tracing in the upcoming stimulus relief bill, according to a new report in The Washington Post, even as infections surge across the country and Americans face long wait times to receive test results amid high demand.

The Trump administration also wants to block billions of dollars that would go toward bolstering the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Pentagon and the State Department to combat the pandemic, the Post reported Saturday, citing people familiar with the deliberations.

The White House declined CNBC’s request for comment.

Some GOP lawmakers, angered by the administration’s position, are pushing back and trying to keep the $25 billion for testing and tracing in the bill, people involved in the negotiations told the Post.

From: The Trump administration hates the National Environmental Protection Act

As Alaskans, we care about our environment, because we know the lands and waters provide us with places to harvest food, to fish or simply camp and recreate. Whether it’s our national forests in Southeast and Southcentral Alaska, or Bureau of Land Management areas that stretch from the Arctic to the interior, these public lands define our state. They provide us with endless opportunities, and we can live daily what amounts to a “bucket list” trip for many in the lower 48 U.S. states.

We can keep it that way – for us and for future generations – if we use our Alaskan expertise to inform decisions that could impact our lands and waters. Unfortunately, the Trump administration is pulling us back from having a say in these decisions and threatening our ability to protect what we love about Alaska.

The Trump administration has now finalized major proposed changes to the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), rewriting the rules that govern how agencies review development projects under that landmark environmental law. NEPA is our country’s national charter for the environment, and it meets its purpose elegantly by requiring information-based decisions over political mandates. It forces federal decision-makers to consider, before they make their decisions, what the impact of their actions will be on the environment, on wildlife and on local communities. It also mandates that they seek the input of the people that will be most impacted before they decide.

Headlines:

6 John Lewis speeches key to understanding his work and legacy

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What happens to John Lewis’ vacant House seat

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Roger Stone calls Black radio host a racial slur