Political Irony

This short video was created by The Atlantic. Watch it. They go on to say:

One knows, of course, that Donald Trump behaves differently from the leaders of other countries, especially the leaders of other Western democracies. One knows that he disdains facts; that he does not read briefing papers; that he has no organizational talents; that he does not know how to make use of militaries, bureaucracies, or diplomatic services; that he has no basic knowledge of history or science, let alone government.

But seeing him in this video, produced by my colleagues in Atlantic Studios, juxtaposed with other world leaders during this coronavirus pandemic comes, nevertheless, as a shock. Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and President Moon Jae-in all speak of evidence-based policy, of the need to take the disease seriously, of empathy and solidarity. Trump speaks of hoaxes, of a disease no different from the flu, of a “germ that has gotten so brilliant that we can’t keep up with it,” of disinfectant as a miracle cure. Even now, even in the worst public-health crisis in a century, he divides people instead of unifying them, creating precisely the kind of distrust that makes the disease harder to defeat. He cannot demonstrate empathy, because he is incapable of feeling any. He cannot demonstrate solidarity, because he has only disdain for his fellow citizens.

Americans, as a rule, rarely compare themselves with other countries, so convinced are we that our system is superior, that our politicians are better, that our democracy is the fairest and most robust in the world. But watch this video and ask yourself: Is this the kind of leadership you expect from a superpower? Does this make you feel confident in our future? Or is this man a warning signal, a blinking red light, a screaming siren telling all of us, and all of the world, that something about our political system has gone profoundly awry?

They aren’t the only people who are alarmed. British newspaper The Guardian reports:

The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed that the US is ‘leading the world’ with its response to the pandemic, but it does not seem to be going in any direction the world wants to follow.

Across Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America, views of the US handling of the coronavirus crisis are uniformly negative and range from horror through derision to sympathy. Donald Trump’s musings from the White House briefing room, particularly his thoughts on injecting disinfectant, have drawn the attention of the planet.

Here’s an interesting demographic group: the people who hate all the presidential candidates, but still end up voting for one of them. For whom do they vote? Politico has an interesting article about this.

Who are these people? According to one pollster, “There are a number of people who hate politics and politicians, and they play somewhat of a swing role in the country.” Let’s call this demographic the haters.

In 2016, both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton had high disapproval ratings, and almost 20% of voters were “haters”, which makes it a rather significant demographic. In exit polls during the election, Trump got 17% more of the hater vote than Clinton. This was more than enough to change the winner in several of the battleground states.

Indeed, our Electoral College system can turn a 17% lead in a single demographic group into the difference between winning and losing. This is especially true for a demographic like haters, which is spread out over a large number of states.

In the upcoming 2020 election, the haters number around 25% of registered voters, but at the present time Biden leads Trump with haters by a 40 point margin. There are a number of reasons for this. First, Clinton was very unpopular, while Biden’s approval ratings are significantly better. As one Republican consultant put it, “There’s no way Joe Biden will be as bad a candidate as Hillary Clinton.”

Second, and more importantly, haters tend to vote against the status quo. In 2016, Hillary Clinton was strongly identified with the status quo, while Trump was the opposite, promising to shake things up. For 2020, it is now Trump who represents the status quo, and the current status is pretty bad.

Disclaimer: Just because this is a good sign for Joe Biden, don’t assume the election is in the bag (like many of us did in 2016). It is still 173 days away and as we have just seen with the COVID-19 pandemic, things can change dramatically in just a week. At this point in the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton had a larger polling lead over Trump than Biden has now. Biden has not been the (presumptive) Democratic nominee very long, and Trump has just barely started to attack him. Trump’s campaign manager has bragged about how much money they have that they will use to attack Biden, calling it a “death star” of negative advertising. I am expecting the ads to be especially nasty, as Trump can’t run on the economy anymore, and their attacks on Biden’s son Hunter didn’t go anywhere. And reality nor facts will not limit them.

A post in Axios provides some evidence that the Republican approach to fighting the coronavirus is not working like they said it would. And their new push to reopen businesses and recreation is likely to backfire.

So far, the states that have suffered the most due to COVID-19 are states with Democratic governors. This was to be expected, because blue states have larger, more densely crowded populations. Also, blue states have done significantly more testing (per capita), so it is likely that the number of cases in red states is under-reported. I also have to wonder what effect the rerouting of medical supplies from blue states by the feds has had.

Regardless, that didn’t stop Republican politicians and pundits from making political hay, calling federal aid to state and local governments “Blue State Bailouts“.

Ironically, the states with GOP governors are now seeing a surge in new cases:

Over the last two weeks, reported infections have increased 91% in red states versus 63% in blue states.

We see the same pattern for COVID-19 deaths: 170% growth in red states vs. 104% in blue states.

That means that deaths in red states are growing 63% faster than in blue states. Due to the nature of exponential growth, at that growth rate red states will pass blue states in deaths per capita at the end of May (in less than 4 weeks). And that is not even taking into account that states will likely see increasing death rates starting a week or two after they relax distancing rules.

According to FiveThirtyEight, “Nine of the 10 states that have seen the most rapid increase in coronavirus from Monday to Thursday are states that voted for Trump in 2016.”

Will this cause Republican pols and pundits to change their tune? Don’t hold your breath.

UPDATE: The CDC announced today that they expect the daily death rate to double by June, and predict the total American deaths will be around 135,000. Ouch! That’s like a 9/11 event every single day.

Both Trump administration predictions and a public model from the University of Washington (that has been frequently cited by the White House) say that deaths will rise as states reopen.

The art museum in Portland Oregon is encouraging people to recreate famous art at home, using materials at hand. Here are a couple of examples people have come up with so far: