A OH Predictive Insights poll in Arizona finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump by 10 points in the presidential race, 52% to 42%.
A new Monmouth poll finds neither presidential candidate has a decisive advantage in public trust on this issue. Slightly over half (52%) are very or somewhat confident that Joe Biden can maintain law and order if he is elected president, while slightly under half (48%) say the same about Donald Trump if he is reelected.
A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds President Trump’s approval for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic at 35%, compared to 65% who disapprove.
“Roughly two-thirds of the country think the president acted too slowly in responding to the outbreak and also distrust what he has said about the coronavirus — a precarious reality for Trump who is facing reelection in less than two months in a campaign largely seen as a referendum on his response to the unprecedented crisis.”
A new Jewish Electorate Institute poll finds Joe Biden leading Donald Trump among Jewish voters, 67% to 30%.
“The survey suggested gains for Trump among Jewish voters since 2016, when Hillary Clinton won 71% of the vote to Trump’s 24%. Mitt Romney, the Republican candidate in 2012, won 30% of the Jewish vote, the highest for a Republican since the 1980s.”
“If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze? If you give a climate denier four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised when more of America is underwater?” — Joe Biden, quoted by CBS News.
“Nearly 200 environmental leaders signed an open leader urging like-minded voters to support Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the November election instead of casting their ballots for the Green Party’s candidate,” The Hill reports.
From the letter: “Angry right-wing voters and liberal absentees put Trump in the White House in 2016. In 2020 the same unholy team could keep him there. Progressives who vote for the Green Party candidate, or write in Henry David Thoreau, or refuse to vote at all for lack of an ideal choice will give Donald Trump precisely what he wants, and enough such pious gestures will produce catastrophic results.”
Politico: “Kremlin-backed operatives are flooding social media with fake accounts and stoking racial divisions around topics like Black Lives Matter. Articles in state-owned Russian media with millions of U.S. readers online seek to dampen Joe Biden’s appeal among progressives and echo President Trump’s unsupported claims about voting fraud.”
“At the same time, Russian state-backed hackers are waging cyberattacks … [S]ecurity researchers, former intelligence officials and lawmakers now worry that the Russians may still have a hand they haven’t played. … And the biggest threat this year may be Americans themselves. Many have embraced a deluge of fringe ideas and misinformation to a degree that may dwarf those foreign efforts.”
Tim Miller watched President Trump’s “unmasked, indoor superspreader event in Henderson, Nevada on Sunday night.”
“For those who have been beaten down by the Trumpian disaster porn, rallies such as this don’t really make a mark any longer. The cable networks and even the three C-SPANs landed on the BORRRRING side of the ledger: None of them chose to air the event. And for political junkies and Trump-watchers, these rallies increasingly have the feel of a boring nostalgia act with a lead singer halfheartedly crooning his old hits. And there’s something to be said for that.”
“But it is important to take a moment to shake yourself free from the blunting effect of the orange Trumpian film that has subsumed our daily lives (and here in northern California, our atmosphere). Seen with fresh eyes, the Henderson rally was truly a shocking and unimaginably wheels-off undertaking given that it came amid a pandemic that is still killing a thousand Americans a day and with wildfires making much of the West Coast uninhabitable.”
“The Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Monday that the Green Party presidential ticket is ineligible to appear on the state ballot, a relief for state and local election officials who feared an addition at this late date would upend election preparations,” the Washington Post reports.
“It’s an extraordinary flip of the mood in the country in a short amount of time… that portends change. Whether voters hold Trump or Republicans in the House or Senate accountable or not, they’re still going to vote for change.” — GOP pollster Neil Newhouse, quoted by Vox.
With Sen. David Perdue’s (R-GA) re-election chances teetering on a knife’s edge, the Republican is talking more about himself as a ‘bipartisan problem solver’ — and less about his reputation as one of President Trump’s most loyal allies, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
“Being one of Trump’s most loyal allies in the U.S. Senate might have helped him avoid a primary challenger in June. But to win in November, Perdue is trying to cast himself as a consensus builder who will defend capitalism.”
Washington Post: “President Trump has used name-calling and invective to great effect over the course of his political career. But his attempts to negatively define Joe Biden in 2020 have fallen flat, and appear to be turning off moderate voters.”
The Trump campaign is canceling TV ad schedules that been booked for this week in multiple states including Iowa, Ohio and Nevada, according to Medium Buying.
However, the campaign appears to be going back up on air in Arizona and Pennsylvania markets.
Joe Biden’s campaign has purchased at least one advertising slot for every game between now and Election Day, NPR reports.
The news comes as Biden’s campaign has closed in on the Trump campaign’s formerly-large cash advantage in recent months.
Walter Shapiro: “The last two times an incumbent president was defeated—Jimmy Carter in 1980 and George H.W. Bush in 1992—the polls throughout the election year gyrated widely. At one point in 1992, in fact, Bill Clinton was trailing both Bush and independent self-funder Ross Perot.”
“But Trump has been underwater in the polls so long, you might expect him to develop gills. After 2016, Democrats will never again approach Election Day without a flicker of fear. But they should allow themselves a hint of joy as Trump comes closer and closer to becoming a one-term president.”
Texas Tribune: “The campaign has added 13 more members to its team in Texas, where polls continue to point to a close race against President Trump.” The FiveThirtyEight polling average shows Trump barely leading Biden in Texas, 47.6% to 46.6%.
Vice President Mike Pence is holding a campaign rally inside in a conference room at a hotel in Wisconsin, The Hill reports. Most attendees are spaced a few feet apart and aren’t wearing masks.
Former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn told CNBC that he had not yet decided who he will vote for in November’s presidential election. Said Cohn: “You know, I honestly haven’t made up my mind. I’m really eager to see an economic debate between the two of them. I actually vote on issues.”
Ricardo Fernolz has modified The Economist election model to allow you to see how odds change under different scenarios. What happens if Trump wins Florida? How about if Biden wins Arizona? Which states are most pivotal?
Politico: “Joe Biden’s chartered airplanes and SUVs are meticulously sprayed with disinfectant and scrubbed. The microphones, lecterns and folders he uses are wiped down in the moments before his arrival. News reporters covering the campaign have their temperature taken. People he meets are scanned in advance with thermometer wands and guests at his events are cordoned off in precise locations mapped out with a tape measure.”
“The former vice president is seldom without a mask when in public or around anyone other than his wife, Dr. Jill Biden. Access to their home is limited to only a few staffers — and when they’re inside, each wears a mask, including Biden. The level of discipline is such that at times when someone stops to take a drink of water, that person will turn their head away from the others to reduce the chances of scattering droplets.”
“With more than 6 million people infected and nearly 200,000 dead from the coronavirus, the former vice president is taking no chances with his safety. He operates in a sanitizer-saturated bubble within the traditional presidential campaign bubble, an environment designed and obsessively cultivated by staff in an attempt to protect him from a possible encounter with the virus.”
“Joe Biden is establishing a major new legal operation, bringing in two former solicitors general and hundreds of lawyers in what the campaign billed as the largest election protection program in presidential campaign history,” the New York Times reports.
“Legal battles are already raging over how people will vote — and how ballots will be counted — this fall during the pandemic, and senior Biden officials described the ramp-up as necessary to guard the integrity of a fall election already clouded by President Trump’s baseless accusations of widespread fraud.”
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