The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Harry Enten has a good piece up on CNN about the centrality of Florida to the 2020 election. I agree. For all the attention observers–including myself–give the Rustbelt three of MI, PA and WI, the fact remains that Trump carried FL in 2016 by barely over a point; if the Democrats take it and its 29 EVs back in 2020, they’re practically done shopping, assuming they hold all their 2016 states. All they would need would be one other state–MI, PA, WI, AZ, NC–and they’re done (and so is Trump).

So what are the chances? Enter makes the argument that they’re pretty decent. He notes:

“Biden holds a three-point advantage in the Sunshine State in an average of nonpartisan probability polls that controls for pollster. That’s closer than Wisconsin (one-point Biden lead), and the same as what we see as in Pennsylvania. Biden is up four points in Arizona and five points in Michigan. (North Carolina, another close Trump won state in 2016, gives Biden a one-point edge, but the high quality polling there has been limited.)”

The RCP average has it closer, just Biden by a whisker, though they throw all the polls in the hopper without adjustment for house effects. The UCLA/Democracy Fund/Lucid Nationscape data–70,000 cases and counting since the beginning of the year–actually has Biden ahead by more in the state, around 5 points. Those data also show Biden shaving 11 points off the Democrats’ white noncollege deficit in the state in 2016. These two things are related. More Enten:

“The story of the 2016 election has often been told like this: “Donald Trump secured victory by breaking through the big blue wall in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.” It’s how you end up with all those stories about Trump voters in Midwest diners. Heading into 2020, there’s still a lot of focus on those pivotal states.

But when you look at the electoral math, it’s pretty clear that former Vice President Joe Biden would be wise to look beyond those states and make a heavy investment in Florida.

Florida was a very close state in 2016. Trump won it by just 1.2 points, which is not significantly wider than the margins he won Michigan (0.2 points), Pennsylvania (0.7 points) and Wisconsin (0.8 points). The next closest state (Arizona) featured a significantly larger Trump win (3.5 points). In fact, the presidential margin in Florida has been within 6 points in every election since 1992, including when Democrat Barack Obama won it in 2008 and 2012. No other state has been within that range for so long….

Florida diversifies the types of states Biden would be competing hard in. When you want to give yourself as many electoral pathways as possible, you want states that are demographically and geographically diverse from each other. That way, if you underperform in one state, it doesn’t mean you have in the others. Florida has more nonwhite voters than any of the other close states Trump won in 2016. And it’s a southeastern state, unlike Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania or Wisconsin. There’s really no other state like it.

Florida is the type of state where you’d expect Biden to outperform Clinton given the recent polling. It has the highest percentage of seniors in the country amongst its citizen voting age population. Right now, Biden actually leads Trump among those 65 years and older by nine points in an average of the five most recent probability national polls….

According to an analysis by the New York Times’ Nate Cohn… the southern swing state voters who didn’t cast a ballot in 2018 were much more friendly to Democrats than those in the northern swing states. In the sunbelt, a large portion were nonwhite. In the north, the clear plurality were whites without a college degree.

With presidential year turnout, Biden’s likely going to be very competitive in Florida. If he wins there, it’ll be awfully tough for Trump to beat him nationally.”

From “How the Coronavirus Could Create a New Working Class: Experts predict the outbreak will lead to a rise in populism. But will workers turn their rage toward corporate CEOs, or middle-class “elites”?” by Olga Khazan at The Atlantic: “When the dust settles, there’s of course a chance that low-income workers might end up just as powerless as they were before. But history offers a precedent for plagues being, perversely, good for workers. Collective anger at low wages and poor working protections can produce lasting social change, and people tend to be more supportive of government benefits during periods of high unemployment…The U.S. has long been the sole holdout among rich nations when it comes to paid sick leave and other job protections. Now that some workers are getting these benefits for the coronavirus, they might be hard for businesses to claw back. If your boss let you stay home with pay when you had COVID-19, is he really going to make you come in when you have the flu? “Is this going to be an inflection point where Americans begin to realize that we need government, we need each other, we need social solidarity, we are not all cowboys, who knew?” said Joan Williams, a law professor at UC Hastings and the author of White Working Class.”

Common sense suggests that American workers will become more concerned about job safety, or the lack of it and other worker protections. As Khazan continues, “A few months from now, the path we take will also depend on whether voters ultimately blame Trump for the pandemic and the ensuing economic collapse, and on whether Democrats are able to create a coherent narrative out of the calls for better worker protections. And in a year, it will depend on how severe the death toll turns out to be among service workers, and how well they’re able to organize in response. But if past epidemics are a guide, the workers may win out in the end.” However, Khazan adds, “Finally, organized labor has been gutted in recent decades, making any sustained workers’-rights movement seem like a long shot.” Yet, “Such a change would be a return to a 1950s-style view of the working class, in which low-wage jobs conferred a sense of dignity. “You viewed yourself as the backbone, the heart and soul of America,” Gest said. No one is more essential than the person bringing you food at the end of a long, frightening week.”

When Sen. Elizabeth Warren endorses a presidential candidate, she doesn’t just make a statement; she makes an impressive video ad. Other former Democratic presidential candidates should do likewise.

At Politico, David Cohen reports that a “Majority fear coronavirus restrictions will be lifted too soon,” andhe notes, “Almost 60 percent of American voters are worried that lifting restrictions on public behavior too soon will lead to a spike in coronavirus cases and deaths…According to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday, 58 percent of registered voters expressed concern about a loosening of restrictions, compared with 32 percent who worried that the restrictions would stay in place for too long. Three percent said they were concerned about both scenarios…While a clear majority of Democrats (77 percent) and independents (57 percent) are more worried about the coronavirus, Republicans are very much divided on the issue — with 48 percent expressing more concern about the economy and 39 percent more worried about the pandemic…Those polled said they favor presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden over Trump by a margin of 49 percent to 42 percent. And 45 percent of those polled said they thought Trump has not handled the pandemic crisis well — and is still not doing so.”

Cohen adds, “More than two-thirds of those polled (69 percent) said they trusted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide accurate information about the coronavirus, followed by their state’s governor (66 percent), Dr. Anthony Fauci (60 percent), New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (46 percent), Trump (36 percent), Vice President Mike Pence (35 percent) and Biden (26 percent)…A total of 52 percent said they distrusted what Trump has to say on the subject, followed by Pence (37 percent) and Biden (29 percent). A mere 8 percent said they did not trust Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.”

“In a national Quinnipiac University survey released last week, just 37 percent of adults living in cities and 44 percent of those in suburbs said they approved of Trump’s management of the outbreak. By stark contrast, 63 percent of those in rural areas said they approved,” Ronald Brownstein writes at The Atlantic. “In the latest tracking polling conducted by the Democratic firms GBAO and the Global Strategy Group, a majority of Americans in all three regions said Trump failed to take the threat seriously enough at the outset of the pandemic. But the numbers were significantly higher in urban and suburban areas, where almost two-thirds of respondents said he acted too slowly…Other danger signs are sprouting for Trump in big urban centers. Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, was the largest county in America that Trump won in 2016. But a new poll, released this week by the Republican firm OH Predictive Insights, found Trump trailing former Vice President Joe Biden there by 13 percentage points. The survey also found Biden leading by nine points statewide, even though Democrats haven’t won Arizona in a presidential race since 1996. These results track with Maricopa’s movement away from the GOP in 2018, when Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema won the ordinarily Republican-leaning county by about four points.”

Also at The Atlantic, Kevin Townsend quotes Sherrilyn Ifill, the president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, from her interview by Edward Isaac-Dovere. As Ifill urged, “We need more early voting so that you don’t have lines, because you have a longer period of early voting. You do need to have drop-off absentee stations. You do need to expand the time for absentee ballots to be returned to the Board of Elections. We need all of this to deal with the challenges of this pandemic. There are ways to manage this. And I think that’s the menu we’re all sitting with right now and are prepared to lean in to, to ensure that in November we don’t have an election that causes people to risk their lives, but we also have an election that we don’t have to be ashamed of, that everyone who is a citizen who wants to participate can participate on November 3…it was shameful and a disgrace that we consigned people to have to choose between their health and their right as citizens to participate and vote. No question. But I also am compelled to see the extraordinary, powerful nobility of those people standing—some of them in wheelchairs—staggered and separated from each other as best they could by six feet, for hours on end, determined to participate in the political process.”

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

This is from a Sabato Crystal Ball article analyzing last Tuesday’s election. It shows the astonishing similarity between the results in Tammy Baldwin’s winning 2018 Senate race and Karofsky’s winning 2020 State Supreme Court Election. They almost look like the same election! Wild.

Then read the Crystal Ball article for all the reasons why it would be risky to assume that the November election in WI will look like the Karofsky election. I agree. But that map comparison to the Baldwin election is still amazing.

I kept thinking to myself that Republicans were missing something important during the coronavirus pandemic. Then it hit me, and I wrote it up for New York:

Despite provoking 70 congressional votes on measures to repeal the Affordable Care Act, Republicans still never developed any sort of consensus plan for addressing such basic problems as the millions of Americans without health insurance or the insurance-company practice of denying coverage to those with preexisting health conditions. Yes, they could tell you what they opposed. (Basically any Democratic-supported effort to expand coverage via public or private means or a combination of the two, like Obamacare.) And Republicans went to a lot of effort in the courts and state legislatures and, after 2016, via federal executive action to undermine the ACA and its protections, usually on grounds that Obamacare made health insurance more expensive for the people who didn’t much need it.

To a considerable extent, Republicans in Washington were inclined to dump all the problems of the health-care system on the states, which is why some described the idea of repackaging federal health-care dollars into block grants for the states as the GOP “plan,” though it was the very opposite of one in terms of providing national protections.

GOP fecklessness on health care was by nearly all accounts a significant factor in Democratic midterm gains in 2018. Given the continued efforts of the Trump administration and Republicans in the states to blow up Obamacare in the courts (though they rather disingenuously asked the Supreme Court to wait until after the 2020 elections to decide their case), and their continued inability to come up with a comprehensive approach to health-care reform of their own, Democrats entered 2020 planning to emphasize this issue again.

Has that changed the Republican posture on health-care policy? Not in any significant way. Yes, the Trump administration has endorsed the idea of using coronavirus stimulus funds to reimburse hospitals for treatment of uninsured coronavirus patients. But there’s still no plan for the millions of people without insurance who are at risk of infection (not to mention other life-threatening ailments), much less for the many millions of additional Americans who will lose employer-sponsored health insurance as they lose their jobs. And the GOP position is still characterized by unrelieved hostility toward existing programs that might help, as NBC News observes:

“The clarity in Trump’s health care vision begins and ends with repealing the Affordable Care Act …

“His budget proposals would strip away funding for the law, and he has endorsed a lawsuit to wipe it off the books. But the president hasn’t thrown his weight behind a replacement bill or even an outline, and he has rejected calls to reopen Obamacare for enrollment during the current crisis.

“Trump’s focus on mitigating the economic damage has kept health care on the back burner. Some allies worry that with millions of newly unemployed Americans poised to lose coverage during a public health crisis, Trump’s lack of a plan for the needy will be a political liability in his re-election bid.”

No kidding.

The focus by Democrats on the nonexistence of any GOP plan to expand health coverage — alongside efforts to shrink coverage via the Obamacare exchanges or Medicaid — is certain to become intense now that they are no longer arguing about the ultimate health-care plans of their own presidential candidates. Much as progressives may find Joe Biden’s health-care proposals inadequate, they look like a veritable horn of plenty compared to anything coming out of the opposing party. Yes, conservative policy wonks have developed theoretical plans, mostly involving high-deductible catastrophic care policies, perhaps supplemented by health-savings accounts. But now more than ever, in a national health emergency, they look howlingly out of proportion to the current situation.

Presumably, Trump will try to take credit for whatever emergency measures Congress provides for dealing with immediate coronavirus-related health costs and try to get across the finish line in November without the “phenomenal” plan he has been promising since 2016. But if they are competent, 2020 Democratic candidates from Joe Biden on down will make this not only a policy emphasis, but a token of all of Trump’s many broken promises, which have brought the country and its most vulnerable people to the gates of living hell.

President Obama’s endorsement of Joe Biden for President:

Washington Post E. J. Dionne, Jr. writes “Obama’s endorsement was important not just because of what he said about Biden and Trump, but also for what he revealed about Democrats. Obama went out of his way to declare that “if I were running today, I wouldn’t run the same race or have the same platform as I did in 2008. The world is different; there’s too much unfinished business for us to just look backwards.”…He praised Sanders and echoed Warren’s call for “real structural change” because “the vast inequalities created by the new economy are easier to see now.”…Perhaps I should confess to bias because I recently published a book making this point, but Obama’s speech underscored that Democrats are far less divided than their primary battle suggested. From health care to climate change to economic inequality, Democrats have moved across the board in a more progressive direction. Obama has done so himself because he sees openings for social reform now that he didn’t have when he was in office.”

Dionne observes further, “Any doubts that the 2020 playing field is very different from 2016’s were laid to rest by the unexpected — and unexpectedly comfortable — victory of liberal Jill Karofsky over conservative incumbent Daniel Kelly in a race for a state Supreme Court seat that was a party contest in all but name…So what will they say now about Karofsky’s inroads into conservative areas that allowed her to build a margin of more than 160,000 votes? Yes, Karofsky was helped by the presidential primary between Biden and Sanders that drew Democrats to the polls. But in going to court to force an election in the midst of a pandemic, Republicans figured they would win by holding down turnout in Democratic urban areas most affected by the virus. A shameful ploy was foiled because Democrats mobilized absentee ballots in unprecedented numbers. This speaks to where the energy in politics is right now. It’s not on Trump’s side…Thus, a wager: When Americans see Trump’s name on those stimulus checks, most won’t regard him as their benefactor. They will see a weak, desperate and selfish man who pretends that the money they pay in taxes is his own.”

Ronald Brownstein notes at The Atlantic that “In the states that will likely decide the 2020 presidential election, Donald Trump has already lost his newly declared war against voting by mail…All six of the swing states that both sides see as the most probable tipping points allow their residents to vote by mail for any reason, and there’s virtually no chance that any of them will retrench their existing laws this year. That means that, however much Trump rages, the legal structure is in place for a mail-voting surge in those decisive states: Florida, North Carolina, and Arizona in the Sun Belt and Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin in the Rust Belt…Such an increase “is going to happen” in states across the country this year, says Wendy Weiser, the director of the Democracy Program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “The president can’t prevent it from happening, his protestations notwithstanding. Voters are going to choose that option, and jurisdictions are going to need to make that option widely available in order to protect public health and administer their elections.”

However, Brownstein adds, “That doesn’t mean Trump’s new crusade will have no effect. It’s so far stiffening Republican opposition to plans for furthering expand mail-voting access in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Those proposals include calls from Democrats and election-law reformers to preemptively mail all eligible voters a ballot, as five states do now, or to require all states to allow their residents to vote absentee for any reason. In the 28 states that already allow this “no excuse” absentee balloting, partisan struggles are nevertheless looming over whether to make the voting process easier.” Yet, “But experts in voter turnout and mail voting anticipate that however these fights play out, the share of Americans who cast ballots by mail in November may roughly double from the previous presidential election, from just under one-quarter in 2016 to about one-half this year.”

New York Times columnist Thomas B. Edall notes, “William B. McCartney, a professor of finance at Purdue University’s Krannert School of Management, points out that “a large share of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck and say they would not be able to come up with $1,000 for an unexpected expense.” Based on the findings in his 2017 paper, “Does Household Finance Affect Elections? Evidence from a Housing Crisis,” a study of voting in the wake of the 2007-9 financial meltdown, McCartney said by email that he was “deeply concerned that household-level financial distress will decrease turnout, in addition to low turnout caused by the health crisis.”…He bases his fear on the following: Voting is a costly activity and, when households’ financial situations have deteriorated, they cut back on everything optional. They, rationally, choose not to spend their scarce resources learning where their polling places are and then waiting in line, potentially for hours….McCartney’s fear of the effects of depressed voter turnout materialized in Wisconsin last week, but it did not prevent a key liberal victory.”

Robert Reich’s blog, via Alternet and Youtube, has a useful timeline of Trump’s disastrous mismanagement of the response to the coronavirus pandemic:

Former Vice President Joe Biden is currently vetting and evaluating potential Veep picks. Biden has said he will chose a woman. But, one of the most important considerations in his selection is what is the replacement cost of the selection. If he picks a senator, as is most often the case, it is important that a Democratic Governor can chose her replacement, since Democrats have a good chance of winning a Senate majority. Joel K. Goldstein writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball that “Choosing a senator from a state with a Republican governor could cost the Democrats a Senate seat for at least some amount of time, which might make the difference between controlling the upper house or not. This consideration could cut against choosing Warren or New Hampshire’s senators Shaheen or Hassan.” The other women Senators said to be on Biden’s short list, including Kamala Harris, Tammy Duckworth, Catherine Cortez Masto, Tammy Baldwin, Amy Kobuchar would all be replaced by choices made by Democratic Governors. For a more thorough list of potential women Veep picks, check out Goldstein’s article, cited above.

“Media outlets have played a crucial role during the COVID-19 crisis to educate the public and provide needed emergency information. To ensure the legitimacy of this year’s elections, they should go a step further and offer regular, timely instructions about how to vote during this national emergency,” Adam Eichen and Joshua Douglas write at TPM Cafe. “And they should start right away, every day and in every publication, perhaps with a “democracy box” on their front page or home page with details about how to register and cast a ballot…But newspapers and other media outlets can bridge the gap. They can educate the public by dedicating ongoing print space to update readers on any legal changes and to explain how to request an absentee ballot in the weeks leading up to a primary or the general election in November. Newspapers could, for instance, include a “democracy box,” or “voting updates” section on the paper’s front page that lists the state’s voter registration deadline, absentee ballot request deadline and a website for more information…Now, more than ever, newspapers should copy the Ithaca Times and distribute voter registration forms within their publications. They should also provide regular reminders about the voter registration and absentee ballot request deadlines. “

After noticing that Trump fans were still crowing triumphantly about his certain victory in November, I offered an assessment at New York of where he currently stands:

Given the near-universal belief of Republicans that POTUS was cruising in style toward a second term, I was beginning to feel lonely not long ago in my skepticism about the Keep America Great cause. And I even felt some doubts about my own judgment as a booming economy boosted Trump’s job-approval ratings out of their stagnant position in the low 40s, with signs they might even drift up toward where Obama’s were in 2012 when he was reelected. Adding in the GOP’s Electoral College advantage, the historic value of incumbency, and Trump’s lavishly financed and unscrupulous campaign, and you had the look of a plausible, if hardly certain, winner.

Then the coronavirus pandemic hit after Trump very publicly dismissed its significance, and it was legitimately in question for a while as to whether the rally-round-the-flag effect that usually boosts national leaders in times of emergency – enhanced by Trump’s opportunity to commandeer media attention with daily “briefings” – would offset the universal tendency of voters to sour on incumbent presidents in hard times.

The evidence is beginning to mount that the damage COVID-19 is doing to the economy Trump so often touted as his supreme achievement, along with meh public assessments of his leadership, have together reversed the arrows and made the incumbent an underdog, as National Journal’s Josh Kraushaar — by no means a liberal or partisan Democrat — explains:

“[T]he reality is that, absent a speedy V-shaped economic turnaround by the fall, Trump is now a decided underdog for a second term.”

Yes, it’s true that past precedents of poor economic conditions blowing up presidential reelection candidacies (from Herbert Hoover to Jimmy Carter to George H.W. Bush) seem inadequate to the kind of disaster COVID-19 poses. But there’s also no example of a president being reelected in the midst of economic calamity on the grounds that it wasn’t entirely his fault. Given the extraordinarily polarized foundation on which Trump has built his political career and his presidency, it’s hard to imagine a figure less likely to inspire sudden respect and appreciation among those not already in his camp (even the regularly pro-Trump polling from Rasmussen currently shows as many Americans strongly disapproving of the job he is doing as approving of it by any degree). To the extent that every presidential election involving an incumbent is basically a referendum on life during the previous four years, you have to figure Trump’s current mediocre approval ratings (at 44 percent at FiveThirtyEight and 45 percent at RealClearPolitics) are a ceiling rather than a floor, assuming no shocking turnaround on either the public-health or economic conditions of the country.

And, as Kraushaar suggests, the nationally darkening climate for Trump’s reelection is being matched by bad news from states he needs to eke out another Electoral College win:

“In traditionally Republican Arizona, a must-win state for Trump, he trails Biden 52 to 43 percent in a new OH/Predictive Insights poll. He’s down by 6 points to Biden in Florida, in an April University of North Florida survey, despite his generally sunny track record in the state. Biden led Trump in a trifecta of Michigan polls conducted in March. According to the RealClearPolitics statewide polling averages, Biden is ahead in every swing state.”

Add to that the shocking, and shockingly large, Democratic win in a Wisconsin Supreme Court contest (ostensibly, but not really, nonpartisan), during which Republicans went to extraordinary lengths to hold down turnout from pro-Democratic constituencies, and you’ve got a landscape that’s no longer friendly to Trump and his party. Joe Biden’s strong showing in trial heats against Trump points to another expected advantage the president has lost: Democrats are not in disarray, as they were four years ago. Biden’s efforts to keep his party united have gotten off to a good and early start, and all the indications are that third- and fourth-party options for disgruntled progressives aren’t looking nearly so alluring this time around, as The Economist noted in a recent profile of Green Party presidential front-runner Howie Hawkins:

“Polling by YouGov for The Economist shows support for third-party candidates at 3%, half of what they won in 2016. More probably, then, Mr. Hawkins is in a fight to avoid humiliation. Even getting on the ballot in many states, which Greens usually manage, is proving difficult. The problem is getting signatures (and the tightening of some requirements). The party’s presidential candidate is eligible to stand in just 21 states so far. Mr. Hawkins guesses 1.6m more signatures are needed to qualify in the remaining ones. The arrival of COVID-19 makes that look almost impossible.”

No, I am not predicting an end to the Trump administration on January 19, 2021. The pandemic’s course and its impact — in terms of lives and political side effects — are far too unpredictable for that and, at this point, we aren’t even sure a normal election with normal procedures can be held in November.

But the idea that Trump has some infernal hold on the presidency (the combined product, I believe, of perennial shock over what happened in 2016 and the endless braying braggadocio of Trump’s conservative media voices) is looking shaky now. He clearly will not be able to campaign as the triumphant engineer of an economic boom created by bulldozing the environment and shiftless workers and godless foreigners while showering tax dollars on wealthy American job-creators. His other credentials for a second term are compelling mostly to people who want to return this country to the 1950s. That’s always going to be a decided, if loud, minority.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

Wisconsin is perhaps the key state for Democrats in the 2020 election–and universally acknowledged to be a very tough challenge. It’s likely to be close under almost any circumstances. But it’s still hard not to be encouraged by the results of Tuesday’s election in the state, where the liberal candidate Jill Karofsky soundly defeated conservative incumbent Daniel Kelly for a seat on the State Supreme Court. Make no mistake: while nominally a nonpartisan election, in the context of Wisconsin politics, this was very much a red vs. blue affair.

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his Facebook page:

Happy Sanders Endorsement Day!

Hats off to Bernie for doing the right thing and endorsing Biden now, rather than dragging it out as many feared he would. This is helpful. And to those on the left who are disgruntled that he lost and perhaps upset that he has now endorsed Biden, I would say, take heart. The fact of the matter is the country’s moving to the left, as is the Democratic party, and Biden will run as a pretty faithful representative of that change. As well-summarized by David Atkins in a post of the Washington Monthly blog:

The following article by Ruy Teixeira, author of The Optimistic Leftist and other works of political analysis, is cross-posted from his blog:

Presidential approval isn’t everything. But probably more than any single metric you could look at, it shapes electoral outcomes. Therefore, when Trump’s approval rating went up modestly as the COVID-19 pandemic hit, people noticed–though it was modest and seemed to have relatively little effect on trial heat measures. But now, even that bump seems to be disappearing fast See the charts below, national from 538 and two swing states, Wisconsin and Florida, from Civiqs data.

At The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter ruminates on Democratic prospects for picking up a U.S. Senate seat in North Carolina, and says that the “suburbs are the most competitive region in the state. Clinton narrowly carried these urban suburbs in the 2016 election 49 to 48 percent. These types of suburbs also turned decidedly more Democratic in the 2018 election…The next question is whether an improvement in these suburbs would be enough for Democrats to win the state in 2020. Trump won the state by 3.6 percent. In 2016, the cities and those inner suburbs comprised 54 percent of the total vote. The rural areas plus the exurbs represented 46 percent of the vote. So, on paper, sure, win the cities and inner suburban areas, and you win the election. But it’s not that simple. Trump dominated the exurban and rural vote carrying rural areas by 24 points and the exurbs by 30 points. Clinton, meanwhile, had a solid showing in the cities — she won them by 35 points — but just barely eked out a win in the inner suburbs…Moreover, while the inner suburbs are turning bluer, it is highly unlikely that Democrats like Joe Biden or Senate nominee Cal Cunningham will pull out the double-digit margins there like they do in the cities. Instead, the key for Democrats will be to do better in those exurbs. According to [Catawba College professor Michael] Bitzer’s analysis, the dense suburban vote and the exurban vote each make up about a quarter of total votes cast. In other words, it’s not enough for Democrats to gain a couple of points in the inner suburbs if they are still losing the exurbs by 30 points.”

At a time when Republicans are panicking out about gowing support for voting by mail and the Republican majority of the U.S. Supreme Court has issued a ruling designed to escalate voter suppression, Virginia’s Democratic Governor Ralph Northam has “signed a series of new measures into law aimed at expanding access to voting in the commonwealth,” Paul LeBlanc reports at CNN Politics. “The new legislation will establish Election Day as a holiday, remove the requirement that voters show a photo ID prior to casting a ballot and, expand early voting to be allowed 45 days before an election without a stated reason.”

From “GOP Justices Decree Capital Punishment for Voting” by Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect: “The only reason that the Republican National Committee doesn’t have John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh on the payroll is that they know they have them for free…Yesterday, as in Bush v. Gore and Shelby County v. Holder (which struck down much of the Voting Rights Act), the Republican majority on the United States Supreme Court did its damnedest to throw an election to their very own Republicans. The Gang of Five overturned the ruling of a federal District Court that extended the period of absentee voting in Wisconsin for one week, to April 13…The Court’s ruling came roughly at the same time that their mini-me’s—four Republican justices on the Wisconsin Supreme Court—overturned Governor Tony Evers’s postponement of today’s Wisconsin primary until June. Alone among the 11 states that had primaries scheduled this month, Wisconsin—that is, the Republican majorities in the state legislature—decreed that this one would proceed despite the coronavirus shelter-in-place rule. Of course, today’s on-again-off-again-on-again-again election will be a travesty, with many, probably most, polling places closed due to a lack of poll workers. In Milwaukee, which, not coincidentally, is home to the largest concentration of the state’s Democrats, the usual 180 polling places have been consolidated to a mere five.”

In his article, “SCOTUS Just Set the Stage for Republicans to Steal the Election: In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court blocked Wisconsin from extending the absentee voting deadline, disenfranchising thousands and creating a terrible precedent” at The Nation, Elie Mystal puts it this way: “Three weeks ago, I wrote that the real threat to the 2020 election is not that Donald Trump will use the coronavirus to try to cancel it but that Republicans will try to steal it, state by state, county by county. In an election in which a record number of people may attempt to vote by absentee ballot, Republican state officials can choose simply to mail ballots to people in counties that traditionally vote for Republicans—and not mail enough ballots to the far more populous counties that traditionally vote for Democrats. In so doing, they can slant the general election toward Donald Trump and other Republicans running for election without Trump having to go through all the bother of declaring himself “dictator for life,” which might spook Mitt Romney…Last night, the Supreme Court gave Republicans the go-ahead to proceed with that scheme. You don’t need an army to cross the Rubicon when you have henchmen on the Supreme Court willing to do all the dirty work.”

Mystal continues: “Where normal people see a vast human tragedy, Republicans see an electoral opportunity. The entire Democratic theory of overthrowing Trump has been to inspire massive voter turnout. Turnout led from the urban centers and their close suburbs. The “blue wave.”But it is in these densely packed communities that Covid-19 is hitting the hardest. And there is already evidence that the African American community, the base of the Democratic party, is being disproportionately killed by the virus…Republicans can use all of this to their advantage. If people have to choose between risking their lives by going to vote, or staying home, most people will stay home—and who can really blame them? If Republicans can make it hard for people to vote absentee, particularly in high-population centers where there is going to be the most demand for absentee voting, Republicans can win…Wisconsin shows them how. Wisconsin shows that the Republican Supreme Court will not stop Republican local officials from disenfranchising people who stay home because of the coronavirus…The Wisconsin ordeal is to the November election as Italy’s outbreak was to our own. It’s where we can see what is coming for all of us, and what will happen to our country, if we don’t act soon enough.”

The tax deadline has been postponed till July 15th, but the soaring government expenses associated with the coronavirus crisis intensifies the debate about tax reform. At The Boston Review, Emanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman provide a guide to needed reforms in their article, “Taxing the Superrich: For the sake of justice and democracy, we need a progressive wealth tax.” As the authors write, “Taxing the superrich involves three essential and complementary ingredients: a progressive income tax, a corporate tax, and a progressive wealth tax. The corporate tax ensures that all profits are taxed, whether distributed or not: it acts as a de facto minimum tax on the affluent. The progressive income tax ensures high earners pay more. And a progressive wealth tax gets the ultrarich to contribute to the public coffers even when they, including Buffett, manage to realize little taxable income. ..The middle class already pays taxes on its wealth, in the form of property taxes. The wealthy don’t, since most of their wealth consists of financial assets, which are exempt from the property tax.”

Re Amy McGrath’s campaign to unseat Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky Senate race,  Jane Mayer observes in The New Yorker that “as covid-19 decimates the economy and kills Americans across the nation, McConnell’s alliance with Trump is looking riskier. Indeed, some critics argue that McConnell bears a singular responsibility for the country’s predicament. They say that he knew from the start that Trump was unequipped to lead in a crisis, but, because the President was beloved by the Republican base, McConnell protected him. He even went so far as to prohibit witnesses at the impeachment trial, thus guaranteeing that the President would remain in office. David Hawpe, the former editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal, said of McConnell, “There are a lot of people disappointed in him. He could have mobilized the Senate. But the Republican Party changed underneath him, and he wanted to remain in power…Stuart Stevens, a longtime Republican political consultant, agrees that McConnell’s party deserves a considerable share of the blame for America’s covid-19 disaster. In a forthcoming book, “It Was All a Lie,” Stevens writes that, in accommodating Trump and his base, McConnell and other Republicans went along as Party leaders dismantled the country’s safety net and ignored experts of all kinds, including scientists. “Mitch is kidding himself if he thinks he’ll be remembered for anything other than Trump,” he said. “He will be remembered as the Trump facilitator.”

“Responding to the unprecedented coronavirus pandemic poses serious challenges for governors across the country, including the nine set to face voters in November’s 11 gubernatorial elections,” Rebecca Klar writes in her article, “Coronavirus response could be key factor in tight governor’s races” at The Hill. “How state leaders handle their COVID-19 responses could have a particular impact in competitive races, such as those in North Carolina or Montana, where Gov. Steve Bullock (D) is running for the Senate and both parties are fighting hard to replace him…The pandemic and how state governments are handling it has significantly raised the profile of multiple governors, particularly New York’s Andrew Cuomo, who has seen his highest favorability ratings in seven years and had to repeatedly deny that he is considering a presidential run…But Cuomo and many others in the coronavirus spotlight, such as Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) or Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D), aren’t facing voters in November. Others managing hot spots, such as Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D), have seen boosts in public polling over their COVID-19 responses, though that may not weigh heavily on the result of their races…Governors across the country have generally received high marks for their handling of the crisis, compared to the response out of Washington, D.C…A poll conducted late last month by the National Opinion Research Center for the Associated Press found 57 percent of Americans said they approved of their state’s response to the crisis, while just 38 percent said they approve of the federal government’s.”

If the Biden campaign needed another challenge, Alex Thompson has it at Politico: “The 2020 presidential campaign’s transition to a mostly digital experience, with the nation on lockdown, has spotlighted a long-term progressive deficit on YouTube that some concerned Democrats compare to the right’s command of talk radio. The country’s leading video platform is also one of its largest search engines (after Google) and a key battlefield in campaigns’ fight to reach new voters and earn free media attention…While Democratic campaigns and groups spend heavily on advertising on YouTube, they lag in organic content, with dozens of conservative and right-wing figures like Ben Shapiro, Mark Dice and Paul Joseph Watson and more official-sounding channels like Prager University cultivating enormous followings not yet matched by equivalents on the left…“‘LeftTube’ has two problems: One is volume and the other is content, neither of which it seems close to solving on its own,” said Stefan Smith, the former online engagement director for Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign. If the party doesn’t ensure that organic YouTube content is getting attention “in addition to paid digital [advertising], then we are in trouble.”…Tommy Vietor, a former Obama White House aide and co-host of the popular Pod Save America podcast, agreed that “Democrats need to step up their game when it comes to YouTube.” For young people, Vietor continued, “YouTube is primarily a search engine. And more often than not when you search for political news or topics, you end up getting force-fed right-wing garbage instead of objective news and information…While Facebook has earned more scrutiny for its impact on U.S. politics, American adults report using YouTube more than any other online platform, with 73 percent saying they use it, according to Pew Research Center’s 2018 and 2019 surveys on social media use. It is even more popular with 18 to 29 year olds, with over 90 percent of that cohort saying they use the site — even higher rates than Instagram and Snapchat.”