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

Krysten Sinema: Live Like Her!

Ron Brownstein has a detailed article breaking down the ways in which Biden’s emerging strength among older voters could be crucial to his chances for victory. He quotes some guy named Teixeira in a couple of places:

Many Democratic operatives still believe that the party’s long-term future will pivot on its capacity to increase turnout among younger and nonwhite voters, especially in the Sun Belt states growing in population. But that conviction is giving way to a growing awareness that the potential path to victory for Biden, given his own unique strengths and weaknesses, may rely less on that forward-leaning mobilization than on a throwback strategy of reducing Donald Trump’s elevated margins from 2016 among older and blue-collar white voters to the slightly smaller advantages Republicans enjoyed with them 15 or 20 years ago.

“The idea that expanding the map comes down to high mobilization of the constituencies that give you the most support doesn’t necessarily follow,” says Ruy Teixeira, a longtime liberal election analyst and senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “You can do the same things by reducing your deficits or becoming competitive among groups where you had been doing quite poorly.”…

While some other national polls still show Trump leading with seniors and near-seniors, the general trend line with older voters is more favorable for Biden than it has been for recent Democratic nominees. At the same time, many political professionals in both parties remain uncertain that Biden can excite a large turnout among young people, especially those of color, who rejected him in big numbers during the Democratic primary and have displayed only modest enthusiasm for him in most early general election polls.

“He is not the spark to that flame, for sure,” says Republican strategist David Kochel.

Those trends among the young still concern many Democratic operatives. But a closer look at the demographics of the swing states makes clear that for Biden a strategy centered on appealing to older voters, most of them white, could substitute for mobilizing young people, many of them diverse, in all of the places that both sides consider pivotal in 2020.

“It was never clear to me that the way you expand the map was by enormous turnout among young people,” said Teixeira. “Other moving parts were just as important, if not more important.”

That guy Teixeira may be onto something. But perhaps the most interesting part of Brownstein’s article is where he makes the case the Krysten Sinema’s successful campaign for a Senate seat in Arizona in 2018 could be a model for what Biden’s trying to do.

“Democrat Kyrsten Sinema won a US Senate seat in Arizona that same year by moderating her earlier liberalism and running as a centrist who would build bridges across party lines. Like the other three Sun Belt Democrats, Sinema struggled among older working adults aged 50-64, according to the exit polls; but unlike them she carried a majority of seniors, which helped her squeeze out a narrow victory over Republican Martha McSally. Sinema carried 44% of whites older than 45, a measurable improvement on the other three.

One of the most striking aspects of Sinema’s win was her victory in Maricopa County, centered on Phoenix. Maricopa was the largest county in the US that Trump won in 2016, but Noble’s post-election analyses found that 88 precincts that backed the President in 2016 switched to Sinema two years later. Those included many suburban areas crowded with college-educated voters who broke from Trump nationwide. But when Noble and his team analyzed the Maricopa precincts that moved away from the GOP from 2016 to 2018, he found two retirement communities at the very top of the list: Sun City and Leisure World.

Noble says he believes that those seniors first pulled back from the GOP around its efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017. His latest statewide poll, which showed Biden leading overall, showed him besting Trump among voters older than 55.

That’s catastrophic for Republicans in Arizona, he notes, since the heavy Latino presence in the younger population reliably tilts it toward the Democrats. (Sinema won three-fifths of voters younger than 45 in 2018.) If Biden can maintain an advantage with those older voters through November, Noble says, “it’s smooth sailing” for him in the state, especially since Trump and the GOP are also eroding among younger college-educated suburbanites.

Sinema’s path, though not as flashy as the approach embodied by Gillum, Abrams and O’Rourke, might be a model for Biden. Polls released over the past week by Fox News likewise found Biden leading with older voters in Pennsylvania and Michigan and tied with them in Florida; a Quinnipiac University survey in Florida showed Trump still leading among older working-age adults but Biden holding a double-digit lead among seniors. An average of all three University of Marquette Law School polls in Wisconsin this year similarly shows Trump trailing by 8 percentage points among voters 60 and older (who broke about evenly in the state last time).”

That’s the Sinema–and now the Biden–formula. And it’s kryptonite to Donald Trump.

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

There are certainly ways Biden could win the 2020 election without doing better among white working class voters than Clinton did. It is possible. But the thing to remember is that, if Biden does in fact do better among this demographic in November, Trump’s chances of winning are radically reduced–indeed, he become almost certain to lose.

That’s why the trends we’re seeing lately in the white noncollege vote are so important. From an article on Decision Desk HQ:

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

It’s been widely observed that Biden is doing quite a bit better than Clinton among older voters (65+). Ron Brownstein:

“Biden led Trump among seniors comfortably in recent general election polling by CNN, Quinnipiac and NBC/WSJ and more narrowly in the latest Monmouth University poll. Though Pew and Grinnell College in recent polls still showed Trump leading with seniors, the overall direction of the surveys suggests that Biden might significantly improve on the Democrats’ recent performance among older voters. Each Democratic presidential nominee since John Kerry in 2004 has lost seniors, a preponderantly white age cohort, by at least 5 percentage points, according to exit polls; Al Gore in 2000 was the last Democrat to carry them.”

In a “fiery” interview by Politico’s Michael Grunwald, former Vice President Biden “said that the next round of coronavirus stimulus needs to be “a hell of a lot bigger” than last month’s $2 trillion CARES Act, that it needs to include massive aid to states and cities to prevent them from “laying off a hell of a lot of teachers and cops and firefighters,” and that the administration is already “wasting a hell of a lot of money.”…He called for stronger assurances that small-business loans will go to small businesses, and that aid to larger corporations will come with strings prohibiting stock buybacks, executive bonuses or worker layoffs. But he also went beyond policy prescriptions, saying the pandemic might convince Americans that grocery clerks “and all the other folks out there saving our rear ends and risking their lives for eight bucks an hour” deserve a better deal. He thinks there could be a backlash against big corporations who have poured their profits into buybacks and dividends rather than worker training and research and development. He thinks the virus could deal a blow to short-term economic thinking and anti-government political thinking.”

At The Cook Political Report, Amy Walter cites four possible scenarios for the November elections, including “1. The virus is still raging, and most of us are still under some form of a shelter at home order. 2. We have regional hot spots, but the rest of the country gets back to normal. 3. We are more or less ‘back to normal,’ but the fear of crowded spaces continues. 4. Things get better over the summer, but a new wave is predicted to break out in October or November.” Walter notes further that “states theoretically have the time to prepare for any of the four scenarios I laid out above. But, we also know that partisanship and legislative wrangling is a big—or bigger—hurdle than the ticking clock. For example, the three most important battleground states of the midwest—Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan—all have split control of government, more specifically, Democratic governors and Republican legislatures. The idea that these states could agree upon new laws before November—especially at a time when many state legislatures are trying to avoid meeting in person during this pandemic— seems unlikely.”

What does it take to get voting by mail in a Republican-controlled state? The Associated Press reports that “North Dakota’s June 9 primary will be conducted entirely by mail after all 53 counties chose to avoid in-person voting due to the coronavirus…Gov. Doug Burgum, a Republican, signed an executive order in March to let counties opt out of a requirement that they open at least one physical polling location. On Thursday, the state announced that every county commission had authorized voting by mail only. The state said it would mail ballot applications to every eligible voter.” Apparently the GOP supports safe voting only when the citizens who would be standing in line are overwhelmingly white. According to the Census Bureau’s 2015 Population Estimates Program, “When it comes to race, North Dakota’s voting age population is 91 percent White, 1.9 percent Black or African American, 1.3 percent Asian, 4.4 percent American Indian/Alaska Native, and 0.07 percent Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander. The Hispanic voting age population represents 2.6 percent of the overall North Dakota population.” Voter suppression practices reduce voting by the state’s racial minorities even further.

Walter also notes that “a February Gallup survey found that 59 percent of Americans were enthusiastic about voting in November — 13 points higher than a similar point in 2016 and 12 points higher than early in the 2012 campaign…Since the outbreak of coronavirus, however, CNN polling has shown a dip in enthusiasm, from 66 percent in early March to 57 percent in early April. Of course, more Americans are worried about paying bills, getting sick, and losing their jobs than they were in early March. As such, an election in November suddenly seems much less relevant. It’s also worth noting that enthusiasm to vote is still 16-points higher now than it was in July of 2016 and 9-points higher than it was in March of 2012. However, it’s worth watching this “enthusiasm” number closely over these next few months to see which voters say they have become less motivated to participate in the fall election…At this stage, we also know that voters are uncomfortable about the prospect of showing up to vote at a traditional voting location. An early March survey by Pew Research found two-thirds of Americans worried about showing up to vote in person.”

“More than 200 black women on Friday signed an open letter to presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden urging him to pick a black woman as his running mate,” Kate Sullvan reports at CNN Politics. “The letter, signed by black women working in both the public and private sectors, lists several potential candidates: former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, California Rep. Karen Bass, Florida Rep. Val Demings, Ohio Rep. Marcia Fudge, California Sen. Kamala Harris, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms, and former national security adviser Susan Rice.,,Signers include actors Vanessa Williams, Latanya Richardson Jackson and Pauletta Washington, the former chairman and president of the US Tennis Association, Katrina Adams, the former editor-in-chief of Essence magazine, Susan Taylor, and the first female African American president of Spelman College, Johnnetta Cole.” Rep. Jim Clyburn, whose endorsement Biden has credited with securing his pivotal victory in the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary, has also expressed support for an African American woman as Biden’s running mate.

Chris Cillizza drills down on “The Warren V.P. Problem” at CNN Politics, and writes about the implications for majority control of the U.S. Senate afyer the election: “I’ve had Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren ranked consistently in the top five potential vice presidential picks for Joe Biden in 2020. The reasons are obvious: She’s a hugely popular figure with liberals nationwide and would help Biden energize that wing of the party come fall. But increasingly, there’s chatter that picking Warren would come with a major potential downside: Republican Gov. Charlie Baker would be tasked with picking her Senate replacement — and he would almost certainly pick a Republican…That would hand the GOP a bonus seat at the start of 2021 — and trigger a special election in the summer for Warren’s full term…The rules in Massachusetts work like this: Baker has the right to appoint an interim senator but also must call a special election for the seats between 145 and 160 days after the vacancy occurs…If Warren was the VP pick and resigned on the day she and Biden were inaugurated (January 20, 2021), the soonest a special election could be held is Tuesday June 15, 2021, and the latest June 29, 2021. That would mean that for the first six months of Biden’s presidency, Republicans would have an extra seat, which could be hugely important if the margin for control in the Senate was tight…And, yes, Democrats would be favored to win Warren’s Senate seat in a June 2021 special election even against Baker’s appointed Republican. But special elections are weird things — and Scott Brown’s 2010 special election win will be on Democrats’ minds…Other potential VP picks Sens. Kamala Harris (California) and Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota) represent states with Democratic governors, making their selections far less problematic for Biden.” Yes, there is a chance Democrats will win a large enough Senate majority without Warren staying in the Senate, but that’s a dicey bet at this point.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne, Jr. proposes “a bipartisan coalition of responsible governors pick one of their own to lead a daily briefing aimed at the whole country. Many governors already make regular reports to their respective states, of course, and New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo has played a de facto role as a spokesman with effective news conferences well-timed for East Coast media…But individual governors often and understandably hedge what they say for fear of retaliation by Trump, who treats them the same way he treated Ukraine’s president. He is, once again, holding Washington’s assistance hostage to his own selfish interests…Workers realized long ago that speaking and bargaining collectively gave them power they didn’t have as individuals. Governors trying to act sensibly should learn the same lesson. Acting together, they could be far more fearless in calling out Trump’s failures, and more demanding when it comes to what their citizens need from Washington”

Dionne continues, “With his hands full in New York, Cuomo will continue his own briefings. But other governors could rotate the job of being the daily embodiment of practical ideas and thoughtful leadership…Americans across the country need to hear more from Republican governors such as Maryland’s Larry Hogan, Ohio’s Mike DeWine and Massachusetts’s Charlie Baker. And let Western and Midwestern Democratic governors become larger national voices, among them California’s Gavin Newsom, Oregon’s Kate Brown, Washington’s Jay Inslee, Colorado’s Jared Polis, Michigan’s Gretchen Whitmer and Illinois’s J.B. Pritzker. Others could join. Each day, one of them should be empowered by their colleagues to speak for the group. They should do this even if Trump — no doubt influenced by the backlash against his Disinfectant Delirium — follows through on his Saturday evening tweet suggesting he might end his daily follies.”

In his article, “A New Poll Shows The Messaging Democrats Should Use To Defeat Trump” at forbes.com, Will Jeakle notes, “Of the three, the message that had the most impact on those polled was the idea that Trump’s response to the coronavirus crisis had not only been ineffective but had actually cost lives. This message moved voters’ perception of Trump almost a full percentage point in the Democrats’ direction….The next most effective message in voters’ eyes was the message that Trump and his allies had used the crisis as an opportunity to slash the social safety net, ensuring help for big business, but leaving workers and small businesses to fend for themselves. This message resonated despite that fact of the CARES act providing SBA loans and disaster relief for small businesses and the beginning of the delivery of $1200 per person relief checks (delivery which was held up in some cases by Trump’s insistence on affixing his signature to the memo field of the checks).”

In looking at various scenarios for how things will unfold politically between now and November, I landed on one nobody is much taking about, and I explained it at New York:

As signs proliferate that the coronavirus is spreading to nonurban Trump country, the odds of the president being able to seek reelection as the vengeful tribune of red America infuriated by a blue America pandemic that has wrecked the economy grow smaller. That’s not to say Trump won’t use every angle he can to divide voters along the same racial, cultural, and geographical lines that undergirded his 2016 victory. But he may now be vulnerable to growing unhappiness about his management of the crisis right there in his electoral base. Indeed, the rapid business reopening some of his Republican allies are engineering in pro-Trump states could expose the MAGA folk to the kind of infection rates normally associated with urban hot spots.

As Ron Brownstein explains, positive assessments of Trump’s handling of coronavirus has up until now closely tracked less-hard-hit areas where things could soon go terribly wrong:

“[Trump’s] precarious public support on the virus heavily depends on preponderant backing from voters in the places that have been least affected. The Pew Research Center divided respondents in its mid-April poll into three groups: those living in counties that faced high, medium, and low incidences of the disease as of early in the month. The high- and medium-impact counties on one side and the low-impact counties on the other each accounted for almost exactly half of the nation’s population.

“These areas diverged strikingly in their assessments of Trump’s response. And ominously for the president, assessments in the medium-impact counties were closer to the (mostly negative) high-impact group.”

So as the impact of the pandemic spreads, so too may downward pressure on Trump’s approval ratings, which are already very slowly sinking. And there could even be a tipping point where dismay with POTUS begins to eat into his base:

If this scenario seems unlikely given Trump’s strong hold on red America — and perhaps it is — we should remember another president who appeared to have unshakable support from his party’s base: George W. Bush.

In late July of 2005, W.’s job-approval rating among his fellow Republicans stood at 87 percent, a bit below where Trump’s are today. Among independents, he was at 46 percent. After his clueless performance in the management of Hurricane Katrina, his numbers began eroding, dipping to 79 percent among Republicans and 32 percent among indies in November and then 68 percent with Republicans and 28 percent with indies in May 2006, when the occupation of Iraq was beginning to become unpopular across party lines. By the time the economic crisis of 2008 kicked in, the president who had won two close red-blue slugfests by uniting the GOP and enthusing the conservative movement saw his job-approval rating drop to 55 percent among Republicans and 19 percent among independents. The “uniter, not divider” was doing neither very successfully.

I am by no means predicting that sort of trajectory is in store for Donald J. Trump, but it’s a scenario worth considering, particularly if he gambles on a highly partisan approach to COVID-19 that backfires with an increasingly infected red America, while failing to revive the economy. The whole country’s watching him on TV every day, and if he fails in this crisis, everyone’s going to see it, and only the most fervent supporters (or those lucky enough to live in the shrinking parts of the country with low rates of infection) will still be cheering. Yes, there are plenty of voters who will cast ballots for him no matter how he handles the coronavirus and the economic fallout. But even though pundits remembering 2016 will likely give him every benefit of the doubt, there’s now legitimate doubt he’s going to keep the race close.

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

Nate Cohn recently published an article in the Times somewhat oddly titled “Is Biden Gaining Older Voters, and Losing Young Ones?” I say oddly titled since his data show a huge swing to Biden among older voters relative to Clinton’s 2016 performance but very little change relative to Clinton among young voters. So the implication of a trade-off does not seem to follow.

Anyway, the most newsworthy part of the article to me was his claim of no pro-Democratic movement among white noncollege voters relative to 2016. He has Biden’s current deficit among these voters at an average of 29 points, identical to his 2016 point of comparison. Is this believable?

Sure, it is possible but I do have serious reservations about this finding. First of all, his methodology seems idiosyncratic, using only “high quality RDD live interviewer polls” for his averages and not even all of them them (at least by any reasonable definition of high quality). And his point of comparison for 2016 is the same type of polls conducted after the third Presidential debate in that campaign. Huh? That doesn’t seem like the obvious point of comparison to me.

Second, while his chosen group of polls may indeed average out at this point to a 29 point Biden white noncollege deficit, there is other data out there. For example, the Nationscape data (70,000 cases since the beginning of the year and counting) has Biden’s white noncollege deficit at 15, a huge swing relative to the 31 point Democratic deficit from the actual 2016 election. On the other hand, the Nationscape data show Biden winning white college voters but by about the same amount as Clinton in the 2016 election.

Third, we have a raft of new polls from key swing states that do seem to show superior performance for Biden relative to Clinton’s 2016 election performance among this group. I’ll use here the just-released Fox polls from Michigan, Pennsylvania and Florida (all presumably Cohn-approved since they are high quality, RDD, live-interviewer polls).

Start with Michigan. The poll has Biden ahead 49-41. His white noncollege deficit: 8 points. Clnton’s 2016 deficit: 21 points. Note especially Biden’s performance among white noncollege women–dead even. Note also that Biden and Clinton do about the same among white college voters.

Then look at Pennsylvania. The poll has Biden ahead 50-42. His white noncollege deficit: 15 points. Clnton’s 2016 deficit: 29 points. And Biden’s performance among white noncollege women is a mere one point deficit. Biden also does better among white college voters than Clinton, but not by as much.

Finally, look at Florida, The poll has Biden ahead 46-43. His white noncollege deficit: 24 points. Clnton’s 2016 deficit: 30 points (Quinnipiac–Cohn-approved!–also has an FL poll out and they have basically the same result). Here again Biden and Clinton do about the same among white college voters.

So am I sure these data are telling the right story and Cohn’s the wrong one? No, there is always room for argument–and new data!–on these matters. And I always applaud an effort to keep a focus on the white noncollege vote as an area of Democratic vulnerability. But, if I had to put money on it, I’d say the white noncollege swing–at least at this point in time–is real.

The strength Joe Biden has been exhibiting among seniors is fascinating and potentially important, and I wrote about a new wrinkle in the story at New York:

Two of the political data points that currently spell bad news for Donald Trump are steadily worsening public assessments of his handling of the coronavirus pandemic and Joe Biden’s strong position among voters over 65, who have leaned Republican in every presidential election since 1996. Since the elderly as a whole are more vulnerable than younger cohorts to a lethal dose of COVID-19 and since Trump at first minimized the threat and later expressed impatience with measures to arrest it, the obvious question is whether the one poll finding has anything to do with the other. Is Trump losing older voters because he seems callous toward their fears?

Morning Consult definitely has evidence that seniors are souring on Trump’s handling of the coronavirus, particularly now that he’s fretting so much over the economy:

“By a nearly 6-to-1 margin, people ages 65 and older say it’s more important for the government to address the spread of coronavirus than it is to focus on economic goals. And as President Donald Trump increasingly signals interest in prioritizing the economy, America’s senior citizens are growing critical of his approach.

“In mid-March, this group approved of Trump’s handling of the outbreak at a higher rate than any other age group, with a net approval of +19. A month later, that level of support has dropped 20 points and is now lower than that of any age group other than 18-29-year-olds.”

Similarly, Quinnipiac shows seniors approving of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus by a 48/45 margin in early March but disapproving by a 52/45 margin in early April. Quinnipiac also shows Biden’s lead among seniors swelling from 49/46 in March to 54/41 in April, even though the Democrat’s overall lead drops from 11 to eight points.

But any way you slice it, Trump is playing with fire in promoting a megastrategy for the pandemic that appears to make the safety of seniors a secondary concern, even as he agitates against allowing the robust voting-by-mail options that might make seniors feel safer in voting. His party needs to win seniors and needs them to vote at their typically high levels. It’s possible Biden’s success in polling of older voters reflects these specific concerns about Trump or simply a tendency to embrace a less erratic and more empathetic leader at a time of maximum insecurity. But it could be Uncle Joe’s ace in the hole.

On his Facebook page, Ruy Teixeira comments on “The Single Most Important Stat from the New NBC/Wall Street Journal Poll,” and notes, “In this poll, Biden leads Trump by 7 points. But the most interesting finding is Biden’s support among those who are not favorable toward either him or Trump. In 2016, Trump carried those unfavorable toward both him and Clinton by 17 points. This time ’round Biden is carrying those who don’t like either him or Trump by 50 points. 50 points! I would characterize this as a good sign.”

A hard-hitting new Biden for President ad:

“President Trump has chosen his pandemic re-election strategy,” Thomas B. Edsall writes at The New York Times. “He is set on unifying and reinvigorating the groups that were crucial to his 2016 victory: racially resentful whites, evangelical Christians, gun activists, anti-vaxxers and wealthy conservatives…Tying his re-election to the growing anti-lockdown movement, Trump is encouraging a resurgence of what Ed Kilgore, in New York magazine, calls “the angry anti-government strain of right-wing political activity that broke out in the tea-party movement” — a movement now focused on ending the virus-imposed restrictions on many aspects of American life…Steve Schmidt — a former Republican consultant and prominent Never Trumper who served as a senior adviser to John McCain’s 2008 presidential bid — described the shape he saw Trump’s 2020 re-election drive taking. As the “administration continues to lie, fumble and flounder,” Schmidt wrote in an April 17 Twitter thread,..”get ready for the noxious blend of Confederate flags, semiautomatic weaponry, conspiracy theorists, political cultists, extremists and nut jobs coming to a state Capitol near you.”

If you were wondering “What Would Virtual Democratic And Republican Conventions Mean For The 2020 Presidential Race?,” A FiveThirtyEight chat surveys the possibilities, including this observation by Nathaniel Rakich : “Sabato’s Crystal Ball had a great article the other day on this and how remote conventions could work. I recommend reading the whole thing, but the TLDR version is that the four important formalities that a convention must address — certifying delegates, approving the convention rules, electing convention officers and, of course, nominating the presidential and vice-presidential candidates — could all be done remotely but will require lots of advance planning…As for the glitzy, self-promoting elements … I think that’s more of an open question.” Julia Azari says, “It’s a really tricky question in some ways. Conventions are kind of a holdover from a past era when delegates reallypicked the nominee, but the transition from “conventions as real events” to “conventions as infomercials” has been kind of messy and slow…Geoffrey Skelley notes, “It’s tough to say what the impact might be, but I can see why the parties don’t want to go virtual if they don’t have to. There’s potentially less coverage of the event and less of a chance to get their message across.”

Another good Biden ad, this one from The Lincoln Project, an oganization of anti-Trump Republicans, including Steve Schmidt, George Conway and Rick Wilson:

From “Biden Quiet on Nationwide Vote by Mail. That’s on Purpose” by Scott Bixby and Hunter Woodall at The Daily Beast: “As concerns have risen about voter safety in the midst of a global pandemic, the past few weeks have seen proposed solutions put forward by voter-rights organizations, Democratic lawmakers, and almost the entirety of former Vice President Joe Biden’s short list of potential running mates…But Biden himself has held back on endorsing any particular plan for expanding access to mail-in ballots—a decision that campaign sources told The Daily Beast is by design…Last week, Sen. Kamala Harris of California introduced the “VoteSafe Act,” which would require states to permit no-excuse mail-in voting by absentee. In March, Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota introduced the “Natural Disaster and Emergency Ballot Act of 2020,” which would do the same, and reimburse states for additional costs of administering elections during the pandemic.” Biden made the right call because his endorsement would likely feed media distortion of the nonpartisan merit of voting by mail, since the need for the reform before the election is critical in light of the pandemic.

Mackenzie Zlatos spotlights “10 Republican Senators who are vulnerable to being swept out with Trump in November” at frontpagelive.com. Noting that “35 Senate seats are up for election on November 3: 12 Democrat incumbents and 23 Republican incumbents (along with two special elections),” Zlatos argues that Senate seats now occupied by the following Republicans are up for grabs: Susan Collins (ME); Martha McSally (AZ); David Perdue (GA); Joni Ernst (IA); Mitch McConnell (KY); Cindy Hyde-Smith (MS); Thom Tillis (NC); Lindsey Graham (SC); John Cornyn (TX); and Cory Gardner (CO). Zlatos provides “Why he (she) might be in trouble” nuggets for each of the GOP Senators, like this one for Tillis: “Tillis was booed while attending a Trump rally in North Carolina.”

Seth Moskowitz writes at Sabato’s Crystal Ball: “In order for Democrats to win an outright majority in the Senate and overcome the current 53-47 Republican split, they need to net four seats. In the case of a Senate tie, however, the vice president casts the tie-breaking vote. Given the 2020 Electoral College and Senate maps, it is difficult to imagine a plausible scenario whereby Democrats net four Senate seats but do not win the presidency and the tiebreaking power in the Senate. So three is the real magic number for Senate Democrats.” Here’s the current Senate election map, according to Sabato’s Crystal Ball:

Would you like to get election reminders via text on your cell phone? How about basic voting information for every state by hovering over an interacti ve map of the U.S. or Covid-19 voting information? Or maybe get a toolkit providing assistance for hosting a voter registration drive in your community? Or if you just want to register, check your registration status or updated poll location? You can also get “A suite of modern digital tools designed to empower organizations to drive civic action and track progress,” or take part in a “Democracy Class” with lesson plans designed to educate high schoolers about the importance of voting, local elections, the 2020 Census and other topics. All of this can be accessed through the Rock the Vote website.

At The Nation, Jeet Heer argues that “The Coronavirus Class War Has Already Started: The combination of plutocratic bailouts and a physically endangered working class is sparking a new blue-collar militancy.” As Heer writes:

There is actually a two-pronged class war going on. Among the rich and their allies in both political parties, the crisis offers an opportunity to loot the Treasury. The stimulus packages that have passed or are being contemplated are all designed to lock in the privileged position of the existing rich, with only limited efforts made to soften the blow of the recession on the working-class majority. At the same time, blue-collar workers are expected to work in dangerous conditions with little compensation. Many of these same workers are being squeezed by furloughs, pay cuts and layoffs.

The combination of plutocratic bailouts and increasing precariousness and physical danger for the working class is an explosive one. It’s hard to see how it can last long without a breakdown of the social order.

Heer explains further, “It’s not just medical workers that are facing more precarious and dangerous workplaces. Writing in The New York Times, veteran labor reporter Steven Greenhouse observed that there was a strong class division in how the coronavirus crisis is being experienced.”

“Millions of white-collar workers are telecommuting from home to stay safe as the coronavirus extends its terrifying reach across America,” Greenhouse observes. “But millions of other workers—supermarket cashiers, pharmacists, warehouse workers, bus drivers, meatpacking workers—still have to report to work each day, and many are furious that their employers are not doing enough to protect them against the pandemic.”

Heer adds, “The growing lethality of the American workplace is fueling a wave of strikes, both union-led and spontaneous wildcat protests. Greenhouse listed a few of these workplace actions”:

Last Tuesday, after a mechanic tested positive for the coronavirus, more than half the workers at Bath Iron Works, a shipyard in Maine, stayed home from work to pressure their employer to thoroughly clean the shipyard. Workers walked out at a Fiat Chrysler truck plant in Warren, Mich., because there was no hot water for washing up. Bus drivers in Birmingham, Ala., went on strike because they felt not enough was being done to protect them from contracting the coronavirus from infected passengers, and bus drivers in Detroit staged a sudden sickout for the same reason. Sanitation workers in Pittsburgh engaged in a work stoppage over their coronavirus worries.

Looking towards the near future, Heer believes, “This wave of protests is only likely to grow, not just because of the coronavirus but also because of the breaking of the social contract by the rich. By crafting bailouts that favored corporations and millionaires amid a pandemic during which blue-collar workers are being forced to work in life-threatening conditions, the American political elite is playing with fire. We could well see social strife far more intense than even the turbulence of Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party movement that emerged in the wake of the 2008 economic collapse.”

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump and the Republicans gutted laws and enforcement of safety inspection regulations that protected miners and toxic peesticide protections for farmworkers. Greenhouse notes at The American Prospect that “Trump’s appointees have eased safety requirements for oil and gas drilling workers. His administration has even relaxed child labor rules, allowing 16- and 17-year-olds who work in nursing homes and hospitals to operate power-driven patient lifts without supervision—even though thousands of experienced adult health care workers get injured each year moving and lifting patients.”

The Republican war on unions has deprived millions of workers of the kind of representation that can prevent health and safety abuses on the job. Heer concludes, “The very collapse of American unions in recent decades means that the stabilizing force of organized labor is gone, making wildcat strikes the weapon of choice in this new class war. America may be heading into a period of working-class militancy unlike anything it has experienced since the 1930s and ’40s.”

If worker safety is not the pivotal issue in the November elections, it will certainly be one of the leading concerns that could make a substantial number of those who have stayed home on election day (about 40 percent of eligible voters in 2016) turn out.

Throughout Trump’s presidency, progressives have repeatedly called attention to the Administration’s gutting of consumer, environmental and health regulations, falling too often on the deaf ears of distracted voters. As the coronavirus death toll continues to soar, however, the likelihood that most voters will lose a family member, friend or co-worker is also growing. There is nothing like a life or death issue to get one’s attention.

If Democrats will loudly and frequently hold Trump, McConnell and the GOP accountable for the gutting of the CDC and a host of worker and consumer protections, it just might produce the margin of victory needed to win the White House and majority control of the U.S. Senate .

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

As noted in my recent scribblings, Trump’s approval bump was (a) remarkably small, (b) had remarkably little effect on his standing in trial heats and (c) seems to be disappearing remarkably fast.

Harry Enten adds some good data to that story in a piece on CNN (I know I featured another Enten story yesterday, but what the heck–good work is good work!)