“President Trump is a ratings hit. Since reviving the daily White House briefing Mr. Trump and his coronavirus updates have attracted an average audience of 8.5 million on cable news, roughly the viewership of the season finale of ‘The Bachelor.’ Numbers are continuing to rise…
…On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen — ‘Monday Night Football’ numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites, and the audience is expanding. On Monday, Fox News…
…alone attracted 6.2 million viewers for the president’s briefing — an astounding number for a 6 p.m. cable broadcast, more akin to the viewership for a popular prime-time sitcom…
…The CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus.” Michael M. Grynbaum @NYTimes
Image, from animation by Worldwide Engineering, illustrating the daily increase in coronavirus cases by country from January 23 through March 28, 2020, as the United States became the globe’s leading nation for the infection:
Every status report and decision is from his perspective chiefly about him, not about the state of the nation, the well being of Americans, or pulling out all the stops to blunt the pandemic.
‘The federal government’s done a helluvua job. . . .
… I think we’ve done a great job for the state of Washington. And I think the governor’s a failed presidential candidate, as you know — he — he leveled out at zero in the polls. He’s constantly chirping and — I guess ‘complaining’ would be a nice way of saying it. We’re building hospitals. We’ve done a great job for the state of Washington.
Michigan, all she does is — she has no idea what’s going on. And all she does is say, “Oh, it’s the federal government’s fault.” And we’ve taken such great care of Michigan. . . .
We have done a job the likes of which nobody’s seen. . . .
I think they should be appreciative because you know what? When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps. They’re not appreciative to FEMA. It’s not right. These people are incredible. They’re working 24 hours a day. Mike Pence — I mean, Mike Pence, I don’t think he sleeps anymore. These — these are people that should be appreciated.
He calls all the governors. I tell him — I mean, I’m a different type of person — I say, “Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington. You’re wasting your time with him. Don’t call the woman in Michigan.” All — it doesn’t make any difference what happens — . . .
You know what I say? If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call. He’s a different type of person. He’ll call quietly anyway. Okay?’
The country is paying an extraordinarily high cost for the President’s misrule:
People are dying because of it, and yet we still aren’t having a frank national discussion about @realDonaldTrump’s psychological unfitness for office?
But half the country — and based on public evidence, half of George Conway’s household — refuses to engage in a frank national discussion.
I am confident that Senate Republicans — most of them, probably, but certainly enough of them when added to all Democrats could have reached a 2/3 vote for impeachment — are well aware of the President’s incapacity. They refuse as a matter of practical partisan politics to acknowledge this or they downplay, no matter what disasters ensue, the magnitude of the harm to our country. So, who are we going to engage in this conversation?
If Trump were politically more skillful and not psychologically debilitated, this could have become a defining success of his presidency. He could have brought the country together à la George W. Bush following 9-11. He would have had to recognize the significance of the problem, rely on the expertise available to a president, and put the federal government to work coordinating a national response. Instead of denying or diminishing the threat, he would have had to speak truthfully about it — and reassured the public with a strategic plan to meet the challenge. (We can imagine, without a stretch, both of his immediate predecessors in the White House, one Republican and one Democrat, acting in this way.)
Had Trump been willing and capable of doing the right thing, he could have nurtured a larger governing majority than the Republican base. Trump’s self-interest and the national interest would have overlapped completely.
This was not to be. Trump cannot overcome his incapacities.
The devastation wrought by COVID-19 will be much greater as a result of Trump’s failures. Unless nature takes a fortuitous turn, Red states and Red regions will not be spared. Will his base stick with him come what may, adding “yet another grievance to their indictment of the liberal establishment” rather than hold Trump responsible? So far, those voters have not wavered.
A reporter asked me today why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus. I tried to explain that one of the dangerous consequences of having a totally dishonest left wing news media was that most Americans discounted their hysteria as phony. – Newt Gingrich
This sample of duplicity and distraction,
from a familiar Fox News Channel contributor, is classic Gingrich. The first
sentence presents an issue raised by a reporter: “why conservatives were initially
so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus.” The second sentence goes
completely off the rails. It’s a clinic on how Trump and Trump apologists
obfuscate, distort, and deceive.
“I tried to explain,” begins
Gingrich, the ever-tolerant professor offering instruction. Well, not exactly.
Instead, in an act of misdirection, he hurls incendiary language, attacking media
outfits seeking to inform the public, while completely ignoring the explanation
in plain sight.
The issue is why conservatives
have been ‘skeptical.’ Polling clearly demonstrates that there has been a
persistent reluctance on the right to accept well-established facts. It is hardly
true that “most Americans” discounted accurate reports of the threat from the sources
where they get their news. A majority of Democrats and independents (who
together outnumber Republicans) have taken the reports as credible. We believed
what we heard and saw on cable and broadcast television and what we read in newspapers
and online. It is a minority of Americans – base Republicans, Donald Trump’s
most intense followers – who have been skeptical of the scientific and medical
reporting on the coronavirus.
Why were conservatives – grassroots enthusiasts of Donald Trump – so thoroughly misinformed about coronavirus?
Because Donald Trump has been spinning lies and diminishing the threat since January. (As recently as a week ago, Trump was saying, “Relax, we’re doing great.”)
Because Fox News Channel, talk radio, the whole conservative media universe, and all the folks (Gingrich, Hannity, Limbaugh, Ingraham, among many others) that traffic in that ideological messaging and Republican talking points, rather than truth and facts, were amplifying Trump’s bunkum.
CNN and NBC, the New York Times
and the Washington Post (to highlight a few of Trump’s bugbears), while
fallible, share a journalistic mission: to find the facts and accurately report
them. Since the news business is competitive, they seek to get it right, because
– otherwise – their errors will be exposed by other mainstream news outlets. They
will lose credibility among viewers and readers who wish to know what’s going
on. We can say the same thing about scientists, medical researchers, and
doctors: while they make mistakes, they try to get it right.
Conservative media do not embrace this
journalistic mission (or the ethos of science) to inform accurately. Their job,
in the conservative media ecosystem, is to bolster faith in their leader, to
cast doubt on facts that might undermine that faith, and to attack and disparage
anyone who contradicts the message of the day.
Gingrich’s attempted indictment of the mainstream press is a backhanded acknowledgment that the conservative media do not conceive of their job as informing the public.
. . .
Fox News told its audience that the coronavirus was a minor problem their heroic leader was quickly resolving, while quietly having its staff follow the very precautions its hosts were ridiculing on air. The mainstream press didn’t force Fox News to do that.
Gingrich, offering pronouncements from Italy, separated himself from the skepticism of American conservatives, but he has had a staring role in bolstering the conservative media universe that has deliberately deceived its audience and in destroying confidence in independent reporting and inquiry that has created that audience. These conservative achievements, not mainstream media reporting, are responsible for the “dangerous consequences” he references.
Gingrich’s tweet presents a phony explanation for why conservative viewers and readers are sadly misinformed about a grave threat to public health.
“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work. . . . The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items, and then shipping. We’re not a shipping clerk.”
This is not leadership. But for nearly half the country, it’s close enough to satisfy.
National surveys reveal that Democrats
express greater concern about the virus than Republicans, and attest to making
more changes in their personal behavior in response. Democratic governors for
the most part are acting aggressively to slow the spread of the virus; fewer Republicans
(Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is an exception) are doing so.
Furthermore, the ideological disparity is matched by a geographical division. New York, Washington, and California — in virtue of the disease’s impact in their metro areas — have by far the most cases, though other states (especially those with large cities) are catching up. In Red states with large metro areas — Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Tennessee, for instance — Democratic mayors and city councils are imposing social distancing restrictions.
Brownstein quotes Geoffrey
Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin (a history of the modern Republican
Party), regarding the urban-rural divide:
“There’s a long history of conservatives demonizing the cities as sources of disease to threaten the ‘pure heartland.’ That’s an old theme. . . . So that could be how it goes down.”
Kabaservice also alludes to the Republican suspicion of elites who comprise the scientific establishment and academia, professionals within government agencies, and of course the media (apart from Fox News Channel and other outfits within the conservative media universe).
We are seeing that on each side of the divide, folks are falling in line with the preconceptions of their tribe. Democrats look to scientific and medical authorities, acknowledge the reality of the pandemic, and accept journalists’ reports on Trump’s dissembling and his administration’s evident failures. Republicans are more likely to accept Trump’s messaging that diminishes the threat, to trust his efforts to protect public health, to endorse his rejection of expert opinion inside and outside of government, and to share his finger pointing at China, other countries, Democrats, and journalists whose reporting casts doubt on the President’s rosy view.
This exchange is all too typical, and will be viewed from starkly different lenses by Democrats and Republicans:
Trump responds: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I say.”
NBC's @PeterAlexander asks Trump what he'd say to Americans who are frightened.
Trump goes on rant against Alexander, says he asked a "nasty question," calls him a "terrible reporter" and attacks NBC and Comcast. pic.twitter.com/vZAk3M4mqR
I think it’s a very nasty question. And I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.
The American people are looking for answers and they are looking for hope. And you’re doing sensationalism — and the same with NBC and Concast. I don’t call it Comcast, I call it Concast … for whom you work.
Let me just say something: That’s really bad reporting. And you ought to get back to reporting, instead of sensationalism.
Let’s see if it works. It might. And it might not. I happen to feel good about it. But, who knows? I’ve been right a lot! Let’s see what happens.
And I believe Trump is in sync with his base. The grassroots Republicans who embrace the President come what may, don’t want to hear any message that detracts from the party line. They want to hear Trump’s rosy scenario.
And Trump could be right. Within a few months, we may look back at COVID-19 as something that didn’t have the dire, long-term consequences media reports have led us to expect. It may, like a miracle, just disappear one day, perhaps mere weeks from now.
Trump’s supporters are sticking with him, hoping for — even expecting — the best. He can weave, and dodge, and change his story as often as he likes. He can point his fingers at everyone but himself. He can make fanciful claims, deny observable facts, and contradict scientists and medical authorities. But his base embraces his authority and outlook. (“He doesn’t lie. I know y’all say he does. He doesn’t. He doesn’t.“)
And what if things don’t turn out for the best? Will their support waver? Will they stray from the party when it comes time to vote in November?
Don’t count on it (even though somemay jump off the Trump train). More likely: the hardcore base, the true believers in Trump’s camp — the overwhelming majority of Republicans who voted for Trump in 2016 — will readily blame the Chinese, the Europeans, the Mexicans. They will point the finger at Democrats, liberals, elites — the folks who, in their judgment, look down on them. They will fault urban dwellers, minorities, and non-white immigrants who, in their view, don’t qualify as real Americans.
If things turn out badly, if COVID-19 hits their communities as hard as it is beginning to hit the Blue regions of the country, they are likely to add yet another grievance to their indictment of the liberal establishment, not to hold Trump responsible.
Whether Trump is right or wrong, whether his bet — playing exclusively to the Republican base — will pay off in November, this is the wager that Trump is staking his Presidency on.
It’s a wager he has placed before. He won the prize in 2016.
We have Blue America on one side, Red America on the other. The outcome in November will hinge on turnout. And perhaps, if things are close enough, on that mushy middle, that sliver of folks who mostly don’t pay enough attention to have a side.
November 3 is a long way off. We don’t know how bad things will get or how long recovery will take. At this stage, though, the 2020 election appears to represent a daunting challenge for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.
The Executive Branch of the government of the United States is uniquely empowered to plan, implement, and coordinate measures to ensure the nation’s public health. The Trump administration has failed miserably to do so.
Unfortunately, that action— taken January 31 — was hardly sufficient to keep the virus from spreading throughout the country. It would be bad enough if all Trump did in the intervening weeks (until his abrupt shift on March 16) was sit on his hands. Instead, for weeks in his every public utterance, he lied about the state of affairs in the country and diminished the increasing threat.
“We have it totally under control. One person from China and it’s going to be just fine.” (January 22) “We pretty much shut it down — coming in from China.” (February 2)
“You know, in April supposedly it dies with the hotter weather.” (February 10) “When it gets warm, historically, it’s been able to kill the virus.” (February 14)
“People are getting better. They’re all getting better.” (February 25)
“And the 15 — within a couple of days, it’s going to be down close to zero.” (February 26) “It’s going to disappear one day. It’s like a miracle: it will disappear.” (February 27) “And you’ll be fine.” (February 28)
“They’re going to have vaccines, I think, relatively soon.” (March 2) “Not only the vaccines, but also the therapies. Therapies are sort of another word for cure.” (March 3)
“We’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” (March 4) “Our numbers are lower than just about anybody’s.” (March 6)
“It’s really working out. And lotta good things are gonna happen.” (March 10)
“And we are responding with great speed and professionalism.” (March 11)
“It’s gonna go away.” (March 12)
“No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” (March 13)
“They’ll all be great. We’re going to be so good.” (March 15)
“This came up — it came up so suddenly.” (March 16)
And Fox News Channel, the loudest, most influential voice of the Republican Party (next to Trump himself), reinforced the President’s message every step of the way:
News reports of the coronavirus, in the view of Fox News’ personalities week after week, was a hoax manufactured by Democrats to attack the President, an illness no more worrisome than the flu, an overblown brouhaha of scant significance. Dismiss, distract, diminish, disparage. Unfortunately, there is much evidence that the President of the United States often takes his cues from his favorite TV network.
This charade has been incredibly effective at convincing the Republican base. The rest of us, not so much. A recent Axios/Survey Monkey poll, which asked whom Americans trusted to protect them from the coronavirus, found high confidence in prominent health agencies:
Centers for Disease Control — 75%; National Institutes for Health — 68%; their state’s health department — 68%; their local office of emergency management — 67%; and the World Health Organization — 60%.
“I didn’t feel different. I’ve always known that this is a real — this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. All you had to do is look at other countries. I think it’s not in 120 countries all over the world. No, I’ve always viewed it as very serious. It was no different yesterday than days before.”
Much too late, facing an imminent disaster, the White House has advanced beyond denials and wishful thinking.
No one in the Republican Party wants to buck the President. They’ve allowed partisanship, tax cuts for their richest donors, and federal court appointments to trump the security of the nation. For more than three years, that reckless bet has paid off handsomely.
As we head toward November 2020, it may pay off once again. But the steep cost to the nation — to our health and economic well-being — of Trump’s misrule is harder to hide now, no matter what diversions the President, Congressional Republicans, and Fox News Channel cook up.
There are many reasons why she failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination. But don’t kid yourself: Being a woman is one of them. – Francis Wilkinson
People always say …
Well, It’s not the right woman. Well, who’s going to be the right woman? Look at us, we’re as diverse as you can get, we’re all different shapes, sizes, colors. So which one of us is the right woman? – Pennsylvania Congresswoman Susan Wild
She was doing so well for a time.
For a while, it seemed like she had a good shot, but then as voting approached, she didn’t. Spooked voters blamed “the country,” as if they themselves didn’t populate the country. I’m ready for a female president, but the country isn’t. And then they voted for a man they could tolerate instead of the woman they loved.– Monica Hesse
Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, her defeat diminished the prospects of a woman winning the Democratic nomination in 2020. The safer choice turned out to be an old white guy whose “policies, such as they are, are milquetoast appeals to moderation in the face of impending catastrophe — vows to compromise on legislation with Republicans, despite their demonstrated commitment to steamrolling democracy in the interest of partisan advantage; refusals to fight for free health care for all in the name of preserving private insurance, despite the rampant horror stories of insulin rationing and deferred emergency-room visits that prevail among the tens of millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans,” in the words of Zak Cheney-Rice, who continues:
But where his policies underwhelm — and, indeed, most voters would be hard-pressed to name a single one — his campaign has found incredible success drawing on voters’ emotional attachment to what they think he represents: a return to the sociopolitical norms that were so rudely disrupted by Trump’s election.
Black voters
in South Carolina are credited with giving Joe Biden the boost he needed to
overtake Bernie Sanders in the race for the nomination.
“But,” Gay adds, “there is a larger context here.”
I just got back from a trip across the South … And the reality is that Senator Warren was running in the shadow of Hillary Clinton’s loss. And voters – Democratic voters, especially black Democrats in the South who really spoke up forcefully in favor of Joe Biden – they are so desperate and so intent on beating Donald Trump that they are looking for the least risk imaginable.
I had voter after voter tell me, ‘You know, we really like Elizabeth Warren, but we don’t know if our neighbors were going to vote for a woman.’ . . .
‘We look at what happened to Hillary and we think maybe it’s too risky.’ . . .
They know Joe Biden. So he may not be Barack Obama and as inspiring, but he’s somebody who they believe is the best bet to get Donald Trump out of the White House.
In a column earlier this week, Gay offered additional context, illustrating the depth of southern black voters’ concerns:
Not long ago, these Americans lived under violent, anti-democratic governments. Now, many there say they see in President Trump and his supporters the same hostility and zeal for authoritarianism that marked life under Jim Crow.
“People are prideful of being racist again,” said Bobby Caradine, 47, who is black and has lived in Memphis all his life. “It’s right back out in the open.”
Cheney-Rice represents a younger generation, which has no memories of Jim Crow, and a different worldview than Congressman Jim Clyburn, born in Sumter, South Carolina before the U.S. entry into World War II. Moreover, many of us view the governing norms that, in Cheney-Rice’s dismissive words, Trump “so rudely disrupted,” as fundamental to a healthy democracy.
If searing memories of a brutal, vicious past moved South Carolina voters, many Democrats — white, black, Northern, Southern, from East to West — have embraced the principle that this isn’t the year to take big risks.
So what happened on or around February 21? The only thing that stands out is the Las Vegas debate, which took place on the evening of February 19. The consensus for this debate was that Elizabeth Warren left Mike Bloomberg bleeding on the floor, but that no one else especially distinguished themselves. I just reread the New York Times summary of the debate, and it barely even mentions Biden except to note that he joined Warren in attacking Bloomberg.
So there’s something peculiar here. The conventional wisdom says that Clyburn’s endorsement powered Biden to a big win in South Carolina, and the big win in South Carolina powered Biden to victory on Super Tuesday. But Clyburn endorsed after Biden had started surging. Something else must have started the Biden surge, but the Las Vegas debate sure doesn’t seem like it was a turning point either.
Though Drum expresses puzzlement, I think he has pinpointed the key event: the debate – and the news coverage that followed over the next few days. The big story, as he notes, was Warren’s takedown of Bloomberg. And that’s – as I suggested in the last sentence of a previous post – a key to Biden’s rise. This isn’t at all peculiar.
Bernie Sanders was ascendant. Many Democrats (even on the left) were convinced that a Sanders nomination posed significant risks for the party in November. The former VP — hogging the moderate lane — appeared shaky throughout the nomination process. Other less risky choices had fallen by the wayside.
The results of the Nevada caucuses on February 22 — the beginning of Biden’s rise in Drum’s chart — would prove that neither Buttigieg, nor Klobuchar could go the distance (a result that the press had anticipated). And Warren (et al.) had already faltered.
But Bloomberg — following a half billion dollar+ campaign, including scads of slickly produced TV ads — had secured many Democratic endorsements and had steadily risen in the polls. He was waiting in the wings, ready to step up on Super Tuesday to rescue the party and the country. His fortunes changed, however, when Warren eviscerated him on stage.
No one else was left standing at that point — except Joe Biden. What exquisite timing.
After Super Tuesday, Joe Biden has pushed Bernie Sanders from his position as frontrunner. With everyone else out of the way, Bloomberg especially, it’s a two-man race for the Democratic nomination.
In 2016, I initially gave Sanders a pass when he continued campaigning even after it was obvious he had no chance of beating Hillary Clinton. After all, one of his goals was to amass enough delegates that he could influence the party platform and push it to the left. To do that, he had to keep competing.
Agreed. I was indulgent of Sanders’ protracted 2016 primary campaign because of my confidence that Hillary Clinton would win in November. If Sanders falters this time, let’s hope the senator promptly concedes and gets behind the Democratic nominee.
Perhaps the starkest symbol of Sanders’s limitations last night was the resurgence of a problem that severely damaged him in 2016: widespread resistance from primary voters who self-identify as Democrats (as opposed to independents). . . .
The Super Tuesday exit polls showed Biden beating Sanders among self-identified Democrats by about 30 percentage points in both Virginia and North Carolina, about 25 points in Oklahoma, 20 points in Tennessee, and nearly 50 in Alabama. Sanders was more competitive among Democratic partisans in the New England states of Massachusetts and Maine. But the overall pattern was unmistakable.
Yeah. Democrats can’t resist complaining about the Democratic Party – but the millions of Democratic voters are a diverse bunch. Our communities are as diverse as we are. We don’t always agree. That’s the nature of a broad coalition under a big tent. Most Democrats, in the election of our lives, are seeking someone to unify us, not scold us – or our leaders. Attacking the Democratic establishment is a discordant rallying cry, especially from someone who regards himself as standing outside the tent.
When
the campaign began, I had a fervent wish not to have to vote for an old white
guy. It wasn’t always clear to me, if I didn’t get my wish, whether a Biden or a
Sanders nomination would be the most disappointing.
From my vantage point today, Biden looks like the best bet to help Democrats boot out Trump and take back the Senate. Joe Biden has significant vulnerabilities, including looking and acting like a not especially vibrant 77-year-old; a continuing career of gaffes, verbal tangents, and visibly losing his train of thought; and an inability, thus far, to explain simply and coherently why the Hunter, Burisma, and Ukraine tales hammered by Republicans aren’t on a par with Trump’s corruption. But he is one of us, the last one standing (since Sanders chooses to stand apart from us), and it’s us against them.
That said, yesterday I cast a ballot – with no expectations that she would hit 15% in California – for Elizabeth Warren. Here’s hoping this terrific senator returns to Washington next year to a chamber with a Democratic majority. And, give her credit, Warren had the starring role in taking down Mike Bloomberg and his obscene $600,000,000+ campaign (which, not incidentally, provided a critical assist in the resurrection of the Biden campaign).
