2020

So, even though the 2020 election is over, we are planning on keeping “Wednesdays at NDN” series alive, at least through the end of the year. 

With Democrats Things Get Better – NDN's signature 2020 presentation, "With Dems" is a deep dive into the performance of the two political parties over the past generation of American politics.  We believe the insights in With Dems are essential to understanding our current moment, and the possibiities the new Biden Presidency may bring.  

We have two presenations of With Dems scheduled for December -  Wed, Dec 9th at 2pm ET (register) and Wed, Dec 23rd at 2pm ET (register). 

Learn more about the big arguments behind With Dems, do read Mike Tomasky’s glowing review in the Daily Beast and feel to watch a recording of our most recent With Dems presentation on Wed, Nov 18th. 

We hope to see you at one of these upcoming events, and feel free to invite others.  The more the merrier for Wednesdays at NDN!

Taking Trump’s Ongoing Assault On Our Democracy Seriously

In an NBC News column a while back, Glenn Kirschner, MSNBC legal analyst and former prosecutor, made a really compelling point – the current DOJ policy preventing the indictment of a sitting President, whether just or not, should not apply to crimes against our democracy, or cheating to win an election.  “If a president can act unlawfully to influence an election,” Kirschner wrote, “he does not deserve the protections of his ill-gotten office. This incongruity encourages lawlessness in the quest for the presidency and then rewards that lawlessness by inoculating the criminal president against prosecution. Such a construct is dangerous.”

In my conversations with Kirschner we discussed how this absurd formulation has created a massive incentive for American Presidential candidates to cheat and cheat big – for the candidate who doesn’t cheat, loses; or if you cheat just a little bit you lose and can be indicted.  The candidate who cheats in a big way and wins escapes prosecution.  We are in such a horrific situation right now with President Trump.  Trump is struggling to win a traditional free and fair election and has begun cheating/law breaking/ignoring the Constitution at a level never seen before in an American election (this thread details all the ways Trump is cheating now – it’s an exhausting list).  

And Trump does all this knowing that if he wins AG Barr will be there to ensure he isn’t indicted, and if staff broke laws getting him elected – even working directly with Russian intelligence assets – he can pardon them (as he did Roger Stone example).  As Kirschner predicted, there is no reason once you start cheating to do it at the margins of an election – you just have to go for it.  For if you cheat and lose, you and your team can be indicted.  Immunity only comes from winning or staying in power illicitly.  

That Trump is a cheater/law breaker/criminal is well established.  Despite all the cover the AG has given him, the President is under criminal investigation in NY for tax and insurance fraud.  A trial involving rape allegations against the President is moving forward.  Michael Cohen went to jail for their plan to repeatedly break election law in 2016, and the Trump family foundation’s law breaking (including 2016 election law) was so extreme the foundation was dissolved by the state of New York.  We know the President accept and encouraged illicit help in 2016, and even built and designed campaign strategy around information Russian assets provided to the campaign in advance.  And then there is whatever drove Comey to make his dramatic intervention ten days out in 2016 – a move which gave a losing Trump campaign an ill-gotten victory.  Trump was Impeached in 2019 over a truly brazen and months- long effort involving senior leaders of his government to cheat in the current election – a lawless move which was given sanction by the Attorney General and the Senate Republicans.  

The political crime spree the President is on right now has no precedent in American history.  He is breaking/damaging ancient foundations of our democracy – the Postal Service, the Census, Separation of Powers, our Election itself.  He’s using the vast powers of the US government to illegally aid his re-election every day, every day – it’s the equivalent of hundreds of millions of dollars of campaign spending paid by you, me and other American taxpayers.  The absurd, fake Kayne campaign. Russia has returned, and this time the collusion is out in the open, overt; and this time, the government is providing intentional cover for Russia’s intervention, laundering it to make it legitimate.  The President asked China for electoral help, his Ambassador to Brazil asked the Brazilian government for electoral help too.   He’s invented a domestic terror threat which doesn’t exist.  He’s using authoritarian means to stifle domestic dissent, and is threatening an all-out war by the United States government itself against “The Radical Left” (whatever that is).  His Presidency has become an orgy of illiberalism – and as we see in the crack downs in Hong Kong and Belarus, we cannot look the other way, pretend this isn’t happening here.  Trump has shown too much admiration and kinship with authoritarian oppressors throughout the world for us to believe it cannot happen here.  Of course it can.  

In 2016 the media and political elites were slow to recognize the illicit activity which helped give Trump an ill-gotten win.  We naively “waited for Mueller.”  The Republican burying of Trump’s Impeachment – essentially not even allowing a Constitutionally required trial – was for us here at NDN a “Crossing the Rubicon” moment, a moment when the US was no longer really a functioning democracy as we have been taught to understand them.   And so here we are, the place Rep. Adam Schiff and my friend Glenn Kirscher predicted we would be – the President has launched enormous effort to stay in power using all means necessary.  He’s in the process of denying America a free and free election.  He is cheating and breaking American election law at a truly massive scale, right now, every day, in front of our eyes.  His partner, Putin, has returned, and is aiding his re-election again.  There simply is no reason to believe he is going to leave office without a fight.  

Yes I know there are big issues in front of our campaigns now – COVID, our recession/depression, return to school, health care, climate, fighting systemic racism.  But we all must find time in this challenging time to talk about what our President is doing to our democracy itself.  It is a betrayal of country without peer or precedent.  We simply have to do everything we can to make it harder for him to cheat, or stay in power illicitly. We have to prepare the American people for the struggle ahead, and we have to fight – using the Congress, state legislatures and Governors, Attorney Generals and city prosecutors.  The director of the USPS should be in front of Congress explaining himself TOMORROW not in mid-September.  If state and local laws are being violated by Trump prosecutions should happen.  State AGs can subpoena the USPS, WH COS Meadows, others in the WH and ask them to explain in public what they are doing.  Our electeds in the states should hold hearings and events educating the public about how to vote, and the threats we see.  There has to be an enormous national effort to not just defeat Trump in a traditional election but to defend our democracy from his ongoing assault.  But that starts with not looking the other way, pretending there are more important issues to talk about – we can wage both a traditional campaign, and a campaign to preserve our democracy.  We have no choice really.  We can and must do both now. 

We know from history how dangerous this moment is – fellow patriots, let us commit to rise to this moment, together, and do everything we can to defeat this extraordinary threat to everything that has made America great, and an inspiration for free people throughout the world for centuries.  

Just think about what is going to be attempted in the next few weeks.  Some very large number of young Americans – 75m or so - will try to go back to school.  Kids will ride school buses and use other public transportation; they will be, play and eat together again; they will be required to social distance and mask, all day; many will have no access to daily exercise.  Millions of college age kids will travel to their schools via driving long distances, (staying where?), flying, while needing also to somehow transport their stuff.  Some significant percentage will have to quarantine for some time, being restricted to their dorm rooms.   

For those schools which are going virtual we know that virtual school doesn’t really work; that kids can’t sit front of a computer all day, and stay engaged; they miss their friends and are unhappy, depressed; that a large percentage of kids don’t have access to the Internet at home and can’t go to school at all, or have two parents who work out of the home, and many millions may be about to take a huge reduction in their temporary government benefits.  

Behind all of this is the fear that all parents have about either sending kids into the a place where the likelihood of them getting sick, and eventually spreading it to the rest of the family, skyrockets; or the fear of keeping kids at home, taking them away from friends, and attending to them all day, regardless of their age.  

Going back to school should have rightly been seen as an extraordinary national undertaking.  Our government should have been there helping families and communities grapple with a series of terrible choices; it should waged a national effort to defeat the virus this summer so return to school could have been easier; the President and his team should have been conducting discussions with governors and mayors on how to grapple with a DDay like mobilization.  Instead, our government has screamed at all of us to go back five days a week even though the virus is raging and killing across most of the country;  has LIED repeatedly about the threat the virus poses to young people and their families; has watered down CDC school guidance when it didn’t fit their ridiculous vision; has repeatedly undermined a societal wide embrace of masking and social distancing, basic tools we need to re-open; has more focused on golf outings and gassing two hundred protestors in Portland than making all this happen safely.  

As the author Anne Applebaum wrote today America’s attempt to return to school is “both tragic and grotesque.”  I wake this morning with a sense of impending doom.  As in almost every other moment in the COVID crisis we think it can’t really be this bad, this stupid; that somehow, it is just going to get better, or “disappear” as the President repeatedly says.  And it has been that magical thinking, that dangerously delusional thinking – that it was all going to just go away – which has prevented America from at any point in the COVID crisis from doing the right thing, preparing properly for the storm which continues to kill and cause so much harm.   

The President knew about COVID in early January of this year, perhaps as early as November.  We had a lot of time to prepare, like knowing a hurricane was coming a week out.  We could have sensitized the country to the difficult choices we had to make – lock downs, testing and tracing, what to do with the kids, social distancing/masking.  Nursing homes could have started taking precautions.  Testing centers could have been established.  All of those conversations, all of these things could have begun in January.  We could have locked down in February and been opened by April, May.  We could have come together as one country and worked together - as neighbors, parents, colleagues, friends, family – to have defeated the virus, together.  Instead we have this.  A public health catastrophe.  An economic catastrophe.  A human catastrophe.  A governing catastrophe.  A weakened nation, further divided, poorer, more in debt, less capable of looking out for itself.  It is both tragic and grotesque; and the President’s party will need to be held to account for what they’ve done to this once great country for a very long time.  

To the parents, teachers, school administrators, young adults, students, student-athletes, staff out there NDN wishes you the best this fall.  What is about to happen will be indescribably difficult.  As Americans we will give it our best, try to make it all work as best we can, adjust, recalibrate and keep fighting for our kids who deserve so much better.  One could only wish that the most powerful man in the country was right there fighting along with us. 

PS - "This is highly infections, and MLB didn't do what NBA did to put in place a really strict bubble.  It is a warning of what could potentially happen if we aren't very careful with the schools." Dr. Scott Gottlieb, CNBC, 8/3/20. 

PS2 - “The problem is the White House and the task force could never organize themselves to lead a federal response and bring virus transmission down to containment levels,” said Hotez, who has argued for the necessity of a federal containment plan that, if executed effectively, might allow the nation to reopen comprehensively as soon as October. “Instead they took a lazy and careless route, claiming schools are important, as we all know, and the teachers and principals need to figure it out. What they did was deliberately set up the teachers, staff, and parents to fail. It’s one of the most careless, incompetent, and heartless actions I’ve ever seen promoted by the executive branch of the federal government.”  From The Atlantic, 8/2/20.

Analysis: Another Week of Ghastly Polls for the GOP, Loud Dems, Trump’s Illiberalism

Our weekly poll roundup took a break last week for there just wasn’t a lot of news – everything was still terrible, worst case scenario bad for Trump and the GOP.  There wasn’t much to add to that story.  This week, same thing but couldn’t let two weeks pass.  So, let’s go to the polls!  

New Fox New polling had Biden up 13 in MN, 11 in MI, 9 in PA.  Quinnipiac had Biden up 13 (!!!!!!) in Florida and 1 in Texas.  2 national polls had Biden up more than 10 yesterday, Gallup found Party ID going from 47D/44R to 50D/38R last month, and there is a growing body of evidence Trump’s numbers on the economy have begun to head south – an ominous development for the GOP.  Democrats continued to put up very strong numbers in the key Senate races, and the DCCC reported 50% more cash on hand than the NRCC heading into the home stretch.  

Some notes on what we are seeing: 

What is Trump’s Strategy? As people who have been in politics a long time, it’s just impossible to explain what Trump and his campaign are doing now.  When you are down like he is, you need to associate yourself with issues which bring you more voters.  But again and again – on masking, the schools, refusal to fight COVID, letting the stimulus lapse, obeying Putin, challenging the protestors/defending rogue policing – the President embraces an extreme position, ones which often poll in the mid 30s.  Not one time in recent months has he chosen the popular thing, something that would allow him to work together with Democrats, and get his numbers up.  Instead this strategy of embracing extreme positions – send all kids back to school regardless of COVID! – has driven him to some of the worst numbers of his entire Presidency, and some of the worst an incumbent President has ever seen.  It’s a baffling re-election strategy.  

This lack of interest, or effort, in raising his standing concerns us.  It’s as if he has given up maintaining power through the election itself, and begun to lean into a series of truly extraordinary illiberal acts as his means for maintaining power – weakening the Postal Service, partnering again with the Russians to smear his Democratic opponent, delegitimizing the election, throwing Michael Cohen in jail/pardoning Roger Stone and perhaps most importantly, his fascistic mobilization against his domestic enemies, “the Radical Left.” 

As we’ve written, we worry that the speeches the President gave on July 3rd and 4th were an open admission that he was now going to attack “the left” not just through ads and a campaign, but with the United States government itself.  How else can you read this passage: “American heroes defeated the Nazis, dethroned the fascists, toppled the communists, saved American values, upheld American principles, and chased down the terrorists to the very ends of the Earth. We are now in the process of defeating the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters”?

And as we’ve seen in Portland in recent days, that process of using the government itself to attack his domestic opponents appears to have begun.  Everyone has to have eyes wide open here.  

The Democrats Are Going To Be Very Loud In the Home Stretch – Another thing which will make a GOP recovery this year far more difficult is what’s happened below the Presidential level these last two cycles.  As we enter this final push Democrats are going a new, extraordinary array of capable, well-funded candidates and newly elected statewide elected officials augmenting Biden’s campaign message – Senate races in battlegrounds with unprecedented amounts of money, inspiring House freshman running full out from their re-elections and incumbent Dem governors in MI, NC, PA, WI.  Despite not having the White House, the Democrats will have the money, the talent, the argument and superior campaigns to potentially control the dialogue in the final weeks, or at the very least, make it far harder for Republicans mount a serious counter in the closing days.  A good example is Arizona.  What does Mark Kelley spending $60m and leading by 7 in the Senate race mean for Joe Biden there? A whole heckuva lot.   

Another thing to watch for which may matter in this closing dynamic is whether Trump/GOP money begins drying up.  My guess is that it will, which could create an even more powerful vicious cycle for Trump and his party – to raise grassroots money in the end they have to embrace ever greater extremism, that extremism drives their poll numbers down even further, and so on……That stories appeared this week raising questions about the Trump family’s mismanagement of the campaign’s fundraising could be a sign that money is indeed beginning to dry up.  

Every Thursday, NDN publishes its Thursday Poll Roundup, a deep dive into recent polling and political trends. You can sign up to receive it each week and feel free to review previous editions too. 

Thursday Poll Roundup – Trump’s Emerging Electoral College Challenge

The big trends we’ve been writing about of late – the across the board weakness of the GOP brand – is still very evident this week: 

Biden/Trump      50.2/41.7   + 8.5   Real Clear Politics

Dem/Rep            48.6/40.7   +7.9   538 Congressional Generic

Trump                 41.6/55.1    -13.5 538 Trump Job Approval (Registered/Likely Voters)

Senate polling continues to bleak for the Rs, with none of their incumbents in the 11 seats  they are defending (AZ, CO, GA/2, IA, KS, KY, ME, MT, NC, SC) holding a clear lead at this point.  New polls have Greenfield leading Ernst 46-43 in IA, Ossof leading Purdue 45-44 in GA, Kelly leading McSally 51-42 in AZ and Peters leading James in MI 47-35.  With Democrats holding consistent leads in AZ, CO, IA, ME, NC the Senate looks very much within Senator Schumer’s grasp this year.  

What should be worrisome to Republicans now is the growing evidence that the President is no longer strong enough to win essential arguments with the public.  This trend manifested earlier this year during the Impeachment debate, where on most aspects of the elements of Impeachment – Democrats handling it fairly, witnesses/documents, etc – the President lost the argument, sometimes by very large margins.  We are seeing that now with his handling of COVID, the protests and police violence – all of these issues are breaking dramatically from the President’s stated positions.  A recent poll by the Washington Post put the President’s approval of handling the protests at 35/61, and then there is this data from this morning’s excellent Corona Navigator: 

Support the protests   66/29

Approve of police response 37/50

Black Lives Matter Fav/Unfav  65/29

Trump COVID Approval  42/57

Over the course of these defining 2020 issues – Impeachment, COVID, the protests – it is common to find the President and his positions in the 20s and 30s, rarely in the low 40s and never in the 50s.  This data, consistent in poll after poll, suggests the President is becoming a spent force, unable to bend and shape the national political environment in a way required for him to win this year.  

Finally, we are starting to get enough high quality polls in the states to get a sense of how the Electoral College is looking.  Using 538’s latest averages, with the race today between +8.5 to 9 pts for Biden, and giving Trump both IA and TX, today it is Biden 368 Electoral College votes, Trump 170 Let’s look at what happens if we tighten the race

Biden/Trump 53/47 (+6) – Trump gets to 219 (GA, NC, OH flip to Trump) 

Biden/Trump 52/48 (+4) – Trump to 230 (AZ flips to Trump)

Biden/Trump 51.5/48.5 (+3) – Trump to 250 (PA flips to Trump) 

Biden/Trump 51/49 (+2) – Trump to 260, maybe 289 (MN, maybe FL flip to Trump).  

Biden/Trump 50.5/49.5 (+1) – Trump to 293 (FL, NH flip to Trump)

 In 2016 Trump got 46% of the vote, and in a high turnout midterm in 2018, Trump/GOP received 44.8%.  For Trump to make this race competitive at this point he will have to make it a 2 point race and get all the way up to 49%, 3-4 pts higher than he was in the last two elections.  This would require him to gain millions of votes from people who have not voted for him before, even if he retained everyone who had voted for him and the GOP in the last two elections.  With historically high unemployment and deficits, COVID untamed, a President seemingly lost in a new and changing environment, a sure footed and smart Biden campaign, what do we really believe the chances of that kind of comeback are this year? 

Spend time with the 538 job approval tracker.  You will find that Trump has only been about 45/46 job approval with likely and registered voters for a day or two in his entire Presidency.  So to make the election competitive in this scenario, Trump will have to get to a job approval level that he has only had for a day or two in the last 3 ½ years, and a level of electoral support he has never come close to.  

These early state polls will change of course, as will the national landscape.  But part of what has made the Electoral College far more daunting for Trump than it was a few months ago is what appears to be significant recent slippage in FL and WI.  If those states remain where they are relative to the other states, this race is going to be very very hard for the President this year.   

We are excited to report to you that our new presentation, “With Democrats Things Get Better,” is the subject of a new Daily Beast column by noted author Mike Tomasky (for those who would like to see the presentation you find the dates of future showings and register here).

Tomasky writes: “Simon Rosenberg heads NDN, a liberal think tank and advocacy organization. He has spent years advising Democrats, presidents included, on how to talk about economic matters. Not long ago, he put together a little PowerPoint deck. It is fascinating. You need to know about it. The entire country needs to know about it.

The presentation compares how the economy has performed by various measures under Democratic and Republican administrations, going back to 1989. That means that it fairly compares 16 years of Democratic presidencies (Clinton and Obama) to 16 (almost) years of Republican presidencies (Bush, Bush, and Trump). It uses official government numbers, from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and so forth. There’s no cooking of any numbers. It’s just the facts.

And the facts are that it’s not even close. The economy does better—far better—when we have Democratic presidents. In terms of job creation, median income, health care, and yep, even the stock market, the economy does better—the American people do better—under Democratic presidents. By a mile.

“We’ve been making a version of this ‘Dems good, Reps not-so-much’ argument for a few years now, but decided to really lean into this year because the magnitude of Trump’s failures has just made the contrast that much more stark, and even more essential for Democrats to establish,” Rosenberg told me. Amen to that.”

Tomasky goes on to review some of the key slides and arguments from the deck, adding his own insights and observations.  Do read it all – it is a terrific and smart piece, and register for one of our future showings. Our next three will take place on Wednesday, June 24th, July 8th, and July 22nd. We are proud of this deck and are working hard to bring it to as many people we can in the months ahead. 

A big shout out to former NDNer Chris Taylor who contributed significantly to the deck, and current NDNer Georgia McLean who has worked hard these last few weeks keeping it current. Chris who did so much good work for us is now working on the staff of the very able Rep. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, and we are sure he's helping out that great office as much as did ours.

The data doesn’t lie. COVID here in the US, never tamed, is spreading again at too fast a rate in too many states for the US govt to pretend it isn’t happening or for it not to act. Because the federal government has done so little to combat COVID (allowing us to have infection rates up there with exemplars Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Sweden), there is much the President could do now to help the country re-open safely – support a national testing and tracing regime, start a big conversation about the need to mask and physically distance, challenge America’s young people to do their part and avoid risky behavior all would be a good place to start.  Our strategy for combatting COVID has failed; the cost to the US in lives, jobs, and our well-being has been immense; it is time now for the President to recognize the magnitude of his failure and course correct.

For all the early mistakes the President made, the most significant mistake he may have made has come in recent days – urging the country to re-open without having the proper tools and protocols in place to lessen the chance of a new surge. The President has time now to correct that mistake and stop asking the entire country to, in essence, sign a waiver absolving him for responsibility for what is happening. The easiest way to do this is for the President and his team to lead a conversation with the American people about the need to maintain physical distancing and mask. These are inexpensive solutions which if widely deployed, could do a great deal to contain the virus and allow us to live “new normal” lives without returning to lockdowns. The President’s attacks on masking and prudent measures by the states have been dangerous, profoundly stupid, and reckless. 

What remains so hard to understand is that with the President and his party seeing truly ruinous 2020 polling numbers, why isn’t the President changing course on COVID? He has clear evidence that the GOP governors who’ve been tough on COVID saw their job approval numbers skyrocket. He has a smart, clear, and well-trodden path to follow. Why, for the good of the nation and for his party, won’t he follow it?

At this point, given the very carnage we’ve seen, and the collapse of the GOP’s brand this spring, we are running out of charitable explanations for the President’s refusal to mount a national campaign to tame COVID. One should note the contrast of the President’s recent intense mobilization of the US military and other federal resources to combat a “terror threat" which didn’t exist to his dogged refusal to mount such an effort to combat the virus. The President didn’t leave our economic response to COVID to the states, or the response to his invented terror threat. Why he thinks it isn’t the responsibility of the federal government to lead a response to a pandemic which affects every American will be the stuff of discussions, books and seminars for a very long time – for it may be the single most destructive set of governing decisions in all of American history.   

Every Thursday NDN publishes its Thursday Poll Roundup, a deep dive into recent polling and political trends. You can sign up to receive it each week and feel free to review previous editions too. 

Short entry today as the trends we are seeing this week are continuations of ones we discussed at length in our last two Thursday Roundups (here and here). Bottom line - five months out, the numbers for the President and the GOP incumbents in the Senate are about as bad as they can be. A few nuggets from new polling this week that stood out: 

Big Biden Numbers - Biden up 12 in Michigan, 9 in Wisconsin, 4 in North Carolina, 2 in Ohio, Texas and Iowa tied. In 2016 Trump won Ohio by 8.6, Iowa by 9.6 and Texas by 9.2, 

Biden up 14 in new CNN poll (55/41), which interestingly almost exactly tracks 538's Trump job approval aggregate, which today stands at 41.8/55, minus 13.2. 

More Bad Senate News for McConnell – In a new poll taken by a right leaning firm, Leader McConnell trails Amy McGrath in Kentucky 40-41. Using publically available polls no Republican Senate incumbent in any of these 11 GOP held seats - AZ, CO, GA (2), IA, KS, KY, ME, MT, NC, SC - has a definitive lead, and none has a recent public poll showing them above 45. As of today, all 11 of these seats may be in play – an incredible 2020 development. 

The Protestors Are Winning the Argument - We touched on this in our Tuesday email, but there has been a dramatic shift in America over the past few weeks on attitudes towards race and policing. Review these analyses from the NYTimes and the WaPo for more, and we will be tracking these developments closely in the days ahead. 

In the coming weeks, we are going to return to some of the demographic and political analysis NDN is well known for, and share some of our recent work below to whet your appetite a bit. Pay particular attention to the reports below on the under 45 vote, and the accelerating deterioration of the GOP brand in the heavily Mexican-American parts of this US. 

On Wednesdays, be sure to catch our weekly look via Zoom at the 2020 elections and US politics. We do it every week at 2 pm ET, with alternating topics each week. The data is always fresh and current, so if you join us each week, you will always learn something new.

2020 Background Analyses

Americans Under 45 Are Breaking Hard Toward The Democrats - And For Good Reason- Among the most significant political developments of the Trump era is the dramatic shift of under 45 year old voters towards the Democrats. From 2000 to 2016, D margin w/under 45s was 6 points. In 2018 it was 25. 

Dems Have Already Won Back Voters In The Rust Belt. It's Trump Who Needs To Win Them Back Now- It is a myth that Trump's anti-immigrant and protectionist policies have made it difficult for Democrats to win in the Rust Belt in 2020. Trump is trailing badly there now raising questions about Trumpism itself has become a grand failure. 

Notes On The GOP's Erosion In The Southwest- The dramatic erosion of the GOP brand in the heavily Mexican-American parts of the country over the past two elections is one of the biggest stories in American politics. Trump's border extremism has cost the GOP dearly, and it hasn't kept the industrial north from slipping away. 

In All Important Florida, Democrats Lost Ground With Hispanic Voters- In a year when Democrats made gains with Hispanics across the nation, Florida Democrats saw their performance with Hispanics decline. Work has to be done to figure out why. 

$38 Million For Beto, And Why It Matters- Democrats have been raising a lot of money this cycle. This is not just about fear of Trump - it is about the broad adoption of a more authentic people based politics suited for the digital age championed by Dean, Obama, and yes, even Trump himself.

This is the seventh piece in NDN's new weekly polling round-up, published every Thursday. You can find previous weeks' analyses here.

NDN's 2020 Polling Roundup - As we’ve written in our recent 2020 Polling Roundups, NDN has never been a subscriber to the Trump has magical powers school of political analysis.  Without the help of Jill Stein, Russia and the Comey Letter, Clinton would have likely beaten Trump by 5-8 points in 2016.  Trump’s job approval has been minus 10 or worse for more days than all other Presidents in their first term combined since polling was invented.  He’s led his party to three consecutive disastrous elections (2017/18/19) and he got himself impeached for trying to cheat in a crude and ridiculous way in the 2020 elections.  This is not the record of a political mastermind.  

The President received only 46% of the vote in 2016 even with lots of help from Russia and the FBI, and his party only got to 44.8% in 2018 losing a very high turn out midterm 44.8 to 52.4 (8.6 pts).  As there will be no third party candidate this time, Trump will have to get to at least 48% to have a shot at winning the Electoral College this year, meaning he’ll  have to win 2-3% pts of the vote he HAS NEVER HAD to be competitive. With civil unrest, Great Depression level unemployment, a still yet quelled pandemic, and Putin lite law and order bluster, is this likely? We don’t think so. 

Let’s look at where things stand five months out from the 2020 election: 

Job Approval – Using 538’s excellent tracker, the President’s job approval is 42.7% favorable, 53.8% unfavorable, -11.1 pts. On Election Day 2018 it was 44/52.4, -8-4, on a day where he was beaten by 8.6 pts.  So the President is significantly lower today than he was in a very high turnout midterm where he only received 44.8% and lost by 8.6 pts. 

Congressional Generic – On Election Day 2016 Democrats led in 538’s Congressional Generic tracker by 1 point, 45/44, and on Election Day 2018 it was 50.7/42.0, almost 9 pts. Today Democrats lead 48.7/40.9, 8 points.  This question – your Congressional preference – suggests the overall structure of the 2020 election is far more hostile to Republicans than in 2016, and remarkably similar to the 2018 outcome.  

Party ID – We tend to put a lot of stock in this number, as it is the answer to the basic question of what Party do you current affiliate with.  We are going to do a bit more work on this in the coming weeks as not every poll reports this number, and it is not tracked the same among all polls.  But today we will use a single poll as a surrogate for an aggregate, one that has been in the middle of the pack of polls recently, the daily GSG/GBAO tracker.  Today it has Party ID at 49% Dem, 41% Republican, 8 pts.  

Trump Biden Head to Heads – Using Real Clear Politics’ tracker, the current average is 49.9% Biden, 42.1% Trump, 7.8 pts.  Two polls, Monmouth and ABC/WaPo had Biden’s lead in the double digits this week.  

The Electoral College – Assuming MI and PA go to Biden, Trump must win all three of the next tier – AZ, FL, WI - to win, while also holding on to all of the next tier – GA, IA, NC, OH, TX.  In recent polling Biden leads in every one of these states except for Iowa and Texas, which are functionally tied.  Fox News polls released yesterday had Biden up by 9 in Wisconsin (!!!!), 4 in Arizona and 2 in Ohio. Trump is far below where he wants to be right now.  

The NYTimes has quite a story today which reports on how Trump world is coming to terms with how badly the election is going for him right now.  And don’t forget that all those elections Dems won in 2018 in these states – from Congress to governorships and in state houses – will make the collective Democratic voice in these states much louder this year, helping blunt the traditionally powerful Trump noise machine.    

The Senate – In our analysis last week we noted that Republicans are not performing well in any of the 10 seats they are defending this cycle.  Most of their incumbents are in the high 30s and low 40s, disaster territory for an incumbent this late in the cycle. The only state where Rs are even hitting 45 now is GA, and in one recent poll Senator Purdue trailed Ossoff, and Senator Loeffler was at 32%! 

As Simon was quoted in the NYTimes: “The Republican brand seems depressed across the board,” Simon Rosenberg, a Democratic strategist and founder of the NDN, said in an interview. “A lot of time senators can insulate themselves from the vagaries of the national electorate, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this time.”

Key Takeaways - So putting all this together we see Republican incumbents for President and Senate now living at 41-42-43, and a margin across many different measures of 7-8-9 for the Democrats.  One can only find a poll or two taken in the past several months where ANY Republican in ANY competitive state is even at 45%.  Trump’s job approval is 42.7; his head to head w/Biden is 42.1; Party ID and Congressional Generic is 41; most incumbent GOP Senators are topping out at 42 right now.  When numbers line up like this, and it is not always the case in elections that they do, a clear structure has developed within the electorate, and that structure, that dynamic is as negative for GOP as any election we here at NDN can remember at this point in an election cycle.  

So for Trump to win he and his Party are going to have to travel from 41-42-43 today to 48-49 in November. That my friends is a very very heavy lift, and it is particularly difficult for what is in essence the incumbent party.  Looking back over the past generation of US politics, you will be hard pressed to find any incumbent in a Federal race who was able to come back and win from 41-42-43 this late in the cycle.  And as we said, we don’t believe that Trump has magical powers, can defy traditional politics physics. He has never broken 46% in a race, and he enters the summer with America more battered and challenged than perhaps in any time in the past 100 years.  

Where this election wants to be today is Biden winning 53-55 to 45-47, and the Senate flipping.  Where it will be five months from now we don’t know, but based on all this data we’ve reviewed with you we believe we are more likely to see a Democratic wave this fall than Republicans holding onto either the Presidency or Senate.    

We believe when we look back at this time in future years, we will view President Trump as having been both an incompetent President and political strategist; incompetent but also very very lucky. 

Notes On 2020 - The President’s defiance on masking is worth us discussing this morning.  The case for masks is a powerful one - they reduce the spread of the virus, are low cost, and are simple.  In poll after poll, support for wearing masks and other prudent physical distancing measures is overwhelming.  In a new Huffington Post poll released last week just on masking, 63% of Americans said the President and other elected officials should wear masks.  Only 7% said no.  So why is the President undermining the use of this powerful and simple tool to help us return to work?

The US government only ever had a few options on what to do about COVID, and what remains extraordinary is that the President to this day has essentially chosen to do none of them.  He could have initiated an early travel ban on China and Europe and, while he eventually adopted partial bans, they came far too late to stop the spread of the virus.  He refused to adopt a national stay at home strategy, leaving it to the states.  He’s refused to set up a national testing and tracing regime, something every other developed country in the world has in place and something that at some point America must do too if we hope to restart domestic and international travel (see this WaPo look at Germany’s tracing regime).  And now he’s undermining the wearing of masks in public.  From a public health standpoint it isn't all that different from recommending folks drink Clorox, or take hydroxychloroquine - it is dangerous quackery. 

It turns out that this lack of really doing anything to fight COVID has left America in rough shape.  We still have among the highest infection rates in the world, per capita, on par with countries like Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Brazil.  We are 35th in the world in per capita testing, and while that number is improving, it is possible the virus has spread here more than any other nation in the world, which means we still lag far behind in testing against the local spread of the virus. The hit our economy and workers have taken is far worse than other developed countries.  Former CDC Chief Scott Gottlieb said this weekend that COVID hospitalization rates are *increasing* in many states, including FL and GA, two of the fastest to re-open.  Fundamentally, the President has failed at job one - taming the virus - at an extraordinary cost to the nation. 

So despite very few states hitting the CDC’s recommended guidelines for re-opening, we are re-opening.  And re-opening means more interactions, more density, and probably for a time, more infections and spread.  Which is why if we are sending people back out into a world where the virus is still active, where our testing and tracing regimes still lag way behind, we should be asking people to wear masks, to protect themselves and others.  It’s simple.  And yet the President is refusing to do it; rather, he is mocking leaders like Joe Biden who are doing the right thing now. 

We are at the point in Trump’s Presidency where we really have to start asking hard questions about whether the President is still capable of understanding what he is doing.  His response to COVID has been among the greatest policy failures in our history.  He isn’t learning from what has gone wrong and making course corrections. He is doing things which seem designed to harm people, spread the virus, and slow our recovery.  And everything he is doing is unpopular.  49 of the 50 governors have higher approval ratings on COVID than the President, with many of the GOP Governors who have been the most aggressive at tackling COVID with the very highest ratings of all.   Only 7% believe he shouldn’t be wearing a mask.  His numbers have dropped in the past few weeks, and he is now well below where he was on Election Day 2018 when he lost that election by 8.6 points.  The Senate also seems to be slipping away from his grasp.  I was quoted in a smart NYTimes Senate analysis on Friday, saying  “The Republican brand seems depressed across the board.  A lot of time senators can insulate themselves from the vagaries of the national electorate, but that doesn’t seem to be happening this time. “

Also on Friday, referring to a new piece I'd written, the Washington Post wrote: “Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg urges his party to see Trump not as someone who possesses fearsome magical political powers, but as someone who’s losing, desperate and panicking.” 

If I were Mitch McConnell and House Leader McCarthy, I would do one thing now for the good of their party and the country - get the President to put on a damn mask, and ask everyone else in the country to join him in the days ahead.  The Republicans just have to stop being cowards, and step in here and help our great country tame this virus in the days ahead.   This war against masks, given all of Trump’s other failures, is dangerous anti-science lunacy, and the cries for it to end should be coming from all quarters now, with the loudest of all coming from the office of Mitch McConnell.  

May 27th Update - New polling from the Navigating Coronavirus project show how little support there is for Trump's hostility to masking - 78% want elected official to wear masks, 74% say they are "pro-mask" and 65% disapprove of the President for not wearing a mask.