Month: June 2020

Nicole Galloway, the State Auditor of Missouri, is running for governor. She hired the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group to poll her race and they tested the Biden-Trump contest as part of their survey. In the business, this is called a “partisan poll” because it’s paid for by a candidate. One advantage to a partisan poll is that a candidate is not compelled to release the data if they don’t like the results. Some polling outfits are not above producing the results their clients wants to see, and a good (even if dishonest) poll can give a struggling campaign some juice and help them attract volunteers, raise money, and get free media attention.  For these reasons, you should always be skeptical of partisan polls, especially when they produce startling headlines.

The Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group survey isn’t particularly great news for Auditor Galloway. She has a 40 percent to 47 percent deficit against incumbent Republican governor Mike Parsons. The pollsters helpfully characterize this as “closing the gap” and state that Parson’s lead has been”slashed in half over the past seventeen months.”

FiveThirtyEight gives the Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group a middling B/C grade and says they have a D+1.3 mean-reverted bias. By contrast, the Trafalgar Group that does polling for Trump receives a C- rating and a R+0.9 mean-reverted bias. The best way to interpret this is that the Galloway poll is likely to be too optimistic for the Democrats.

So, with that caveat in mind, the survey found that Joe Biden is leading Donald Trump in Missouri by a 47 percent to 45 percent margin. The pollsters insist this “is consistent with national polls showing a double-digit Biden lead and state polls showing Biden ahead in other states Donald Trump won in 2016.” But it’s really not consistent with that. Trump won Missouri in 2016 by a thunderous 56.4 percent to 37.9 percent margin. Polls showing Biden outperforming Clinton by eight-to-ten points nationally and in key battleground states would not support a swing of this magnitude in Missouri. But, when we take the pro-Democratic bias of the pollster into account, we can see how it could bring Missouri into the competitive range.

That’s the real takeaway from these results. It’s unlikely that Biden is actually leading in Missouri but he could be approaching parity. And, with the trajectory things are on, that’s a recipe for eventually carrying the state. I think this is just one more date point that indicates that things are beginning to tilt heavily against Trump. Combined with a mid-June poll showing Biden down by two points in Arkansas and a recent Fox News poll showing him ahead by one point in Texas, we’re seeing a crumbling of the red wall in places where few people expected a competitive race.

Look what happens when you put an absolutely malicious and blithering idiot in charge of your country:

The coronavirus crisis has caused a dramatic deterioration in the European public perception of the US, extensive new polling reveals.

More than 60% of respondents in Germany, France, Spain, Denmark and Portugal said they had lost trust in the United States as a global leader.

A report based on the survey’s findings argues that the shock of the pandemic has “traumatised” European citizens, leaving them feeling “alone and vulnerable”.

In almost every country surveyed, a majority of people said their perception of the US had deteriorated since the outbreak. Negative attitudes of the US were most marked in Denmark (71%) Portugal (70%), France (68%), Germany (65%) and Spain (64%). In France, 46% and in Germany 42% said their view of the US had worsened “a lot” during the pandemic.

Americans probably don’t realize how much Europeans have traditionally relied upon the United States, nor how important this was to their sense of overall well-being and security. Frankly, many Europeans probably didn’t fully understand this about themselves until they were forced to concede that we’ve become an unreliable basket case.

A new president will help, but a lot of this damage will remain at least as long as the current generations are alive. It may not seem all that important that our allies respect us and seek our protection, but their main alternative is Vladimir Putin.

Speculation that President Trump may pull a Lyndon Johnson and decline to seek a second term is beginning to percolate. To understand why, let’s turn to a guy best known for making drunk cable news appearances:

“Under the current trajectory, President Trump is on the precipice of one of the worst electoral defeats in modern presidential elections and the worst historically for an incumbent president,” said former Trump political adviser Sam Nunberg, who remains a supporter.

Nunberg pointed to national polls released by CNBC and New York Times/Siena over the past week showing Trump receiving below 40 percent against Biden. If Trump’s numbers erode to 35 percentage points over the next two weeks, Nunberg added, “He’s going to be facing realistically a 400-plus electoral vote loss and the president would need to strongly reconsider whether he wants to continue to run as the Republican presidential nominee.”

Recent surveys have Joe Biden leading by one point in Texas and pulling ahead in Georgia, so Nunberg isn’t just raving in his usual way. He spoke of the “trajectory,” and if Trump can’t bend the current curve, his polls are going to look devastatingly bad in a couple of weeks, and certainly before he is supposed to accept the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in Jacksonville.

Actually, the Republican convention is looking increasingly like a fate worse than death for the president. As Dave Brooks writes for Billboard, the venue management company ASG Global that handled Trump’s Tulsa rally is also responsible for running events at the VyStar Veterans Memorial Arena in Jacksonville. They are furious with Trump’s campaign.

The company asked the White House for a detailed security and social distancing plan for Tulsa and received nothing. When they put stickers on alternating chairs telling people not to sit there, campaign staffers went around and peeled those stickers off. Several of those staffers actually had COVID-19 and they were not following basic protocols about maintaining six feet of distance or wearing masks. After the event, the Tulsa mayor had the temerity to say that he would have been okay with it if ASG Global simply refused to serve as the host. There’s a real chance that they will refuse to put their employees at risk again in Jacksonville. At a minimum, they’re going to make demands that will undermine the whole point of moving the convention from Charlotte, North Carolina. Trump isn’t getting a normal looking crowd.

In any case, the coronavirus has now erupted throughout the South, and particularly in Florida, making it unlikely that a bunch of septuagenarian and octogenarian delegates will want to travel there by plane. Most residents don’t want them to come anyway, and it’s unclear if the hotels will be welcoming.

Why would Trump want to be humiliated in this fashion? Why would anyone want to show up and sing his praises after he’s begun supporting “white power” and shooting peaceful protesters on Twitter?

Wouldn’t it be best to just call the whole thing off?

It’s not as crazy of an idea as it sounds, but there’s plenty of preparation going on in the other direction, with William Barr working overtime to use the Justice Department as an organ of Trump’s reelection effort. We’ve seen dry runs on limiting urban polling stations in Georgia and Kentucky, and Trump’s clearly still banking on covert Russian assistance. If he stays in, he’s going to fight dirty on every front.

What’s clear is that under Trump’s leadership, nothing is going to get better between now and November. Schools won’t reopen or will quickly regret their decision to do so, the economy is going to get worse, and America will continue to stick out like a sore thumb as having the absolute worst response in the world to the viral pandemic. Certainly, Trump isn’t going to become some kind of stable genius. He will continue to outrage and offend in ways that don’t fit the current moment.

He might just call it quits. He certainly should.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be starting with a new painting of the Grand Canyon. The photo that I’m using (my own from a recent visit) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas.

I started with my usual grid and pencil sketch. Not a difficult sketch but it helps to place various elements in their appropriate places. I have outlined things in blue as a start.

The current state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

I almost never write about bills that pass in the House of Representatives which have no prospect of being taken up by the Senate, let alone signed into law by the president. I’m making an exception for the vote on Thursday to make the District of Columbia into a state.

[Del. Eleanor Holmes] Norton’s bill, H.R. 51, would shrink the seat of the federal government to a two-square-mile enclave, including the White House, Capitol Hill, the Supreme Court and other federal buildings, which would remain under congressional control.

The rest of the District would become known as the State of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, named for abolitionist Frederick Douglass, who was born a slave on the Eastern Shore of Maryland and later lived in Anacostia.

I guess people would still call it “DC” to distinguish it from Washington State on the Pacific coast, but the “DC” would no longer stand for “District of Columbia”. It’s a cool idea even if it kind of reminds be of the way that the Los Angeles Angels become the California Angels before they turned into the Anaheim Angels and finally became the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Every Democrat voted for the bill with the exception of Collin Peterson of Minnesota, who represents a decidedly pro-Trump district on the Canadian border. No Republicans voted for it because they know it would mean two extra Democratic votes in the Senate, probably in perpetuity. I understand that political parties are not organized to do deliberate political harm to themselves, but there is a compelling moral case that the citizens of our nation’s capital should have the same representation in Congress as the citizens our fifty states.

Unfortunately, if this bill is ever to become law, it’s going to have to be done through brute force, not bipartisan consensus.

If President Trump seems resigned to losing November’s election, he has good reason. The strategy he is pursuing–and it’s generous to call it a strategy–is premised on the idea that he is going to lose. His own advisers acknowledge that there are very few people who can be persuaded to vote for him, and his aim therefore is to do whatever he can to hold his strong supporters while reducing the overall level of turnout.

Trump’s team feels confident that approximately 40% of the electorate supports him and notes his approval rating has remained unusually stable during his term. The president’s campaign advisers believe it comes down to getting a bigger proportion of the smaller group of people who love Trump to turn out than the larger group of voters who express tepid support for Biden.

Some people realize this is not going to work, but when they offer alternative strategies they just sound like morons:

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of Trump’s closest allies in Congress, said Trump can win with “a little more message discipline” and a focus on policies that separate him and Biden.

“Just make it more about policy and less about your personality,” Graham told reporters.

Asking Trump to stop being a narcissist is some kind of psychiatric malpractice, since a narcissist isn’t free to think about other people. Asking him to talk policy is laughable. And to ask him to debate policy with a man who has spent a lifetime in the Senate and White House is a suicide mission. Lindsey Graham might as well advise Trump levitate while farting firecrackers.

His advisers are too optimistic in any case, since Trump has fallen below 40 percent in several recent national surveys, and in many new battleground state polls. Fox News now has him down by a point in Texas. If you’re being honest, there’s no reason to see the present as some nadir or low-water mark for Trump. There’s virtually no reason to think he’ll suddenly become a more effective crisis manager or that the current crises are about to lessen in their severity. If he’s down in Texas today, he’s likely to lose there. Hoping for some miracle on Covid-19 is not a medical or a political strategy, and it’s clear that the outbreak is as bad today as it has been at any point so far. This is going to prolong and deepen the economic damage.

Trump seems to have realized this, which is why he said on Wednesday that Biden “is going to be president because some people don’t love me.” For once, he’s probably right.

Hi photo lovers.

We are overdue for a new foto flog. I really haven’t been out the way I normally would be, so fresh images are a bit harder to come by. This time, the featured photo is one I took around the Arkansas River not far from the Trail of Tears memorial that was washed away in last year’s flooding. I have a few more from this set that turned out okay.

I am still using my same equipment, and am no professional. If you are an avid photographer, regardless of your skills and professional experience, you are in good company here. Booman Tribune was blessed with very talented photographers in the past. At Progress Pond, we seem to have a few talented photographers now, a few of whom seem to be lurking I suppose.

I have been using an LG v40 ThinQ for the last year. It seems to serve me well, now going on its second year. Occasionally I get to use my old 35 mm, but one of my daughters seems to have commandeered it. In the next year or two I will probably have to go through the whole smart phone purchasing process again. I never look forward to that. I am curious about the cameras on other smartphone models. I now have a daughter using an iPhone 8 (what we could afford). She seems happy with the photo quality. Always curious to get input on smartphone camera quality, as that is one of the variables that I weigh when I do purchase one of those contraptions.

This series of posts is in honor of a number of our ancestors. At one point, there were some seriously great photographers who graced Booman Tribune with their work. They are all now long gone. I am the one who carries the torch. I keep this going because I know that one day I too will be gone, and I really want the work that was started long ago to continue, rather than fade away with me. If I see that I am able to incite a few others to fill posts like these with photos, then I will be truly grateful. In the meantime, enjoy the photos, and I am sure between Booman and myself we can pass along quite a bit of knowledge about the photo flog series from its inception back during the Booman Tribune days.

Since this post usually runs only a day, I will likely keep it up for a while. Please share your work. I am convinced that us amateurs are extremely talented. You will get nothing but love and support here. I mean that. Also, when I say that you don’t have to be a photography pro, I mean that as well. I am an amateur. This is my hobby. This is my passion. I keep these posts going only because they are a passion. If they were not, I would have given up a long time ago. My preference is to never give up.

Peace.

I get annoyed when the media perpetuate the idea that Joe Biden is hiding in his “basement” or his “cellar” or a “bunker.” He’s a 77-year-old man living in the midst of a global pandemic that targets the elderly and takes their lives. What Biden is doing is spending most of his time at his rather nice suburban home. It’s safer for him but also for his staff and his security detail.

But, as annoying as this narrative is, it’s Trump who carries the #BunkerBoy hashtag around like an anvil. That too, is unfair, since the right thing to do when the Secret Service asks you to head for the bomb shelter is to head for the bomb shelter.

Marc Caputo and Christopher Cadelago of Politico say that Democrats are “warming” to Biden’s “bunker strategy.” It would be a lot more accurate to say that Democrats have noticed that Biden is surging to a gigantic lead in both the national and the battleground polls. It’s possible to find cranks who insist he should be leading by more, but when the headlines say Biden is ahead by eleven points in Wisconsin and nine in North Carolina, it’s hard to be a convincing critic of his strategy.

There isn’t much to question anyway. He could have followed the Andrew Cuomo model and held dueling press conferences with the president, but that was a terrible idea and was rejected for obvious reasons. Biden doesn’t have access to all the data and cannot command the appearance of Anthony Fauci or Deborah Birx. Conducting a press conference by Zoom is never going to look as good as an appearance at the White House. Unlike Cuomo, Biden can’t actually make any command decisions, so all he’d be doing is trolling the president. Besides, Trump’s coronavirus briefings were completely self-injurious, and why would Biden want to distract attention from them?

It’s an article of faith on the right and among Trump’s campaign strategists that Biden is past his sell-by date and will make verbal gaffes and otherwise show his age if he spends more time talking to the press. But it’s Trump who struggles to drink a glass of water and walk down a slight incline in leather-soled shoes. Biden hasn’t suggested that we nuke a hurricane or publicly pondered why antibiotics won’t kill a virus. Everything Trump does seems to backfire, and all the bad things he wants people to believe about Biden, they are increasingly believing about him.

Biden isn’t hiding in a bunker, but he’s winning this campaign. Of course Democrats are okay with that.

With only Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Angus King of Maine,  and Doug Jones of Alabama crossing the aisle to support a failed cloture vote, the Senate Republicans’ police reform bill was successfully filibustered by the Democrats. This will allow the Republicans to argue that they wanted to do something but their opponents wouldn’t allow it, and this will be true in the narrowest technical sense.

The GOP is getting a major boost by the headline writers at the Washington Post (Senate Democrats block GOP policing bill, stalling efforts to change law enforcement practices) while the New York Times does a better job (Senate Democrats Block G.O.P. Police Bill, Calling It ‘Inadequate’).

“Inadequate” is putting it mildly. Just compare what the Republicans were offering in the Senate to what the House Democrats are proposing:

The Republican bill would encourage state and local police departments to change their practices, including penalizing departments that do not require the use of body cameras and limiting the use of chokeholds. It would not alter the qualified immunity doctrine that shields officers from lawsuits or place new federal restrictions on the use of lethal force.

The measure that the House will consider on Thursday, the most aggressive intervention into policing that lawmakers have proposed in recent memory, would in effect eliminate qualified immunity, make it easier to track and prosecute police misconduct, restrict the use of lethal force and aim to force departments to eliminate the use of chokeholds.

The way to do this is to mark up a bill in the Senate Judiciary Committee where all members are allowed to introduce amendments, rather than bringing a piece of shit bill to the floor that has no prior input from Democrats. Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow this is what caused the Democrats to shut down the process. Things might have been different if the Democrats could put any trust in McConnell to keep his word on how the procedure would play out, but that ship sailed a long time ago.

The truth is, the GOP is not going to pass a bill that is opposed by police unions in an election year, so their whole strategy is based on finding a way to blame Democrats for their own inaction. They’ll have a modest amount of success with this gambit, but it won’t change that the public is furious with the police and their defenders, and having their back right now is not a political winner. So, really, the Democrats don’t have much incentive to cave on this. The issues can be addressed to their satisfaction or they can remain unresolved and a potent weapon in their politicking arsenal.

The Republicans could try doing the popular thing for once, but they prefer to win in other ways than having the most public support.