DWT posting:
The latest Ipsos poll for Reuters, shows him [Trump] with just 37% approving (+2% leaning towards approval) and 55% disapproving (and again with 2% leaning towards disapproval). Among registered voters, the poll shows Biden leading Trump 47-37%.
When it comes it his actions [sic] on confronting the pandemic, he's a dead man walking-- Only 17% strongly approve, while 44% strongly disapprove. And with the pandemic sweeping through Trump strongholds in Texas, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, South Carolina, Iowa and North Carolina and starting to come on strong in Oklahoma and Missouri, voters who "somewhat approve" and "lean" approve are going to increasingly move towards disapprove. The latest Georgia poll, for example, just came out from Fox News. Keeping in mind that Trump beat Hillary by over 5 points-- 50.44% to 45.35%-- the new poll must be panicking the Trump campaign. Biden is actually leading Trump 47-45%. When asked who will do a better job handling the coronavirus, Biden leads Trump by 4 points. Trump's overall disapproval is 51% with just 47% approving.
Yesterday, a Politico headline went right to the crux of the matter: A Sun Belt time bomb threatens Trump’s reelection. Natasha Korecki and Marc Caputo wrote that the explosion of COVID-19 cases in Sun Belt states is becoming another albatross for Trump's campaign and "Republican governors in Florida, Arizona and Texas followed Trump’s lead by quickly reopening their states while taking a lax approach to social distancing and mask-wearing. Now each of them is seeing skyrocketing coronavirus caseloads and rising hospitalizations, and Republican leaders are in retreat. It’s hard to overstate the gravity of the situation for Trump: Lose any one of the three states, and his reelection is all but doomed. Liberal outside groups and the Biden campaign have launched digital and TV ads in Florida, Arizona and Texas hitting Trump for allowing a second wave of coronavirus. The developments have buttressed Biden’s main argument against Trump: that he’s incapable of bringing stability or healing in a time of crisis... Trump’s campaign accuses Democrats of exploiting tragedy."
These are the Sunday --- Monday new cases and the (number of cases per million people) in these 4 states:
• Florida +8,530 (6,568 cases per million) --- 5,266 (8,814 cases per million)
• Texas +4,330 (5,283 cases per million) --- 6,135 (5,494 cases per million)
• Arizona +3,857 (10,154 cases per million) --- 3,079 (10,577 cases per millions)
• Georgia +2,225 (7,272 cases per million) --- 2,207 (7,480)
Korecki and Caputo summarized the situation in each state and certainly Florida and Arizona look dire for Trump at this point. Phoenix Congressman Rubin Gallego, they wrote, "expects hospitalizations and deaths to rise in the coming weeks in the state. 'Ballots drop in October. The president essentially has two months to try to turn this around in Arizona,' Gallego said. By then, 'What’s going to be on the TV is Covid-19.' In late March, Republican Gov. Doug Ducey issued an executive order barring local governments from requiring masks in public. Two weeks ago, Ducey reversed himself amid pressure from mayors, residents and health care professionals. As infections surged, Trump held a rally last week with thousands at a Phoenix mega-church, where photos showed the crowd sitting in close proximity and few wearing masks. Ducey brushed off calls to cancel the event. Days before, Phoenix required mask-wearing, but the city order was ignored. 'We’re going to protect people’s rights to assemble in an election year,' Ducey told reporters at a press conference last week, defending his decision to wait until after the Trump event to emphasize to all Arizonans to wear masks.[...]"
[links in original] It certainly looks like a Republican virus to me. In Republican-led sun belt states, (with many electoral college votes), governing decision-making puts risk into the entire nation because people travel into decently governed areas bringing their GOP risk loads, so that we all face risk from sun-belt GOP indecencies.
(If they stay home and ride around streets in their golf carts shouting, "White Power" at news gatherers without traveling north, it would be tolerable in the bulk of the US of A, but they travel to where you and I live.)
If the reported polling mood holds in the nation through November, "Republican virus" will be President Biden's problem, and while his faults are many, at least they do not include firing underlings who have the task of bringing bad news (such as informing of bounties allegedly paid for dead service members to a shoot-the-messenger Trump-child).
UPDATE: Re the above parenthetical, Politico, here.
_________FURTHER UPDATE________
Kissing the Blarney Stone? Republican style? Or just wishing it were so?
Strib carries a June 30, 2020, AP feed, "Fauci: U.S. faces possibility of 100,000 new coronavirus cases a day," stating in part:
The U.S. is “going in the wrong direction” with the coronavirus surging badly enough that Dr. Anthony Fauci told senators Tuesday some regions are putting the entire country at risk — just as schools and colleges are wrestling with how to safely reopen.
With about 40,000 new cases being reported a day, Fauci, the government’s top infectious disease expert, said he “would not be surprised if we go up to 100,000 a day if this does not turn around.”
“I am very concerned,” he told a hearing of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
Infections are rising rapidly mostly in parts of the West and South, and Fauci and other public health experts said Americans everywhere will have to start following key recommendations if they want to get back to more normal activities like going to school.
“We’ve got to get the message out that we are all in this together,” by wearing masks in public and keeping out of crowds, said Fauci, infectious disease chief at the National Institutes of Health.
Connect the dots, he told senators: When and how school buildings can reopen will vary depending on how widely the coronavirus is spreading locally.
[...] Lawmakers also pressed for what Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, the committee’s top Democrat, called a national vaccine plan — to be sure the race for the COVID-19 vaccine ends with shots that really are safe, truly protect and are available to all Americans who want, one.
“We can’t take for granted this process will be free of political influence,” Murray said. She cited how President Donald Trump promoted a malaria drug as a COVID-19 treatment that ultimately was found to be risky and ineffective.
[...] FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said vaccine makers also must test their shots in diverse populations, including minorities, the elderly, pregnant women and those with chronic health problems.
“We will not cut corners in our decision-making,” Hahn told senators.
[...] For now, the committee’s leading Republican stressed wearing a mask -- and said Trump, who notoriously shuns them, needs to start because politics is getting in the way of protecting the American people.
“The stakes are too high for the political debate about pro-Trump, anti-Trump masks to continue,” said Sen. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, who chaired Tuesday’s hearing.
Alexander said he had to self-quarantine after a staff member tested positive for the virus but that he personally was protected because his staffer was wearing a mask.
“The president has plenty of admirers. They would follow his lead,” Alexander said. “The stakes are too high” to continue that fight.
Compare an opinion and argument by a Minnesota Republican blogger:
The COVID emergency is behind us
June 29th, 2020
It’s time for the legislature, especially the DFL House, to strip Gov. Walz of his peacetime emergency powers. It’s time because the COVID crisis doesn’t exist anymore. We know that thanks to this article, which reports “Sunday, the Minnesota Department of Health reported there are 523 new cases that have tested positive for COVID-19, creating a total of 35,549 cases in the state. MDH reports there are 1,425 total deaths, with eight additional deaths reported Sunday.”
Sunday morning, At Issue With Tom Hauser reported that there were 1,411 COVIDS as of Friday’s report. Further, Hauser reported that Friday’s report marked the sixth straight day of single-digit deaths. That streak has now hit 8 straight days. A month ago, Minnesota was averaging 25-30 COVID deaths per day.
It’s clear that there isn’t much to be worried about with COVID if you don’t have underlying health issues or if you’re living in a long-term care facility. If you’re 50 or younger and don’t have diabetes or respiratory problems, this just isn’t a problem.
[...] The bottom line is simple. The COVID emergency doesn’t exist anymore. More than a week straight of single-digit deaths proves that. Gov. Walz shouldn’t have special authority for a situation that might or might not happen. The definition of emergency is “a sudden, urgent, usually unexpected occurrence or occasion requiring immediate action” or “a state, especially of need for help or relief, created by some unexpected event.”
It’s inconceivable that Minnesota’s Constitution would give a governor such sweeping authority to prepare for an event that might not happen.
Wishful thinking is fine enough, but caution is prudent, and the Minnesota blogger ignores what medical experts expects. In a frenzy to throw stones at political caution, one day's data does not prove anything, especially with Republicans in the South and West being irresponsible, with people there at greatest risk of such unsound actions, but with people moving around to where the dunces in one part of the nation imperil us all. And, most importantly, a State with better precautions should not be told to downgrade caution because Trump wants to be reelected and Republicans in Minnesota want to snipe at pandemic management wisdom's having made Minnesota better than Texas or Arizona or Florida. The idea we should sink to the least cautious levels can be argued, and has been, but reality and sound medical advice seem to carry the day.
If a sound projection of 100,000 infections per day might follow established levels of 40,000 per day, the blogger's headline misstates truth. That Trump mishandled the pandemic cannot be erased by saying, "It's all over . . ." when, as a fact, it is not.
Advocacy has reasonable limits. Or should have.
FURTHER: Strib: "Daily coronavirus cases in U.S. at all time high; numbers rise in 40 of 50 states - By JAKE COYLE , TERRY SPENCER and DAVID RISING Associated Press July 2, 2020 — 12:38pm"
That Republican blogger thinks the fat lady sang. Not so. Not at all. And Yogi Berra on Wagner Ring operas noted for US all,
"It ain't over 'til the fat lady sings."
That Republican blogger is blowing smoke. Imitating Trump is a questionable tactic these days.