Today’s Edition (June 3, 2021)

Reasons for hope.

          It would be easy for Biden to declare victory in the effort to contain the pandemic. Hospitalizations and deaths from Covid are plummeting. Per the White House, “[f]ifty-two percent of adults in the U.S. are fully vaccinated, including seventy-five percent of all seniors. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have achieved 50 percent of adults being fully vaccinated in their jurisdictions.” After a long and fractious slog through shutdowns, redoubling efforts to vaccinate unvaccinated Americans seems like a tedious and tiresome task heading into a summer of normalcy. But to Biden’s credit, he announced a “month-long effort to pull all the stops to free ourselves” from the coronavirus. See WhiteHouse.gov, “Remarks by President Biden on the COVID-19 Response and Vaccination Program.”

On Wednesday, Biden set another ambitious goal of achieving a 70% vaccination rate for adults by the 4th of July. To reach that goal, the Biden administration will offer free childcare, free transportation, 24-hour vaccination sites, a one-stop text number (438829) to identify walk-up vaccine availability, and a National Canvassing Weekend with thousands of volunteers knocking on doors in communities with low vaccination rates. Anheuser-Busch will offer a free beer to vaccinated adults if the U.S. reaches its 70% goal by July 4th. In addition, Vice President Harris and Dr. Jill Biden will embark on a national tour promoting Covid vaccinations.

          There is nothing radically new or different in Biden’s month-long effort to boost the national vaccination rate, but his dedication to completing the task is a sign of true leadership. Though Covid hospitalizations and deaths are low, they remain at a level that would have shocked the conscience in the early days of the pandemic. (There were 514 new deaths reported in the United States on June 1, 2021.) Biden is right not to give up and move to the next crisis. The ability of the Biden administration to set a goal and stick to a plan has saved hundreds of thousands of lives. If Biden achieves his goal of a 70% vaccination rate, the U.S. will be back to “nearly normal” six months after Biden’s inauguration. That will be a truly remarkable achievement—and gives us reason for hope in 2022 and 2024.

          Though containing the pandemic was never about politics, succeeding in doing so will inevitably redound to the political benefit of Joe Biden and Democrats nationally. Moreover, the coronavirus relief measures enacted by Biden through the reconciliation process have made a significant difference in the lives of tens of millions of Americans. See NYTimes, “Stimulus Checks Substantially Reduced Hardship, Study Shows.” Per the Times, a survey of government data suggests that the coronavirus relief payments reduced food insecurity, financial instability, and anxiety and depression. Those improvements coincided with distribution of coronavirus relief payments:

          While the economic rebound and other forms of aid no doubt also helped, the largest declines in measures of hardship coincided with the $600 checks that reached most people in January and the $1,400 checks mostly distributed in April.

 The analysis offers the fullest look at hardship reduction under the stimulus aid.

          Recall that no Republicans supported the American Rescue Plan, though many now seek to take credit for the payments that have improved their constituents’ lives. See ABC News (5/6/2021), “Republicans promote pandemic relief they voted against.” Just as Republicans made a political mistake in opposing the Affordable Care Act, they repeated that mistake in opposing Covid relief payments. Biden’s vision and ambition in passing the American Rescue Plan will give Democrats a solid record of achievement— and give us reason for hope in 2022 and 2024.

          Against this backdrop of good news for Biden and Democrats, there is reason to hope that the Trump cult is a dead-end movement that has locked the Republican Party into a downward demographic spiral. In an op-ed in the New York Times, Charlotte Alter examines recent surveys of young Republican voters. See NYTimes, “Elise Stefanik and the Young Republicans Who Sold Out Their Generation.” Ms. Alter describes recent studies by Pew Research that suggest that contrary to conventional wisdom, political views tend to remain stable as voters mature. That is bad news for the GOP, and especially for the Trump wing of the party. Nearly 75% of Americans under 50 years-old said they “strongly disapprove” of Trump (and, by extension, his wannabe successors). Worse for Trump, Republicans under 30 years-old were more than twice as likely than older Republicans “to believe that Mr. Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 election and roughly twice as likely to believe the party shouldn’t follow Mr. Trump’s lead on race issues.” To be blunt, the GOP is “aging out” and the next generation in the party does not ascribe to the central dogma that Trump won the 2020 election.

          So, for a day, let’s focus on Biden’s accomplishments and the GOP’s missteps in reading the future of their party and the mood of tens of millions of Americans affected by the pandemic. As always, we have every reason to be hopeful, but no reason to be complacent.

More signs that Trump is in trouble.

          As noted yesterday, Trump is peddling the notion that he will be reinstated as president in August 2021. On Tuesday, Maggie Haberman reported that Trump was pressuring right-wing news organizations to promote the lie that he won the 2020 election. Mediaite, “Maggie Haberman: Trump Promoting Stolen Election Narrative.” Trump may see his fantasy of being reinstated as president as the only way out of his increasingly sticky legal and financial problems. Trump’s hapless son, Eric, provided an unintentional insight into the Trump family's legal troubles when he told Fox News that he is receiving multiple subpoenas. Eric Trump said, “I’mon the receiving end. Every single day, my father gets subpoena after subpoena.”

          You don’t have to be a legal expert to know that receiving subpoenas every day is not a good sign. See Above the Law, “Eric Trump Whines About Avalanche Of Trump Subpoenas, Confirming Multiple Investigations Pending.” Trump’s legal troubles overlap with the financial distress of his flagship hotel in Washington, D.C. See Washington Post, “Donald Trump’s company puts D.C. hotel lease up for sale again.” And, to add insult to injury, Trump shut down his website, From the Desk of Donald Trump, because of dismal traffic at the site. See MSN, “No more 'From The Desk of Donald J. Trump': Former president shut down blog launched just a month ago.”

          Why this matters: As Trump is increasingly cornered by financial and legal troubles, his pursuit of wild escape scenarios will intensify. Becoming president again in the next few months is the only path Trump sees out of his desperate situation. In surrendering to that pipe dream, Trump is again taking guidance from the “My Pillow Guy,” Mike Lindell, and the “too-unhinged-for-the-Trump-campaign” lawyer Sidney Powell. Despite Trump’s troubles, he is the leading GOP contender for the 2024 presidential campaign. He will be so indefinitely, causing the GOP presidential contenders to remain in suspended animation—resenting and loathing Trump but fearing him above all else. Good. The GOP deserves Trump; they created him, have remained loyal to him, and will suffer defeat because of him. They deserve one another.

The News Bubble.

          The right-wing media is aflame with claims that Dr. Antony Fauci engaged in a “scientific cover-up” of the Covid pandemic. (The right-wing media has apparently forgotten that Trump tried to silence Fauci for saying pesky things like “the virus is highly contagious.”) Stories about “vaccine passports” and “forced vaccinations of children” continue to raise the specter of a socialist state. As always, V.P. Kamala Harris is the object of derision for everything she does—this time for her Naval Academy commencement speech, dubbed “the worst in history.” And the effort to establish a bipartisan commission on the “Capitol Riot” is “tearing our country apart.”

Concluding Thoughts.

          During a video call with readers today, one reader asked about my views of Trump’s presidential prospects for 2024. The reader said he did not believe Trump would be the GOP nominee and noted that many of the contenders would be worse than Trump. The reader is right. The odious Rep. Matt Gaetz recently announced a possible presidential bid in 2024. See Newsweek, “Matt Gaetz Plans to Run For President in 2024— But Only If Donald Trump Doesn't.” My view is that Donald Trump will be on the 2024 ballot regardless of whether he is the GOP nominee. Even if the GOP nominates someone other than Trump, the criterion for nomination will be adherence to views that are at least as Trumpian as those held by Trump himself. Given that most Americans do not like Trump—see the NYTimes’ op-ed, above—and given that any other nominee will be forced to defend every action ever taken by Trump, even a capable GOP nominee will be fatally tied to Trump. We can beat Trump again; we have done so twice before—and his unfavorable ratings are higher than ever. So, as always, there is reason for hope, but no reason for complacency.

          Talk to you tomorrow!