Republicans Nominate 'Florida Woman'

Over the past couple of years, the hashtags #FloridaMan and #FloridaWoman have become an internet staple. The phrases are often found in bizarre news stories with titles such as “Florida woman who tried to kiss strangers calls 911 about lack of social distancing” and “Florida woman arrested after attempting to burn down former home with blow torch.” While I hate to denigrate an entire state with the Florida woman stereotype, last night Republican voters in Florida nominated a stereotypical example of a Florida woman to Congress. As Dave Barry, a Florida man himself, used to protest, I am not making this up.

Last night, the Republican voters of Florida’s 21st congressional district nominated Laura Loomer, a longtime fringe right conspiracy theorist and anti-Muslim bigot to challenge Democrat Rep. Lois Frankel. You may remember Loomer from 2019 when she handcuffed herself to the Twitter office building in New York City after being banned from the social media platform after she, in Buzzfeed’s description, “tweeted a series of anti-Muslim falsehoods about Ilhan Omar.”

President Trump praised Loomer in a tweet after her primary victory last night. She was also supported by none other than Roger Stone and alt-right idols Milo Yiannopoulos and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes per USA Today.

Loomer has a long and disturbing record of activism and attention-seeking. In 2017, she gained notoriety after her arrest for disrupting an anti-Trump version of “Julius Caesar” in New York’s Central Park. There are indications that the incident may have been both a publicity stunt and an attempt to cash in on a “FreeLaura” website. In 2018, she came into her own as a professional provocateur after she disrupted several events including the trial of the Pulse nightclub murderer’s wife, a promotional event for James Comey’s book, and Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s congressional testimony.

In 2019, Loomer jumped fences at both Nancy Pelosi’s house and the California governor’s mansion to protest immigration policy. Ironically, the activist was heard to scream that walls work after hopping Pelosi’s fence to trespass on her property in Napa. Trespassing at the governor’s mansion resulted in another arrest.

Loomer also has a history of spreading conspiracy theories. She “investigated” the Parkland shootings for Infowars, advanced conspiracy theories about the Las Vegas massacre, and claimed that the 2018 Florida pipe bombings by a Trump supporter were a “false flag.” She also tried to paint a right-wing bombmaker arrested in South Dakota in 2018 as an Antifa member.

In addition to her Twitter ban, Loomer has been kicked off of Paypal, GoFundMe, and Venmo. She was also banned from Uber and Lyft after tagging the companies in a tweetstorm in which she called for the creation of a “non Islamic” [sic] rideshare app “because I never want to support another Islamic immigrant driver.”

Loomer’s Twitter ban occurred in November 2018 after another rant in which she called Rep. Omar “anti Jewish” [sic] and described Islam as a religion in which “homosexuals are oppressed” and “women are abused” and “forced to wear the hijab.” Twitter called the comments a violation of is rules of conduct but Loomer defended her words.

“Everything I said is 100 percent true and factual. It’s not malicious, it’s not mean, it’s not hateful,” Loomer said, quoted by NBC News.

Loomer’s nomination comes on the heels of QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene’s primary win in Georgia. Greene also tweeted her congratulations to Loomer.

Unlike Greene, who faces no serious opposition from Democrats in the general election, Loomer will face a tough campaign. Democrats have represented the 21st district since 2013 and Hillary Clinton won the district by 20 points in 2016. Republicans should breathe a sigh of relief that Loomer, unlike Greene, won’t spend the next two years saying and doing embarrassing things as a Republican elected official.

Still, the now-established pattern of Republican voters nominating radical fringe activists as mainstream candidates represents a disturbing trend for a party that has become enamored with and given over to the conspiracy fringe. For the past four years, Republicans have lurched from one conspiracy to the next including the Deep State, the belief that the FBI concocted the Russia hoax, QAnon, and the belief that pandemic is an attempt to “get” Trump. But Republican conspiracies go back even further. Before Trump, there was Obama’s birth certificate and the belief that he was a closet Muslim as well as Jade Helm and the idea that RINO Republicans were a fifth column that was selling out conservatives.

It is the growing conspiracy wing of the party that propelled Donald Trump to the nomination (when traditional Republicans split the vote of the majority opposed to Trump). Trump’s increasing hold on the party and the mainstreaming of the conspiracy theories has made candidates like Loomer and Greene acceptable.

In reality, I suspect that it wasn’t despite Loomer’s history that she won her primary but because of it. As with Trump, many Republicans assume that, if the media is against them, they must be doing something right, so attempts to de-platform the nuts give them more credibility with the tinfoil hat base.

For me, a major (but not the only) stumbling block to voting Republican these days is the party’s slide into conspiracy madness. That includes a denial of the seriousness of the pandemic. Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene are not in my district but the Republican acceptance of the pair and their far-out beliefs taints the entire party.

 Originally published on The Resurgent

Florida Mandates School Reopenings

There is a nationwide debate on whether students should return to school this fall in the midst of the pandemic. The question is all the more difficult to answer because the curve of virus cases had seemed to be flattened a few weeks ago, but now is surging higher once again. In Florida, however, the decision has already been made. Schools will reopen in August for all students.

Tallahassee’s WTXL reports that Florida Education Commissioner Richard Corcoran has issued an Executive Order that mandates that all of Florida’s public K-12 schools will reopen in August. The order requires that schools open for all students for five days per week and provide all required services.

“Upon reopening in August, all school boards and charter school governing boards must open brick and mortar schools at least five days per week for all students, subject to advice and orders of the Florida Department of Health, local departments of health, Executive Order 20-149 and subsequent executive orders,” Corcoran said in the order, which also mandates that schools provide “the full array of services that are required by law so that families who wish to educate their children in a brick and mortar school have the opportunity to do so.”

The full text of the order is available on the Florida DOE website here.

The Executive Order came almost simultaneously with a tweet from President Trump that succinctly exclaimed, “Schools must reopen in the fall!” The move also came on a day in which Florida reported 7,361 new cases and three deaths. The state not only has an increasing number of cases but an increasing rate of positive tests.

While many will applaud Florida’s move to mandate that kids get back to school, in a pandemic whose effects vary greatly by region, a one-size-fits-all solution from state governments makes as little sense as a one-size-fits-all solution from the federal government. COVID-19 has so far hit urban areas much harder than rural areas. Different approaches to localities that are subject to different levels of risk and different rates of infection would seem an appropriate solution.

For example, Miami has been hard-hit by the pandemic. Dade County was responsible for 28 percent of Florida’s new cases yesterday. The situation is deemed to be so serious there that Miami Mayor Carlos Gimenez issued a new order this week closing dining rooms and bars beginning on Wednesday. The Sun-Sentinel reports that Broward and Palm Beach Counties may soon make similar moves.

On the other hand, rural Okeechobee County in central Florida reported only 12 new cases on July 6, 0.001 percent of the state total. The two counties obviously are having different experiences of the pandemic. It stands to reason that their responses could be different.

Dr. Fauci acknowledged this as well. Speaking to CNBC last week, Fauci said, “When you’re talking about getting back to a degree of normality and school openings and things like that, it’s always related to the level of activity of the virus.” 

Fauci noted that the question of whether schools should reopen had “a bit of a complicated answer, because the United States is a large country.”

One size does not fit all.

The seriousness of whether to reopen is underscored by the story of Carsyn Leigh Davis, a 17-year-old girl from Fort Myers, Florida who died after attending a church party with about 100 other youths. Masks were not worn at the party and social distancing was not enforced. To make matters worse, Carsyn, who was immunocompromised due to childhood cancer and other health issues, was not taken to the hospital for almost a week after showing symptoms of Coronavirus. Instead, her parents treated her at home with hydroxychloroquine. She died 13 days after the party.

There are loopholes in the Florida mandate. The Order contains an exception that makes it “subject to advice and orders of the Florida Department of Health [and] local departments of health” as well as gubernatorial orders. While local school boards cannot unilaterally decide to keep their schools closed or turn to online classes, they can do so if the local health department or government decides that in-person classes are dangerous.

The Order also does not prohibit online classes or mandate attendance. The Order stipulates that schools may provide “live synchronous or synchronous instruction with the same curriculum as in-person instruction and the ability to interact with a student’s teacher and peers as approved by the Commissioner of Education.” The Order does not address how schools should handle immunocompromised students (or teachers) or parents who are concerned about the health risks of sending their children back to school in the midst of a pandemic.

One of the keys to public health and safety in the midst of a pandemic is flexibility. Corcoran’s Executive Order clearly communicates a preference from the state government that schools reopen for in-person classes next month, but it does leave loopholes for local governments and concerned parents to opt out. Given Florida’s state of rising Coronavirus cases, those exemptions should be more explicit and local school boards should be given more autonomy to decide what is best for their students and faculty.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Fox News Poll Shows Trump Trailing In Swing States

Three new Fox News polls sampled voters in the swing states of Arizona, Ohio, and Wisconsin. The news in all three states was not good for the president. Mr. Trump, who won all three states in 2016, now trails Joe Biden in each case.

In the Arizona poll, the president trails his Democratic challenger by a 42-46 margin. On the issues, the economy was the only area in which Trump scored better than Biden (by 48-41 percent). Shockingly, Biden even edged out Trump on immigration in this border state by one percentage point. Trump’s net approval rating in Arizona was negative-six points.

The poll also showed that Arizona is a likely spot for a Senate pick-up for Democrats. The poll showed Republican incumbent Martha McSally trailing Democrat Mark Kelly by 13 points.

In Ohio, which has seemed increasingly Republican, the Fox poll showed Biden with a two-point lead (45-43 percent). This is well within the 3.5-point margin of error for the poll. In Ohio, Trump’s 50-percent approval rating gave him a net approval of two points.

Moving to Wisconsin, the poll found Trump trailing Biden by nine points (40-49 percent). The president’s net approval in the state was negative-nine points, closely mirroring the difference in the head-to-head matchup.

President Trump’s poor response to the three crises of Coronavirus, the recession, and the race riots seemed to be driving much of the opposition to his re-election. While Trump scored best on the economy in all three states, Biden rated better on race relations and Coronavirus in all three cases. On immigration, the only other issue tested, Biden was preferred in Arizona (which was a statistical tie on the question) and Wisconsin. Ohio voters liked Trump’s approach to immigration.

As I frequently point out, individual polls are a single data point and should be treated with caution. There are also additional swing states to consider. In addition to the three surveyed by Fox News, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are likely battleground states this year. For a more complete look at polling in all seven swing states, all of which were won by Trump in 2016, here is a rundown based on Real Clear Politics averages:

Arizona: Biden leads by 2.8 points

Florida: Biden leads by 3.4 points

Michigan: Biden leads by 4.2 points

North Carolina: Biden leads by 0.8 points

Ohio: Biden leads by 1.0 point

Pennsylvania: Biden leads by four points [As a caveat, Trump held a four point lead in the only May poll, but Biden has led in every other recent poll.]

Wisconsin: Biden leads by 3.4 percent

Based on these polling averages and assuming that the tossup states of North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania go to Trump, Joe Biden would win the electoral vote by 288-250 if the election were held today.

I frequently hear from Trump supporters who are skeptical of all polls since polling pointed toward a Hillary Clinton victory in 2016. In most cases, the surprise states of 2016 were polling within the margin of error by Election Day, and the final Electoral College result hinged on about 70,000 votes. It is whistling past the graveyard to assume that Donald Trump can repeat that performance this year. If Biden still leads in all swing states in November, Trump will have to defy the odds and run the table to keep his job.

Increasingly, the polling for 2020 is not close. On the contrary, more and more red states seem to be moving towards battleground status. For example, the Real Clear Politics average shows Trump only holding a two-point lead in Texas. Likewise, Arizona used to be reliably Republican.

The polling does not predict with certainty that Trump will lose in November, but it is a warning sign that his re-election campaign is in trouble. To turn the tide, the president must change his image, but he seems incapable of doing so.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Republican Governors Gamble On Reopening Early

The pandemic has become somewhat of a partisan issue. Many Republican states are reopening early while Democratic states are playing it cautious. The resulting differences in both the impact of the Coronavirus and the local economies are likely to play into this year’s elections.

Several weeks ago, the White House put forth a proposed plan for reopening the country. Triggers for the plan included a 14-day downward trajectory of cases reporting influenza and COVID-like symptoms, a 14-day downward trajectory of confirmed COVID cases or positive tests, the ability of hospitals to treat all patients with crisis care, and having a robust testing program in place. I’m not sure that any state meets these benchmarks, particularly the call for robust testing.

There are fundamental, nonpolitical differences between the majority of red and blue states. Blue states, which are congregated along the coasts, have higher population densities and more urban. This may be why, as Axios points out, blue states have so far had higher rates of both infection and death from COVID-19.

That doesn’t mean that red states are out of the woods yet, however. In the last half of April red states saw higher percentage increases. Statistically this makes sense because an increase of the same number of cases will yield a higher percentage increase where the total number of cases was lower. For example, the addition of 10 cases would be a 10 percent increase in a state that had 100 cases previously, but it would be a one percent increase where there were 1,000 old cases.

Red states, which tend to be more rural and sparsely populated, are more difficult territory for Coronavirus to spread through. That doesn’t mean that it can’t happen. When rural people congregate, the virus can spread rapidly if it is present. Here in Georgia, some of the worst outbreaks outside of Atlanta were spread through religious services.

Where COVID-19 takes hold in red states, it can be deadly. Residents of nonmetro areas tend to be both older and have more underlying health problems than city dwellers. Often age and health problems go hand-in-hand. Both categories are high-risk for COVID-19. Further, demographic data from many southern states show that blacks are far more at-risk for negative outcomes from COVID-19 than whites.

When it comes to reopening, new cases are a more useful metric than deaths. Because COVID-19 takes about three weeks to kill on average, deaths are more of a form of historical data, hinting at the number of infections several weeks ago. New confirmed cases are more useful in determining how fast the virus is currently spreading.

Despite the bad press regarding Georgia’s reopening, Gov. Brian Kemp has handled the situation relatively well. Although the state did not meet the recommended 14-days of decreasing numbers when it reopened, Georgia’s seven-day moving average of Coronavirus cases has now been sharply trending down since April 22. On May 4, Georgia reported only 44 new cases. This is a positive sign that the state has seen the worst of the first wave of cases.

The downside is that many Georgians seem to be no longer following social distancing guidelines. Gov. Kemp lifted the general shelter-in-place order but encouraged Georgians to stay home when possible, but social distancing guidelines and shelter-in-place for “medically fragile” and elderly Georgia residents are still the order of the day. However, many residents seem to think that social distancing and mask recommendations are yesterday’s news. On my recent trips to town, I’ve noted that people congregating more closely and fewer are wearing masks.

In Florida, another hot-button state, cases peaked in late March but have trended down slowly. Per the Florida Department of Health, the Sunshine State is still recording 4,512 new cases per week, more than 600 per day. Yet, Florida began its phase one of reopening on Monday, as it recorded 819 new cases in one day.

The difference between the two states likely reflects a different strategy on reopening. There are at least two schools of thought on when to reopen. One is to move the IHME trend line down to the point where hospitals can cope with the surge of cases. The second is to move the trend line down even further to the point where transmission of the virus is drastically reduced and a secondary flareup is unlikely, at least in the short term. In Florida’s case, the state has achieved the first goal per the current IHME modeling for the state. It is possible that Georgia has achieved the second.

Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas is also taking an aggressive approach. Texas State Health Services reports a stable level of new cases, which increased slightly in late April and early May. Unsurprisingly, the highest levels of Texas cases are in Houston’s Harris County and Dallas County. KHOU reported that there were hundreds of complaints in the days following reopening that Houston businesses were not following the social distancing guidelines established by the governor’s office.

At least two other red states have taken a more conservative approach. In Mississippi, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves delayed the state’s reopening last week after a spike in new cases. The state’s Department of Health website shows a downward trend but notes that recent data may not be complete. Yesterday, Gov. Reeves amended his emergency order to allow some restaurants and businesses to reopen on May 7 if they follow strict social distancing and sanitary guidelines.

In Ohio, the Department of Health reports a 21-day average which has been declining since May 1. At 560 on May 4, the state is far off of its April 19 peak of 1,380 new cases. As a result, Gov. Mike Dewine, a Republican, plans to open about 90 percent of the state by next week.

Governors of both parties are walking a tightrope between rekindling the pandemic and mitigating economic damage. The situation is made all the more difficult by a vocal minority of citizens who are demanding that states be reopened immediately. Recent polling shows that a large majority of Americans, including most Republicans, support social distancing, however, and are more concerned about reopening too quickly than too late.

The rush to reopen states paired with a growing abandonment of social distancing measures at the grassroots level has led to an uptick in projected Coronavirus deaths. In early April, forecasted deaths were revised down to 60,000 following the implementation of the mitigation strategy. The US hit the 60,000 mark last week, however, and, as mitigation strategies are jettisoned, death estimates have more than doubled to 134,000.

To put that number in perspective, it would be more than the number of American soldiers killed in World War I, a number which incidentally included a large number of casualties from the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918. This year the US has had to relearn many lessons of past pandemics such as the Spanish flu. One of those lessons is that reopening too early leads to more loss of life.

“One clear lesson of the 1918 pandemic is to be wary of that kind of thinking,” said James Leloudis, a history professor at the University of North Carolina. “Letting down the guard, in that case, turned out to be disastrous. It’s the same situation we are in now.”

In the midst of the emergency, it is difficult to see what the correct moves are because we don’t have all the information. We don’t know how many people are infected and not tested. We don’t know if there will be additional waves of infections. We don’t know if or when effective treatments and vaccines will be discovered. We don’t even know how many asymptomatic carriers are spreading the disease. What we do know is that reopening earlier will cost an unknown number of lives.

Republican governors are gambling that the disease has largely run its course and that the loss of life from reopening will be minimal enough to be acceptable to the majority of their state’s voters. We won’t know for some time, possibly years, whether these gambles were correct. In November, voters will begin to rule on whether those gambles a good bet.

Originally published on The Resurgent

Swing State Polls Look Bad For Donald Trump

A new round of head-to-head polling from the swing states came in yesterday and the results are somewhat encouraging for Republicans. While Donald Trump trails the leading Democrats in national polling, many of the swing state races are too close to call.

Due to the large number of candidates and states to examine, for clarity, I will present each state separately and give Trump’s net poll rating with each candidate based on the Real Clear Politics average. A negative rating means that Trump is behind and a positive rating means that he is ahead. For reference, I’m also including the latest state-level Trump approval numbers from Morning Consult, which were taken as the Ukraine whistleblower scandal was breaking in late September.

National

Trump vs. Biden               -10

Trump vs. Warren            -7.3

Trump vs. Sanders           -7.9

Trump vs. Buttigieg         -4.5

Trump vs. Harris               -5.3

Trump approval                -13

Arizona

Trump vs. Biden               -1.7

Trump vs. Warren            0.7

Trump vs. Sanders           5.3

Trump approval                -4

Florida

Trump vs. Biden               -2.0       

Trump vs. Warren            0.3

Trump vs. Sanders           1.0

Trump approval                -2

Iowa

Trump vs. Biden               1.5

Trump vs. Warren            4.5

Trump vs. Sanders           1.0

Trump vs. Buttigieg         4.0

Trump approval                -14

Michigan

Trump vs. Biden               -7.7

Trump vs. Warren            -3.0

Trump vs. Sanders           -7.3

Trump approval                -10

North Carolina

Trump vs. Biden               -5.4

Trump vs. Warren            0.2

Trump vs. Sanders           -2.4       

Trump approval                -3          

Ohio (no recent polling)

Trump vs. Biden               -7.0

Trump vs. Warren            -1.5

Trump vs. Sanders           -5.0

Trump approval                -5

Pennsylvania

Trump vs. Biden               -7.3       

Trump vs. Warren            1.7

Trump vs. Sanders           5.4

Trump approval                -8

Wisconsin

Trump vs. Biden               -5.7

Trump vs. Warren            -1.0

Trump vs. Sanders           -2.7

Trump approval                -11

There are a couple of important takeaways from this polling, even though the election is still a year away. The first is that Joe Biden is a stronger candidate in the swing states than Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders. In six of the seven swing states with recent head-to-head polling, Biden leads Donald Trump. Warren fares worst of the three top-tier Democrats, but Bernie Sanders is not much better.

Second, Trump approval is a pretty good proxy for how he stacks up in a head-to-head matchup in most cases, although this is dependent on individual candidates as well and the numbers don’t match up exactly. In only one of the states examined, Iowa, does Trump have a negative approval rating but leads in polling.

Finally, as we saw in 2016, it isn’t enough for the Democrats to win the popular vote and expect that to translate into an Electoral College victory. The Democrats must give Donald Trump a 5-10 point shellacking in the popular vote to be assured of winning enough swing states to secure the White House. This is especially true due to the difficulties of state-level polling in swing states.

Based on the current polling presented above (while assuming Ohio stays red), Joe Biden would win the Electoral College by 333-205 and Bernie Sanders would eke out a 273-265 victory. Elizabeth Warren would lose by 258-280, but many states are actually too close to project in a Warren-Trump matchup. Neither side could be confident of victory at this point, although Warren does seem to represent Trump’s best chance at reelection.

The election is a long way away and a lot can happen. In the current cycle, that is even more true than most years due to the breaking Ukraine scandal, impeachment, the slowing economy, and a number of other factors. While the swing states are not looking good for Donald Trump, they are looking much better than the national average, but that’s why they call them battleground states.

While many of the state-level races are not polled frequently, it will be important to watch them for trends over the next year. Significant movement in one direction or the other could represent a changing dynamic within the election.

Originally published on The Resurgent