Presidential politics move fast. What we’re watching heading into a new week on the 2020 campaign:
Days to general election: 113
THE NARRATIVE
These are among the darkest days of President Donald Trump’s presidency. Coronavirus infections are exploding, the economic recovery is in jeopardy and Trump may have undermined his own “law and order” message by commuting the prison sentence of his friend and political adviser.
Emboldened Democrats are trying to guard against overconfidence, even as they see real opportunities to expand Joe Biden’s path to the White House in states like Georgia, Iowa and Ohio. And Biden’s slow-and-steady approach is winning praise from Democrats everywhere as Trump’s string of unforced errors and divisive rhetoric continues.
There’s less time for Republicans to turn things around than they’d like. Early voting across several swing states is set to begin in little more than two months.
THE BIG QUESTIONS
How many more Americans will die?
The number of Americans dying from COVID-19 is surging again. The daily death toll began falling in mid-April, and it continued to fall — until about a week ago. Daily reported deaths in the U.S. have increased from 578 two weeks ago to 664 on July 10, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University’s seven-day rolling average. That’s still well below the heights hit in April, but researchers are expecting deaths to rise for at least some weeks still as infections soar.
Overall, more than 135,000 people in America have died as a result of COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins. As a reminder, Trump in April predicted a death toll of “substantially below 100,000.” In May, he predicted deaths could reach 100,000. And now, the CDC’s latest model forecasts as many as 160,000 deaths by the end of August.
The Trump administration has yet to offer any kind of comprehensive, coordinated federal response. There was one noteworthy change over the weekend, however: The president wore a face mask in public for the first time.
Is “law and order” tainted?
Trump went where Richard Nixon would not when he commuted the sentence of longtime friend and political adviser Roger Stone, who had been convicted of multiple felony charges for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the House investigation involving Trump himself. Legal experts were aghast, and Republican Sen. Mitt Romney called it an act of “unprecedented historic corruption.”
The decision came as the president touts “law and order” as a central message in his reelection campaign. Another Republican, Sen. Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, called the Stone commutation “a mistake.”
Will the criticism from his own party grow? It will be especially difficult for Senate Republicans in tough reelection campaigns to stand by the president on this one. They won’t want to address it, but Democrats will make it difficult for incumbents like Sens. Martha McSally, Cory Gardner, Susan Collins and Tom Tillis to stay silent.
