May 15, 2020

As states slowly begin to roll back their economy-demolishing lockdowns and unemployment reports roll in with previously unthinkable figures, the surreally sidelined 2020 race continues its inevitable creep toward November.

Speaking of creeps, Biden has suffered another set of bad headlines, not all of them related to Reade.

And though Trump is getting knocked around by brutal economic reports, he’s seeing a few encouraging signs in some battleground states.

1. Biden “unmasked”.

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden just can't buy a good headline.

While he's holed up in his house in Delaware (the 77-year-old is in the most vulnerable category for COVID-19), newly declassified documents show that the former vice president submitted a request to unmask then-incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn on the same day that The Washington Post revealed Flynn’s identity.

The revelation that Biden requested the unmasking of Flynn appeared to contradict statements that he made earlier this week on ABC’s “Good Morning America” when he was asked what he knew about the Obama administration’s moves against Flynn.

“I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn,” Biden claimed. “This is all about diversion. This is the game this guy plays all the time. The country is in crisis. We’re in an economic crisis, we’re in a health crisis. We’re in real trouble. He should stop trying to always divert attention from the real concerns of the American people.”

Stay tuned to this story.


2. “Dementia Joe, Sleepy Joe, Creepy Joe”.

Vanity Fair contributor Peter Hamby went there.

Hamby sat down with Biden for an interview this week and told him, "Harvard did an analysis of all of the anti-Biden memes out there on the internet. According to them, the top three slogans they’re seeing, this is from the left and the right, are Dementia Joe, Sleepy Joe, Creepy Joe.”

“Barack Obama reportedly said last week that his daughters had been showing him anti-Biden TikToks,” Hamby said. “Basically, there’s an entire discourse on the internet right now that’s painting you as creepy and old and out of touch and kind of lame. How do you fight back against that?”

Biden’s response? He laughed, then said “the vast majority of the voters out there, including young people, are not getting all their news from the internet.”

Um, yes they are. All of them. Check it out, Joe, you might like it. Just don’t google “Creepy Joe.”


3. The Reade Effect.

A new survey of nearly 28,000 registered voters found that the sexual assault allegation against Biden from his former Senate staffer Tara Reade is starting to hurt his campaign for the White House. The survey by Morning Consult found that the Democrat's net favorability has dropped 5 points among registered voters in just a few weeks ago.

“Tara Reade’s allegation that Joe Biden sexually assaulted her when he was a senator in 1993 is one of the few non-coronavirus stories to have broken through to voters amid the pandemic, and it appears to be taking a toll on the former vice president’s popularity,” Morning Consult reported.

Female voters are bailing in droves.

“The slide resulted in Biden’s net favorability among women falling underwater for the first time since the nadir of his primary campaign in February, with 46 percent viewing him unfavorably and 44 viewing him favorably,” Morning Consult notes. “Taken together, it marks a 6-point drop in net favorability among women since the April 20-26 poll, driven by women ages 30 to 65 — the voting bloc that strategists on either side of the aisle credit with fueling Democratic victories in 2018 House races.”

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4. Biden balks on “believe women”.

The Democratic Party has a mantra: “Believe women.” They went all in when Christine Blasey Ford sought to take down Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, claiming that the judge molested her 30+ years ago during a high school party, though all the alleged witnesses she named denied or flat refuted her claim. But Biden faces a dilemma: While his party demands that everyone "believe women," he thinks no one should believe Tara Reade.

Reade said in March that when she worked as a staffer for Biden in 1993, the senator sexually assaulted her. “He just had me up against the wall. It happened all at once,” she said. “His hands were on me and underneath my clothes, and he went down my skirt and then up inside it and he penetrated me with his fingers and he was kissing me at the same time and he was saying something to me.”

In an interview this week with ABC, George Stephanopoulos noted that Biden has denied the allegations, but added, "you’ve also said that women should be believed."

“Well, that’s their right,” Biden said. “Look here, look, I think women should be believed. They should have an opportunity to have their case and state it just forthrightly, what their case is. Then it’s the responsibility of responsible journalists like you and everyone else to go out and investigate those. At the end of the day, the truth is the truth. That’s what should prevail. And the truth is this never happened. This never happened, I assure you. That’s the truth.”


5. CNN buries poll showing Trump crushing Biden in battleground states.

CNN put out a new poll on Thursday that showed President Trump leading Biden in 15 key states — but buried the lead.

"CNN Poll: Biden tops Trump nationwide, but battlegrounds tilt Trump," said the headline.

"Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden's lead over President Donald Trump now stands at five points, but Trump has an edge in the critical battleground states that could decide the electoral college, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS."

But the real lead for the story was this: "In the new poll, 51% of registered voters nationwide back Biden, while 46% say they prefer Trump, while in the battlegrounds, 52% favor Trump and 45% Biden."

Those states? Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico and North Carolina.

That's 186 electoral votes, well more than half the 270 needed to win the White House.

Now, no one is saying Trump will win all those states come Election Day, but the fact that he's leading in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida is significant.

CNN also buried another key finding: Young people aren't flocking to Biden's campaign.

“Though other recent polling has shown some signs of concern for Biden among younger voters and strength among older ones, few have pegged the race as this close among younger voters,” CNN wrote. “The results suggest that younger voters in the battleground states are tilted in favor of Trump, a stark change from the last CNN poll in which battleground voters were analyzed in March.”


6. By the numbers: Trump vs. Biden.

In an unusual development, both Trump and Biden rose in the polls this week, according to Real Clear Politics. Biden climbed to 47.7% support and Trump hit 43.3%. Both went up about 1 percentage point from the week before. In the four polls taken in May, Biden leads:

CNN – Biden +5
Economist/YouGov – Biden +4
CNBC – Biden +3
Monmouth – Biden +9
But The New York Times is puzzled. "Trump’s Ratings on the Virus Are Sagging. Why Isn’t Biden Surging?" the paper asked on Thursday.

"While he has held consistent leads in most national and swing-state polls, they have not been altogether comfortable ones. And even as the public’s faith in Mr. Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic steadily erodes, Mr. Biden has struggled to establish a narrative that resonates with persuadable voters or motivates those on the left," The Times said.

The truth is, the real Biden narrative is already set: Democrats simply aren’t inspired by him, and an increasing number are creeped out.


7. Meme of the week:

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