We will not see diseases like the coronavirus come here… Isn’t that refreshing when contrasting it with the awful presidency of President Obama?-Kayleigh McEnany, not dead yet but the most ignorant and dishonest White House spokesperson in history,February 25, 2020 on Trump TV
Minnesota has had a relatively easy pandemic until recently. It's going very badly now, over a thousand new cases a day, along with other states-- like Wisconsin, Indiana and Utah-- that fared relatively well during the first spike. The last thing the state needed was a Trump super-spreader event. But Trump was thinking about himself, not about Minnesotans. Last Wednesday he showed up in Duluth, filled with contagion, but unaware he was spreading the disease. Minnesota has been a blue state in recent years. The governor is a Democrat, as are both senators. But... there are very politically backward, red areas of the state. In 2018, the Democrats flipped two red congressional seats blue-- but the Republicans flipped two blue seats red. There are 5 Democrats and 3 Republicans in the state's congressional delegation. Democrats control the state House 75-55 (with 4 superfluous New Republicans) but the state Senate is run by the GOP-- 35-32. Trump declared Minnesota a "swing state" for 2020 and a dull-witted Beltway press went along with him-- same as with New Mexico. Bit neither Minnesota nor New Mexico is in actual play. Solid majorities of voters in both states detest Trump and would never vote for him. Real Clear Politics lists both Minnesota and New Mexico as "battleground states." New Mexico's polling average has Trump losing by 14.5 points-- not just not a battleground-- a massive landslide. Minnesota is also in landslide territory-- the polling average showing Trump down by 9.4 points. Over the course of the last year, there were a dozen legitimate polls of the state. Trump lost every single one of them. Even the illegitimate polls by the GOP Trafalgar joke firm showed Biden winning one by 5 points and tied in another. Trafalgar's absurd "polling"-- you pay you get to dictate the results-- bolsters Trump's actual numbers in the state, which are certainly down by double digits. The last Fox News poll showed Trump losing badly-- 51% to 38%. A more recent poll (last week) by Langer Research for ABC News and the Washington Post shows Trump losing to Biden by much bigger numbers-- 57-41% among likely voters. Langer reported that one factor in Biden’s strength in Minnesota is his broad advantage there in trust to handle the pandemic-- 58-36% over Trump among registered voters. That gap in Minnesota overwhelms a dead heat in trust on the economy (where Biden is slightly ahead of Trump). Underscoring Trump’s challenges in Minnesota, Biden also leads there, by 11 points, in trust to handle crime and safety. The death knell for any chance for Trump at all is among Independents. They say they're voting for Biden, 58-37%. This is how Minnesota voters compare the two candidates: That said, whatever strength Trump does have is mostly in the rural north and he'll probably win up there. That's where he was spreading COVID last week. His Duluth rally, reported David Siders for Politico, "was a story of worst practices in a pandemic... it was in Duluth that the recklessness of his campaign fell plainly into view-- from his scoffing at mask-wearing to his insistence on assembling large crowds. By the weekend, local public health officials were warning rally attendees about their risk of exposure, and prominent Republicans in the state were in quarantine. Emily Larson, the city’s Democratic mayor, asked anyone who attended the rally to 'please get tested, self isolate.'"
“Contact tracing President Trump in Minnesota: Who hung out with him for how long?” blared a headline in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. The Duluth News Tribune’s above-the-fold front page read simply, “[Rep. Pete] Stauber traveled with Trump.” No further context was necessary. Photographs of the Duluth rally appeared on social media with red circles drawn around people standing closest to the lectern-- and to Trump. Stauber and two other Republican congressmen who traveled with Trump on Air Force One were pilloried for returning to the state on a Delta Airlines flight on Friday night-- apparently flouting airline rules. The House members’ “stupidity and disregard for the well-being of their fellow passengers is staggering,” Ken Martin, chairman of Minnesota’s Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, said in a prepared statement. Gary Anderson, the Democratic president of the Duluth City Council, said Sunday that Trump “took risks with the health of our community, clearly, and I think that’s how our community is worse off in the most direct way.”
Today, right after Fed chairman Jerome Powell announced that the economy needs more stimulus, Trump-- who had prematurely returned to the White House from the hospital and is suffering from obvious and serious mental deterioration-- abruptly called McConnell and McCarthy and ordered them to end all negotiations with the Democrats over a pandemic relief package. That ends any hope millions of Americans had for help in a critical situation Trump and the Republicans just do not understand or do not want to understand. Making Americans sick again
