Are Biden's poll numbers as strong as they look?
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
"State Patrol troopers strategically deflated tires" — Minnesota state police acknowledging that they stabbed the tires of parked, empty cars near protests in Minneapolis last week.
WHAT'S HAPPENING
- The President of the United States devoted some of his morning to smearing the old man shoved to the ground by police in Buffalo, New York, and saying he "fell harder than he was pushed."
- The attorney for one of the police officers who killed George Floyd said the officer was in his fourth day on the job and was following the orders of his training officer. The attorney said his client asked the training officer twice if they should roll Floyd on his side, and, later, gave Floyd CPR to try to save his life.
- The World Health Organization walked back the claim by one of its experts that asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19 is rare. After widespread skepticism and condemnation, the WHO expert said it was all a "misunderstanding." Scientific consensus is that asymptomatic transmission is common.
- Several Tesla employees tested positive for the coronavirus after CEO Elon Musk defied county orders and opened the company's California factory early.
- Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling continues to air personal views about transgender people. Transgender YouTubers say the comments show Rowling is transphobic.
BLODGET & PLOTZ
American attitudes about police killings have changed massively and fast.
A remarkable 69% of Americans now say police killings of Black Americans are a "sign of broader problems," according to a Washington Post/Schaar School poll. That's up from only 43% who said that in a poll taken after police killed Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014. The shift among Republicans is most astonishing, with 47% saying the killings reflect a broader problem, up from only 19% in 2014.
These findings and others in the poll help explain why President Trump is floundering in his response to the George Floyd protests. It's hard to get 70% of Americans to agree to anything in a poll. Yet 74 % of us approve of the Floyd protests — including a clear majority of Republicans.
Will this support persist? Polls find strong support for gun-safety laws after school shootings, yet this rarely translates into law, since legislators and the gun lobby are so good at miring and blocking bills. We could see the same pattern with the Democrats' police reform bill. Support may flag once the public turns its attention away from the George Floyd killing and police unions start making calls and contributions.
But it's valuable to remember that protest movements often succeed even when they fail to produce a federal law or to durably change public opinion. Even when American protest movements "fail," they almost always succeed in the long run by spawning a cadre of activists and politicians who shape things for decades. The Civil Rights movement brought Black leadership to cities and Congress. The pro-life movement galvanized a generation of conservative leaders. The women's marches of 2017 brought us hundreds of new female elected officials.
The Floyd protests will hopefully reform American policing immediately. But they will definitely train and galvanize a generation of activists who will be running city halls and occupying Congressional seats for decades. — DP
Wow, Biden's poll numbers look good.
Given Hillary Clinton's 2016 defeat, there's no chance of Democrats banking on the polls and coasting to November. The electoral college favors the Republican candidate, and swing-state polls are less favorable for Biden. The economy could revive enough to boost Trump.
More importantly, this election could be warped by the pandemic and outside interference. There's strong evidence that Russians will profoundly mess with the election. A pandemic resurgence could alter voting patterns, potentially dampening turnout in cities. And then there's the concerted Republican efforts to shut polling places, limit early voting, and strike voters from the rolls. All these factors foretell an election filled with dispute, ambiguity, and conflict. It would take a Biden landslide to quash those doubts. — DP
TAKE OF THE DAY
Gen. Petraeus says we should rename all military bases honoring Confederate leaders. Braxton Bragg, Henry L. Benning, John Bell Hood, John Brown Gordon: All men who rebelled against the United States and led Confederate armies against their country. (In Gordon's case, he came back after the Civil War to lead the Ku Klux Klan.) And all have US Army forts named after them, as does Confederate commander Robert E. Lee. In the wake of the Floyd protests, Petraeus says, renaming is an easy, small symbolic act. These men weren't American military heroes. They were traitors who sought to advance slavery and defeat the US army. The Defense Secretary and Army Secretary said Monday they're open to the renamings. — DP
OTHER NEWS
At least Trump isn't spending your money to stroke his ego this time.
The Trump campaign has spent $400,000 on TV ads in DC largely to soothe an anxious president. According to the Daily Beast, the campaign has advertised on DC-area Fox, CNN, and MSNBC in recent weeks to buck up the president and congressional Republicans, even though Trump has no chance to win DC, Maryland, or Virginia. This is yet another sad indictment of the president's fragile narcissism, but at least this time it's not costing taxpayer money, as his July 4 military parade did, or as his border wall does.
Judge temporarily blocks removal of Lee statue in Richmond. Gov. Ralph Northam's efforts to take down the enormous statue of Robert E. Lee in the state capital were temporarily blocked by a judge. Opponents of the removal had sued, citing the deed Virginia signed in 1892 when it took custody of the statue: "The State of Virginia....will faithfully guard it and affectionately protect it."
BUSINESS & ECONOMY
Economic activity is recovering, but, wow, do some industries have a long way to go. Here's a chart of daily TSA airport screenings from Calculated Risk, for example. The blue line is last year. The red line is this year.
Some stocks are down! The Dow Jones industrial average, for example, was down about 1% at midday Normally that wouldn't be news, but given the market's relentless charge upwards since mid-March it seems startling. Many observers continue to think the recent performance is a "sucker's rally" that will eventually implode. As ever, no one actually knows, so the sanest approach is to stay diversified and be ready for anything.
LIFE
I tried Ina Garten's famous cosmopolitan, and now I understand why she makes it at 9am. It's delicious. And huge.
These photos will help you figure out what went wrong with your banana bread. Insider readers are going, well, bananas about this one, so we're sharing it again. Insider's Rachel Askinasi took her camera to the kitchen and made 12 loaves with 12 different mistakes.
THE BIG 3*
SpaceX's top priority is now a reusable moon/Mars rocket. Elon Musk told SpaceX employees to shift their focus to the "Starship" project.
How to lose fat and build muscle at the same time. Most experts say you can only do one. But called "body recomposition" trainers teach how to do them simultaneously.
300,000 Nintendo Switch accounts were hacked. Back in April the company said only 160,000 accounts had been breached.
*The most popular stories on Insider today.
YOUR LETTERS
Defund the Police is not a lousy slogan and I almost didn't read your op ed because of your lousy title. I generally skim your work and find it to be a fresh perspective, but today I almost just threw it in the trash. My reasonable side got the better of me, and what you wrote had nuggets of important insights, so I'm glad I did. But "Defund the Police" is meant to be a radical slogan as to how far we need to go to fix this issue. It is meant to spark a debate that gets us closer to the actual middle ground instead of the movement starting in the middle and getting crumbs. It is doing exactly what it was intended to do and is therefore is very effective.
— Allison King
You are so darn right! I heard it and immediately felt the stupidity. Some argue that the police represent a broken system that we should replace but systems with such a long and, generally good, history should not be tossed without reasonable, engaged and intelligent considerations for how they can be fixed. "Defund" is dumb.
— Vincent McCoy