And here is how it played out in the November election.
https://www.brookings.edu/research/2020-exit-polls-show-a-scrambling-of-democrats-and-republicans-traditional-bases/ Noteworthy:" There was also less Republican support among older segments of the population: ages 45 to 64 and ages 65 and older. This decrease in Republican support was even more pronounced for 45- to 64-year-old whites: from 28% in 2016 to 19% in 2020 (see downloadable Table A). This is evident in several battleground states." It was a shift from 2016 , particularly significant in heavily retirement population in Arizona which helped Biden win there.
Joe Biden, August 31 speech, said that the social security fund would be depleted by 2023. That is because social security funding depends on payroll tax which has been suspended as part of the COVID stimulus. It could be saved by paying for it from the general fund. which Biden prefers. Trump and the GOP for years have wanted to privatize it.. Paying for it would be by the casino of Wall Street. If Trump is re=elected and the Senate is still in GOP hands.and that the legislative fight will be epic. Trump cannot enact that big of change by executive order, but like so many issues like he tries to move funds around to legislate changes in legislatively approved uses.. He has often been rebuffed by the Supreme Court, but as he stuffs the Court with conservatives, and will complete his control of the Court in a second term if the GOP remains red..
Released figures July 24 were the deaths attributed to COVID and 8 out of 10 of them were senior, those over 65.
Update July 29, per a July 22 poll: The revolt continues: https://www.nbcnews.com/…/who-s-behind-trump-s-big-polling-…
Per NBC News and republished in Cook's Political Report show huge shifts in voter demographics since 2016. The most dramatic are seniors, showing a 20 point swing, now favoring Biden, and impressive college-educated whites showing a 12 point swing, also now more than ever favoring Biden. These two blocks are likely voters. Seniors got the message: COVID and Trump's willingness to throw them under the bus in a haste to open for business...and they are the most vulnerable group to COVID-19.
Update July 4. 2020
For those over 65, the message should be"we need to keep older people from dying from it". Older people are the ones who die; 80% of the deaths from COVID 19 are older ones. Even if older people follow every guideline and follow safer at home or stay at home, those who are younger are the spreaders and bring it home. So long as the virus rages in the younger population, the danger to seniors will not diminish. What this shows is that the administration does not care about older people, and given his plunging polls with that group, they have gotten the message. Update: July 21, 2020. The last to get the message are residents of the Villages, a huge retirement settlement in Florida, where 2/3 are registered Republicans and "they can tell who are Democrats by the ones who wear masks". They swallowed the Trump cool-aid. They had kept the virus out until recently and now they are experiencing it themselves. The President was caught recently wearing a mask. Something as gotten to him that perhaps he is indeed in danger of losing some of the most hard-core White senior support to be found..in the Villages itself., if not owed to a political conversion but to the experience of having the disease and surviving. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/20/us/coronavirus-florida-elderly.html
https://www.newyorker.com/…/donald-trumps-big-problem-with-…
This article, drawing from numerous polls, shows this group he carried in 2016 has flipped to favor Biden. In some instances, it is as much as a 12% swing in that demographic. The swing is particularly noticeable in the swing states that gave him the electoral college win in 2016 with narrow margins.
This article, drawing from numerous polls, shows this group he carried in 2016 has flipped to favor Biden. In some instances, it is as much as a 12% swing in that demographic. The swing is particularly noticeable in the swing states that gave him the electoral college win in 2016 with narrow margins.
Some pointed Facebook remarks from ordinary people: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/dontkillgrandma?__eep__=6&hc_location=ufi
July 2020
July 2020
Trent Todd You are correct. The reason we have been asked is to sow down the spread for hospital capacity. Where your comment got my dander up. For only 1% we are to tank our economy.? As a person in my 80's 80% of the dead are over 65. What that means for me is that if I get to a hospital there may be a ventilator should I need one. If I go on a ventilator, I have a 20% chance of surviving. If I survive in the hospital, and was sick enough,to be there, I will have lung damage. Pray I am not in a nursing home, either. If you are sick enough to go to the hospital, you will be rejected to join the military at any age now. Lung damage is anticipated and found. The only protection seniors have is to stay at home and pray no one, even my kids bring it home. In New York, at one point, 66% o new hospital cases were of stay at home seniors who brought the disease to them. The masks are the only defense we have, and there are knuckleheads who think they are immune, but who are asymptomatic who take it to anyone else...so they do no wear masks. So when you say: live with it or tank the economy, for me it is a matter of life or death. You may see it as a trade off,; I see it as quite something else...
Continuing with the June 13 posting.
Trump made a devil's bargain and seniors noticed they drew the short stick. His callous attitudes toward seniors have taken a toll. So what if the infection death rate increases. for seniors The administration looks at it as a tradeoff; a balancing act. However, there has been an unanticipated political price to pay for it. The political backlash is already being felt as Trump's polls show seniors' support of Trump had swung to Biden in a short time as the number of dead from COVID-19 rose to over 100,000 by the end of May, and was projected to be 134,000 by August 1. Seniors have been the most predictable voters and Trump-supporting demographic until late April, but no longer., especially in swing states Trump needs to win, per https://www.usnews.com/news/elections/articles/2020-05-29/older-voters-support-joe-biden-over-trump-amid-coronavirus-pandemic This is no minor loss for Trump. Seniors make up one-quarter of voters and the most reliable voters who turn out to vote. In 2016, Trump carried seniors by 10 points It is now reversed. Morning Consult tracking poll April 20, "By a nearly 6-to-1 margin, people 65 years old and older say it’s more important for the government to address the spread of coronavirus than it is to focus on the economy. " It is especially true in states with large numbers of seniors, such as Arizona.
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-06-10/trump-coronavirus-protests-senior-voters-arizona
Even in spite of senior support tanking, Trump beat the drum for the nation to open for business, ready or not, as he tried to bury the CDC handbook on how to do it safely. (It was finally released with administration pleasing revisions) The cost of increased deaths is worth reviving the economy is his implied message. Trump doubled down May 21 when he made it clear that if there is a return of the virus in the fall, he will not close down the country (though he does not have the power to require states to comply). May 22, again he ruled all houses of worship re-open, though he likewise does not have the power to force states to comply. In both cases, he is doing nothing but harming seniors, the most frequent churchgoers, and the most vulnerable under a live and let die "edict". He does not care about seniors' health yet he hopes to get their vote. Seniors take little comfort from Trump's right-wing supporters who poopoo the death rate of seniors from COVID, since there are so many "co-morbidity" questions. Seniors are not stupid. They know their age makes the more vulnerable to death if they do get COVID 19 and they need special care and attention. The callousness of such Trumpers toward their condition adds fuel to the fires of their disillusionment with Trump.
.https://www.wired.com/story/why-has-covid-19-hit-seniors-so-hard/
One senator estimates that the good news is only 3.4% of the US population will die from COVId 19. At least he thinks that is good news. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/03/gop-senator-no-more-than-3-4-of-our-population-may-die.html?fbclid=IwAR0fPPTXAGrBKSqP_LmTzOP4175TsMqm60-P3RrMOW3QuOjCsqcO6T3xGLI
"White House National Economic Council chairman Larry Kudlow claimed in an interview that “The cure can’t be worse than the disease, and we’re gonna have to make some difficult trade-offs.” Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said on live television that “lots of grandparents” are willing to “take a chance” on their survival for the good of the economy. Brit Hume of Fox News said it’s “entirely reasonable” to let family members die for the stock market. "
Then there was FOX person Bill O'Reilly who callously proclaimed ""many were dying from coronavirus were on their last legs anyway: https://thehill.com/homenews/media/491994-bill-oreilly-many-dying-from-coronavirus-were-on-last-legs-anyway Glad I am not a grandparent of Kudlow, Patrick, Johnson, O'Reilly, and Hume" given how much they care about older people.
The silliness from the rightwing Trumpers is also not lost on seniors when they hear from Trumpers who claim COVID 19 is a hoax, a conspiracy by the left to make Trump look bad or to hurt business.by exaggerating death and cause of death statistics. Particularly hard hit were senior care facilities, accounting for half of seniors' death in some countries. To turn the virus into a left-wing conspiracy assumes that every country in the world was in on the plans, too,(their findings were similar, especially in Sweden that did not close down business) and almost every US coroner or the MD stating the cause of death (held to a uniform standard, too) was in on the conspiracy. The conspiracy would have to assume tests for the virus were mostly false positive. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/16/across-the-world-figures-reveal-horrific-covid-19-toll-of-care-home-deaths
That worldwide, COVID 19 has overtaken other causes of death to be #1. This moving chart demonstrates the rise by date of COVID 19.
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/2562261/?fbclid=IwAR2BbAJ2JBXRv37vTy66tmVWbdvKwLeJgOJIfzA_SSJud5ev4Bum
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality
Trump's antidote to his tanking polls is not to become more loving and caring for elders. The reason older people are reconsidering their past support him is not limited to his response to COVID 19, as the LA Times article suggests, but to make "law and order" an issue, to scare seniors back into the fold., making them think rioting Black people are out to get them. His plans took an unexpected turn when his November rival Joe Biden was quick to oppose the slogan of "defund police"., too. Biden yanked the rug from under Trump's strategy. Incoming attacks from the left-wing of Biden's party who backed the anti defund police advocacy was hefty, but polls are showing Biden was on the right track in this semantics war,. The slogan,"defund police', is getting little support (16-32% depending on the poll). The left also failed to listen to what Biden was saying: He wanted to use federal dollars as a carrot and stick to induce changes in policing and to give more to mental health and social services support of police.
The criteria for reporting deaths to officials have been changed: one figure is for those whose death certificates have COVID 19 as the cause of death and one figure is for those whose cause of death may not be listed as COVID 19 but occurs among people with COVID 19.
From the Colorado State Health Department web site.:
Beginning May 15, the department began reporting the number of deaths in two ways:
- The number of deaths among people with COVID-19. This represents the total number of deaths reported among people who have COVID-19, but COVID-19 may not have been the cause of death listed on the death certificate. This information is required by the CDC and is crucial for public health surveillance, as it provides more information about disease transmission and can help identify risk factors among all deaths across populations.
- The number of deaths among people who died from COVID-19: This represents the total number of people whose death was attributed to COVID-19 as indicated on a death certificate. This number is determined by the CDC and is updated daily for dates through the previous Saturday.
Important things to know about these two datasets:
- The numbers of deaths due to COVID-19 and deaths among people with COVID-19 should not be added together to determine a total death count. They are separate numbers.
- The numbers of deaths due to COVID-19 and deaths among people with COVID-19 are reported from two different systems that are updated on different timelines. These numbers cannot be compared day-to-day to determine how many deaths have occurred in each category.
- The number of deaths due to COVID-19 are not necessarily included in the number of deaths among people with COVID-19. After review, at either the state or national level, some deaths may not be counted as COVID-19 deaths. This is rare, and the expectation is in the end, the numbers will closely align.
- The deaths due to COVID-19 are provisional counts and often track several weeks behind other data. The number reported indicates the number of deaths from records that have been analyzed as of the date indicated. However, due to the one- to eight-week timeframe it can take to completely process death records, counts from previous weeks are continually revised as more records are received and processed.
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