lol no it hasn't. It's at an absolute fever pitch, and it'll only get hotter as the election gets closer.

Like, honestly, read something to the left of Fox News and at least try to understand what the other side is thinking.

No, Trump lost the election in March, when he decided to go all in on magical thinking that covid would just disappear like a miracle. Covid was actually a golden opportunity for him. If he could have taken it seriously, spoken somberly and presidentially about it, and done the basic block-and-tackling of public health (testing, contact tracing, public messaging), we'd be drowning in liberal tears right now. Other world leaders who handled this well have seen their approval ratings soar. But not Trump. He didn't and couldn't do those things, because Republicans since at least the 90s have believed government can never do anything right, and have done their best to prove it. And Trump personally is a master at hype but has never succeeded at actually executing a big project in his life.

This part is correct.

If you still think (based on your thorough analysis):
Then I congratulate you on your impartiality.

Name one.

At least our Prime Minister's approval ratings here in Finland went through the roof after our covid response in the spring (we had 300 dead or so in wave #1). I'd imagine it's the same in a lot of European countries but I can't be bothered to check. The NZ prime minister is probably another example.

Personally I think covid was just a sick black swan for Trump, and I don't think Trump would've had a realistic way to not suffer from it. He didn't handle it well and now he's suffering a lot because of it, but idk what he could have done to even hit breakeven.

Like, on a scale of 0-10 with 10 being max damage to his ratings and 0 being no effect at all, the covid effect for Trump ended up being probably a 9, and if he had played his hand perfectly maybe he could've mitigated the damages to, idk, 4-5? That's the problem with there only being two parties in the US, when you face a crisis with only bad options available you will get blamed regardless. Close down the country, you'll get blamed for destroying the economy. Keep it open, you'll get blamed for the loss of lives. It's easier for politicians to "win" when bad **** happens if there are more parties than just two, which is the case in most European countries.

This is the exact comparison I've been making.

I can't think of anything else on that level. At least not anything that was high-profile.

Hopping on the brag train... 9 cent Biden. After he lost Iowa and New Hampshire.

Would prefer not to post publicly. I've sent you a PM.

when did u sell trump?

Jacinta Ardern obv

Scott Morrison (he was under fire for being in holiday in Hawaii during the bushfires and a corruption thing before)

All of the Australian state premiers except the Victorian one where there was an outbreak have seen their ratings go up too if I recall correctly

Assume Thailand/Vietnam/Taiwan etc have seen their leaders do well on approvals too but too lazy to google it

Ontario premier Rob Ford - https://bayobserver.ca/2020/07/15/fo...-rating-soars/ He got a +39% jump.

In fact, almost every canadian politican gained - https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...ting-most-poll

Trump was on his way to an easy electoral victory before Covid19 hit.
He mismanaged the situation. But he couldn't do otherwise. He was a goner from the moment covid reached America. First, because he can't act against his own ingrained instincts. Second, because he couldn't handle the pandemic different than how his base would have expected him. His base is a mirror of him and he's a slave to his base.
This outcome was inevitable.
Hey, how can a leader protect his country from Covid, when he can't even protect his White House from Covid?

If he had simply applied the travel bans across the board in January, along with (correctly) assuming WHO had no clue and strongly recommend facial coverings, that would have gotten him on the right side of the dispute. The dems would of course gone strongly against his actions (xenophobia, states rights, masks don't work, etc.), and the sides would have been effectively switched from that point on. Obv the media would have spun it in favor of the dems, and made Trump look awful for getting in the way of a roaring economy, going against WHO "science", and worrying about a virus that only afflicts 85 year old people.

LA Times was going on and on about how ineffective facial coverings were as late as March. I don't see any retractions from them or other mainstream media on that.

For vinivici9586:

CNN/SSRS , Ipsos and POLITICO/Morning Consult all have Harris winning. The CNN poll was very partisan though so I would discount it a bit.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/1...tention-428105

Yep

Unsurprisingly, most don't realize that much of the COVID spread in the US came from the Italy/Europe -> New York route.

Biden is up by 8+ points and undecided/third party voters make up at most eight percent. Do the math. In 2016 20% of voters were undecided. The only reason I'm not all in on Biden is fear of Trump pulling shenanigans.

any sharps* have a read on early voting? seems like some, maybe not sharps, are jumping to conclusions on twitter.

*if you are taking victory laps on Pence's debate performance your opinion is invalid

BetOnline had state-by-state bets down for about a week and are now back up. Interesting notes:
- It's now "Democrat v Republican" not "Biden v Trump"

- Maybe somebody can explain this so to me before I stake too much on it; Trump is now an underdog in Florida (+110) and not nearly as big of a favorite as I would have imagined in Ohio (-150)

I think most people realize that Trump's travel ban on China was so effective that it slowed when the virus initial grasp on the US and that led to most cases be traced back to Europe and not China.

Ohio's was one of the few states to take proactive action against COVID in march. They had shutdowns, stay-at-homes, and mandatory masks. The governor's approval rating hit 80% at one point.

Ah yes, his travel bans were so effective that we only lead the entire world on cases and deaths! Everyone knew Italy was having a crisis at that time. Hell, Italy totally locked down a part of their country. But Trump only wanted to lock down travel from China even though COVID had already spread around the world. It's like the type of plan some first grader comes up with.

You need to re-examine the timeline.

We are one of the biggest tourist destinations in the world, the engine of the world economy and have a lot of 50 biggest cities in the world. Did you not expect covid to ever effect us?