Week in Review

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Week in Review

11/07/2020

For the week 11/2-11/6

[Posted 10:00 PM ET, Friday]

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Edition 1,125

Before I get to the Election, in the final days of the campaign, President Trump liked to say that the media was focused only on one thing, “Covid, Covid, Covid.”  But the president claimed he had done a great job, “and we are rounding the turn…rounding the corner.”

So while we were all focused on Tuesday, and then the chaos after as the president issued unfounded claims of fraud, while Joe Biden inched his way to 270 and victory, this was the worst week yet in America with the pandemic, the nation hitting over 100,000 cases each of the last three days, including a staggering, world record for one day, today, 132,500!  And over 1,200 deaths.

As some of our medical experts are observing, it is as if a large percentage of the population has just given up and clearly is refusing to wear masks, like in North and South Dakota, who are suffering huge spikes in hospitalizations.

Just a quick local anecdote.  I’ve been communicating continuously with my doctor/Wake Forest friend, Dr. W., down in Greenville, S.C., comparing notes, and telling him how I was proud of my community of Summit, New Jersey, and how the kids have been going to school since the beginning of September, essentially 8:00-12:30, and then home for online learning.  It’s worked.  Plus we had only eight positive Covid cases in almost the entire first two months, so the school system didn’t shutdown once as a result.

And then…bam!  19 positives in literally about 8 days, and today Summit High School sent the kids home for two weeks of in-home learning.  Neighboring Berkeley Heights sent its high school students home as well on Wednesday for two weeks after eight positives originating from a bunch of Halloween parties.

I was taking care of Dr. Bortrum’s home last Saturday for Halloween, dropping off candy in the afternoon that I placed in the driveway, and then at night removing the setup, and going home I was astounded how many Halloween house parties were being held.  It was insane!  Exactly what people were not supposed to do. 

And that’s your message from the editor (along with Dr. Fauci, Deborah Birx, Scott Gottlieb et al) when it comes to Thanksgiving.  Don’t do it!

Yes, Covid, Covid, Covid is coming back as a headline next week, once the voting results become crystal clear.

Speaking of which, I wrote the following in this column two weeks ago, Oct. 24.

“These next eleven days are going to be pure chaos, with all manner of intelligence officials warning of Russian interference. There will be some incredibly ugly stuff up on social media…

“But this is all leading up to the chaos and uncertainty of Election Night itself. As I note down below with some of the polling data, it seems a virtual certainty that Donald Trump will be declaring victory that evening, while hundreds of lawyers affiliated with the Republican National Committee and the campaign attempt to stop the counting of mail-in ballots, 2/3s of which in most states will be for Biden. There’s really no telling what will happen.”

And that’s exactly what happened.  As I detail below, President Trump disgraced himself and the country both late Tuesday night (early Wed. morning) and then again Thursday ranting about how “mail-in voting has destroyed our system,” urging states such as Georgia and Pennsylvania to stop counting the mail-in ballots, while at the same time insisting Nevada and Arizona continue counting same.

The president is doing everything he possibly can to discredit the prime institution of American democracy; each citizen’s right to vote.  He is doing all he can to undermine the process, and in so doing is also undermining our national security and giving our enemies further ammunition, social media being the weapon of choice.

But as the president tears down our institutions, without any hard evidence of meaningful voter fraud, Joe Biden narrowly leads in four states: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada that would secure his victory, having already won two of the three states comprising the Blue Wall, Wisconsin and Michigan.

Biden only needs Pennsylvania, but now the president will tie up all four states in litigation and, in the case of at least Georgia, there is reason for a recount.

But if the margin of Biden’s lead in Pennsylvania grows to 30,000+, just how far will President Trump go?

Trump is clearly in his right to challenge the votes in various states and our system is well-equipped for this, but how ugly is he going to get in his messaging to his supporters?  Quite ugly, it turns out.

As in a tweet from the president tonight:

“Joe Biden should not wrongfully claim the office of the President.  I could make that claim also.  Legal proceedings are just now beginning!”

I’ll get into the exit polls (beyond a few comments I make down below) in great detail next time once all the data is in because they are indeed important and will help drive messaging in 2024, as well as the already looming 2022 mid-term elections.

But you really can’t make too many broad-based assumptions on Tuesday’s vote outside of the obvious, including the pollsters.  There was no Blue Wave and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi deserves a lot of heat for her own messaging in the final weeks, specifically on the stimulus plan that fell apart.  That definitely cost some votes and the Democrats ended up losing seats when they were expected to gain some, though the true extent is yet to be determined as many of the races are awaiting the counting of, yes, mail-in ballots.

Importantly, Republicans should retain the Senate, assuming the two run-offs in Georgia on Jan. 5 are at worst a split for the elephants.  [We’ll have plenty of time for the Warnock-Loeffler and Perdue-Ossoff races later…assuming Perdue can’t get his final vote count to 50.0% from its current 49.8%, which would allow him to avoid a runoff with Ossoff.]

Elsewhere, Democrats made some sizable gains in the presidential vote.  Look at Georgia, which Trump won by five points in 2016.  The president won Texas by six points, but this was a gain of three from 2016.

And Joe Biden probably won!  And when all is said and done, by five million votes (it’s currently 4.1 million with millions of ballots, particularly in California, yet to be counted).

Assuming Pennsylvania goes to the former vice president, he did exactly what he set out to do.  Take back the Blue Wall.  That’s pretty freakin’ good.  So there are reasons for Democrats to be  down in the mouth, like over the Senate, and Florida (more on this next week…I’m going to rant a bit on the topic of the Latino vote), but Georgia has now joined the Big Six in terms of battleground states…Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Arizona, and there is good reason to invest in Texas for the future, if you’re a Democrat, and not ignore it if you’re a Republican.

Lastly, for now, three cheers for America…at least for one week.  While all the final numbers aren’t in, it seems the turnout will indeed be the highest percentagewise since 1908.  And three cheers for election workers all over the country, doing their civic duty.

Where we go from here, however, at least in the short-term, is up to Il Duce, the Superspreader-in-Chief.  For now, wash your hands and blow off any holiday plans.

The 2020 Election…days of chaos…

Late Election Night, Joe Biden said he was confident of winning the contest once the votes were counted. Shortly after, President Trump appeared at the White House to declare victory and said his lawyers would be taking his case to the U.S. Supreme Court, without specifying what they would claim.

“We were getting ready to win this election. Frankly, we did win this election,” Trump said.  “This is a major fraud on our nation. This is an embarrassment to our country.  We want the law to be used in a proper manner. So we’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court. We want all voting to stop,” he ranted.  “We don’t want them to find any ballots at 4:00 in the morning and add them to the list, okay.  It is a very sad moment.”

Then he talked of disenfranchisement.

“A very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise….and we won’t stand for it,” he told supporters in the East Room. “We will not stand for it.”

“It is also clear that we have won Georgia,” Trump said.  “They’re never going to catch us; they can’t catch us.”

“We’re winning Pennsylvania by a tremendous amount,” Trump contended.  “Think of this: We’re up 690,000 votes in Pennsylvania…with 64 percent of the vote in. It’s going to be almost impossible to catch. And we’re coming into good Pennsylvania areas where they happen to like your president, so we’ll probably expand that.”

Trump said Democrats “knew they couldn’t win. So they said, ‘Let’s go to court.’  And did I predict this? …I’ve been saying this from the day I heard they were going to send out tens of millions of ballots.”

Biden rejected Trump’s apparent efforts to cast doubt on the vote-counting process earlier in the night.

“It’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare the winner of this election,” he tweeted.  “It’s the voters’ place.”

So while the picture looked bleak across the Blue Wall – Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania – late Tuesday, it quickly improved early Wednesday morning, especially in the first two, which meant, coupled with Biden leads, albeit slim, in Nevada and Arizona, the former vice president had a path to 270.

Biden didn’t win in Florida, Ohio or Texas, but he was also battling in North Carolina and Georgia.

Following President Trump’s tirade Tuesday night, Fox News anchor Chris Wallace told viewers: “This is an extremely flammable situation, and the president just threw a match on it.”

Referring to Trump’s false claims that he had won states like Georgia and North Carolina, neither of which had finished counting votes, Wallace said: “He hasn’t won these states.  Nobody is saying he’s won the states. The states haven’t said that he’s won.”

The president, held back by his advisors, then stayed out of the public eye for two days as the vote count began to surge against him, particularly in Pennsylvania and Georgia, though he continued to tweet. Biden then issued a statement of calm Thursday afternoon as it appeared increasingly clear the trends in Pennsylvania were in his favor.

“Democracy is sometimes messy,” he said in downtown Wilmington, Del.  “It sometimes requires a little patience as well… I ask people to stay calm.”

Trump had then had it and strode into the White House briefing room during network news primetime in the 6:30 p.m. ET slot.

“If you count the legal votes, I easily win,” he said.  “If you count the illegal votes, they can try to steal the election from us.”

For 15 minutes, the president claimed to be the victim of nefarious efforts to prevent him from earning a second term.  When he finished, he then left the room full of reporters without facing any questions.   He had presented zero hard evidence.

The president claimed that Democrats supported the use of mail-in ballots to alter vote totals after Election Day.  He claimed the media, pollster and tech companies were arrayed against him as well.  He said the polls were meant to “suppress” Republican turnout.  He insisted he had evidence of impropriety that would be upheld by the courts.

For weeks before the election he told his adoring crowds that the only way he could lose would be through fraud, while declining to say he would allow a peaceful transfer of power.

He telegraphed he would be headed to the Supreme Court with the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett, telling reporters before announcing her selection that it was important to fill the seat vacated by the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg because of the election.

A number of GOP voices expressed outrage at the president’s performance Thursday.

“With his remarks from the White House tonight, the President disrespected every single American who figured out a way to safely vote amid a pandemic that has taken 235,000 lives,” former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge tweeted.  “Not to mention those who are dutifully counting that vote.  Absolutely shameful.  Yet so predictable.”

Former Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.) said Trump’s Thursday evening speech asserting he was being cheated out of a victory was “dangerous.”

“No Republican elected official is going to stand behind that statement.  None of them will,” Santorum said on CNN.  “There may be fraud – we don’t know that right now.  For the president to go out there and claim that without any evidence of that is dangerous.”

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) urged the president to “stop spreading debunked misinformation.”

“We want every vote counted, yes every legal vote, of course,” he said.  “But, if you have legit concerns about fraud present evidence and take it to court…This is getting insane.”

Rep. Will Hurd (R-Tex.) said Trump’s comments were “dangerous & wrong.”

“A sitting president undermining our political process & questioning the legality of the voices of countless Americans without evidence…undermines the very foundation that this nation was built upon.  Every American should have his or her vote counted,” he tweeted.

Today, former GOP presidential contender Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) issued a statement on Twitter:

“The President is within his rights to request recounts, to call for investigation of alleged voting irregularities where evidence exists, and to exhaust legal remedies – doing these things is consistent with our election process.  He is wrong to say that the election was rigged, corrupt and stolen – doing so damages the cause of freedom here and around the world, weakens the institutions that lie at the foundation of the Republic, and recklessly inflames destructive and dangerous passions.”

Opinion…all sides…

Gerald F. Seib / Wall Street Journal [Wed.]

“A divided nation is emerging from a wrenching presidential election still divided – and divided in many of the same ways it was before.

“The precise outcome of the presidential race was undetermined late Tuesday night, but this much was clear: Any thought that the political picture would look vastly different after a year of bitter debate and national reflection, and as a result of a cathartic presidential election, seemed to be fading away.

“Instead, the same splits that have been on display in recent years are still there, and in some cases they appeared to have widened. The gap between men and women in Tuesday’s voting was large: Democrat Joe Biden drew the votes of 58% of women but just 49% of men, according to AP VoteCast, a broad nationwide survey conducted for The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations.

“President Trump won the votes of 61% of white working-class men, while Mr. Biden won an almost identical 62% of the votes of white women with college degrees. The president may have made some inroads with Black men and Hispanics in Florida, but voters of color remain a heavily Democratic constituency.

“The vast swath of rural and small-town counties that were painted Republican red in the 2016 election that swept Mr. Trump into the White House remain that color, while the urban counties that have become the stronghold of the modern Democratic Party remained deep blue. The biggest movement in the ensuing four years came among suburban women moving against the president, but he offset his losses there, at least to some extent, by creating new voters among working-class white men.

“In sum, the most bitter presidential campaign in memory, conducted against the backdrop of a pandemic and summer of racial reckoning, seems not to have altered the fundamental contours of the American body politic.  There have been changes in the margins, to be sure, but the massive turnout seen in this year’s voting seems to have only confirmed with greater intensity how deep the divides run.

“What all this says about the ability of those in Congress and the White House to govern effectively is hard to say.  There have been plenty of important issues on the table in the 2020 presidential debate: the level of taxation, the urgency of counteracting climate change, the contours of the American health-care system, the country’s willingness to accept new immigrants.

“But at its heart, the 2020 race was more about cultural issues and attitudes: Should the country worry more about public health or economic health?  Should a summer of social unrest leave Americans worrying more about systemic racism or a breakdown of law and order?  Is the country’s growing diversity a strength to relish or a hurdle to overcome?

“At first blush, it doesn’t appear the election showed a consensus emerged on any of those questions.  Instead, the debate over all of them seems destined to carry on.

“The presidential campaign played out across a map remarkably similar to the one seen four years ago, and election-night returns confirmed that that map continues to accurately portray the divisions of America.

“It is clear from the voting outcome that Democrats are beginning to make inroads in states that once seemed far from their grasp – the states of Georgia and Texas in particular. Demographics seem destined to drive both toward them in the long run, but not enough to put them within their reach now.  In addition, Democrats seem to have ridden a wave of demographic change to flip Arizona from red to blue.

“Similarly, the votes of young Americans are flowing toward Democrats as well, but not yet in enough numbers to radically alter the national equation.

“In many places, the election confirmed, red America is growing more red and blue America more blue.  President Trump sought to do something no president had ever even attempted to do before: run for re-election without ever having topped 50% job approval in the venerable Gallup poll.  He showed, once again, that people who don’t particularly like him, and who don’t like many of the things he does, are willing to vote for him.

“And Mr. Biden was trying to bridge the gap between a Democratic Party of the new left and a Democratic Party of the old center, where he has spent his career.

“Yet they both found that they were most successful in winning the votes not of people who were for them, but of those who were against the other guy.

“In that sense, the Trump era, which has been a time of deep division, remained precisely that as the nation pondered whether to give him four more years.”

Thomas L. Friedman / New York Times [Wed.]

“We still do not know who is the winner of the presidential election. But we do know who is the loser: the United States of America.

“We have just experienced four years of the most divisive and dishonest presidency in American history, which attacked the twin pillars of our democracy – truth and trust. Donald Trump has not spent a single day of his term trying to be president of all the people, and he has broken rules and trashed norms in ways that no other president ever dared – right up to Tuesday night, when he falsely claimed election fraud and summoned the Supreme Court to step in and stop the voting, as if such a thing were even remotely possible.

“ ‘Frankly, we did win this election,’ Trump declared, while millions of ballots remained to be counted in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and Nevada.

“ ‘We’ll be going to the U.S. Supreme Court,’ Trump added, without explaining how or on what basis.  ‘We want all voting to stop.’

“We want all voting to stop?  Really?

“But if Joe Biden wins – and we may not know for days – it may be by just a sliver of votes in several key battleground states.  Although he’ll likely win the popular vote, there will be no landslide, no overwhelming majority telling Trump and those around him that enough was enough: Be gone with you and never bring that kind of politics of division back to this country again.

“ ‘Whatever the final vote, it is already clear that the number of Americans saying, ‘Enough is enough’ was not enough,’ said Dov Seidman, an expert on leadership and author of the book ‘How: Why How We Do Anything Means Everything.’

“ ‘There was no blue political wave,’ he noted.  ‘But, more importantly, there was no moral wave. There was no widespread rejection of the kind of leadership that divides us, especially in a pandemic.’

“We are a country with multiple compound fractures, and so we simply cannot do anything ambitious anymore – like put a man on the moon – because ambitious things have to be done together. We can’t even come together to all wear masks in a pandemic, when health experts tell us it would absolutely save lives.  It would be so simple, so easy and so patriotic to say, ‘I protect you and you protect me.’  And yet, we can’t do it.

“This election, if anything, highlighted the fault lines.  The president, using many different dog whistles during the campaign, presented himself as the leader of America’s shrinking white majority.  It is impossible to explain his continued support, despite his unprecedented poisonous behavior in office, without reference to two numbers:

“The U.S. Census Bureau projects that by the middle of this year, nonwhites will constitute a majority of the nation’s 74 million children.  And it is estimated that by sometime in the 2040s, whites will make up 49 percent of the U.S. population, and Latinos, Blacks, Asians and multiracial populations 51 percent.

“Among many whites, particularly white working-class males without college degrees, there is clearly a discomfort with the fact, and even a resistance to it, that our nation is in a steady process of becoming ‘minority white.’  They see Trump as a bulwark against the social, cultural and economic implications of that change.

“What many Democrats see as a good trend – a country reckoning with structural racism and learning to embrace and celebrate increasing diversity – many white people see as a fundamental cultural threat.

“And that is fueling another lethal trend that this election only reinforced.

“ ‘Many Republican senators and congressional representatives – like Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and John Cornyn in Texas – won by hugging Trump,’ said Gautam Mukunda, author of ‘Indispensable: When Leaders Really Matter.’  ‘That means that Trumpism is the future of the G.O.P.

“ ‘The tactically unique thing about Trumpism is that it never even tries to get the support of the majority of Americans. So the G.O.P. will continue with the strategy of using every legal, but democratically deeply harmful, way to control power even though most Americans vote against them – like the way they just crammed through two Supreme Court justices.’

“That means all the stresses on the American system of government will continue to grow, Mukunda added, because in our antiquated electoral system, Republicans theoretically can control both the White House and the Senate despite the desires of a large majority of the American people.  ‘No system can survive that kind of stress,’ he concluded.  ‘It will break at some point.’

“Nothing has happened, even if Biden wins, that suggests Republicans will fundamentally rethink this political strategy that they perfected under Trump.

“But Democrats have a lot to rethink, said Michael Sandel, a professor at Harvard and author of ‘The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good.’

“ ‘Even though Joe Biden emphasized his working-class roots and sympathies,’ Sandel told me, ‘the Democratic Party continues to be more identified with professional elites and college-educated voters than with the blue-collar voters who once constituted its base. Even so epochal an event as a pandemic, bungled by Trump, did not change this.

“ ‘Democrats need to ask themselves: Why do many working people embrace a plutocrat-populist whose policies do little to help them?  Democrats need to address the sense of humiliation felt by working people who feel the economy has left them behind and that credentialed elites look down on them.’

“Again, while Biden made small inroads with working-class voters, there seems to be no huge shift.  Maybe because many working-class Trump voters not only feel looked down upon, but they also resent what they see as cultural censorship from liberal elites, coming out of college campuses.

“As Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, wrote in an Oct. 26 essay, ‘Trump is, for better or worse, the foremost symbol of resistance to the overwhelming woke cultural tide that has swept along the media, academia, corporate America, Hollywood, professional sports, the big foundations, and almost everything in between.’

“ ‘To put it in blunt terms,’ he continued, ‘for many people, he’s the only middle finger available – to brandish against the people who’ve assumed they have the whip hand in American culture. This may not be a very good reason to vote for a president, and it doesn’t excuse Trump’s abysmal conduct and maladministration.’

“I confess that the hardest conversations I had Tuesday night were with my daughters.  I so badly want to tell them that all is going to be OK, that we’ve been through bad patches as a country before.  And I hope that will turn out to be the case – that whoever wins this election will draw the right conclusion that we simply cannot go on tearing one another apart.

“But I could not, in all honesty, tell them that with any confidence.  I am certain ‘the better angels of our nature’ are still out there.  But our politics and our political system right now are not inspiring them to emerge at the scale and speed that we so desperately need.”

Editorial / Wall Street Journal [Thurs.]

“Besides media pollsters, the biggest immediate election losers on Tuesday were Democratic Congressional leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Americans diminished Speaker Pelosi’s House majority and appear to have kept Republicans in control of the Senate as a brake on the left’s agenda.

“The biggest news is that Mitch McConnell is likely to return as Senate Majority Leader to torment Democratic dreams for two more years. The GOP lost seats in Colorado and Arizona but gained one in Alabama. Republican Senators Joni Ernst in Iowa, Susan Collins in Maine and Steve Daines in Montana prevailed, and Thom Tillis is leading in North Carolina.

“Democrats poured literally hundreds of millions of dollars into races against Lindsey Graham in South Carolina and in Kentucky against Mr. McConnell that they lost by double-digits.  Democrats seem to believe their own progressive pieties that money is destiny in politics.

“Democrat Gary Peters will likely hold onto his seat by a hair, but Iraq war veteran John James outperformed President Trump and made a Michigan Senate race competitive for the first time in many years.  The two races in Georgia could head to runoffs in January, but Republicans will be favorites.

“A GOP Senate would mean the end of the Biden-Bernie Sanders ‘unity’ agenda.  No death to the legislative filibuster, no new U.S. states, no Supreme Court packing, no confiscatory tax increases, no Green New Deal.  If Mr. Biden wins and he wants to get something done, he would have to go through Mitch the Knife.

“Mrs. Pelosi will keep her majority, but much reduced from 232-197.  The GOP flipped two seats in South Florida amid a surge of Hispanic turnout and toppled 15-year Rep. Collin Peterson in western Minnesota.  Republicans had picked up a net five seats by Wednesday afternoon and could gain as many as 12 or 13.  They regained seats they’d lost in 2018 in Cedar Rapids, Charleston (S.C.), and Oklahoma City….

“These GOP gains will reduce Mrs. Pelosi’s legislative running room and perhaps test her party control.  Her strategy of refusing to compromise on a Covid-19 relief bill may have cost seats, and now she’ll have a harder time getting a blue-state and union bailout through the Senate.  If Mr. Biden wins, the GOP will be better poised to retake the House in 2022.

“One of Tuesday night’s big stories was how Republicans gained ground among minorities.  One reason is they made more of an effort at outreach, especially at their August convention.  The GOP message of economic opportunity resonated with minority entrepreneurs and workers as Democrats stood for government lockdowns and handouts.  And who would have thought that immigrants who fled socialism in Venezuela and violence in Central America would oppose those scourges here?

“Democrats have refashioned themselves into a party of coastal elites and government unions with a progressive agenda that many middle-class Americans dislike.  This includes banishing fossil fuels, abolishing state right-to-work laws and a pointless partisan impeachment.

“They may have saved a few seats by fear-mongering about pre-existing health conditions for the third election in a row, but even Republicans might eventually figure out they need a response to that one.  Regardless of whether Joe Biden wins the White House, the Democratic left lost America.”

Ty Burr / Boston Globe

“Who knows what we’ll be facing tomorrow, or in two weeks, or in the long haul to Inauguration Day?  The work is just beginning.  But that’s it: Our eyes have been forcibly opened to how fragile our system can be.  How electoral systems put in place decades or centuries ago to ensure equitable representation now work against it.  And how easy it is to upend the separation of powers that restrains a power-hoarding president and keeps America from becoming a republic in name only. There’s so much to do. But we’re awake now.”

Editorial / Washington Post [Fri.]

“President Trump did the country the favor of explaining ahead of time how he planned to falsely allege the rigging of the election for his opponent. Thursday evening in the White House, he followed up with a series of preposterous, inflammatory lies about the vote-counting process.  ‘There’s been tremendous corruption and fraud going on,’ he said.

“Let’s be absolutely clear: There is zero – zero – evidence of fraud or corruption. What Mr. Trump sees as nefarious is something more mundane though undoubtedly painful for him: He is losing.  On election night in some states, he held a lead in partial counts. Then, as mail-in ballots were counted, his lead was ‘whittled away,’ as he said.  The explanation is obvious to everyone except, apparently, the president.  He railed so much against mail-in voting before the election that few Republicans voted that way.  Most of the mailed ballots therefore favor Democrat Joe Biden.  Now officials are counting the votes – with observers watching, contrary to another Trump lie; with both Republican and Democratic election officials participating, contrary to another Trump lie; and in accordance with the rules, contrary to yet another Trump lie.

“For news networks and platforms, these relentless, bald-faced falsehoods present an almost insuperable challenge. Hashtags exhorting readers to ‘stop the steal’ exploded in popularity after Mr. Trump used Twitter to accuse Joe Biden of trying to ‘STEAL the election,’ and then took to television to claim baselessly that he had won and that any other outcome would constitute a ‘fraud.’

“Purveyors of propaganda within Mr. Trump’s circle needed no further cues. Eric Trump shared a fake ‘ballot-burning’ video originally from sources affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory; he also announced, ‘We have won Pennsylvania!’ even as evidence to the contrary flowed in.  Newt Gingrich launched allegations of vote theft on ‘Fox & Friends’; Rush Limbaugh shared a viral lie about more votes than registered voters arriving in Wisconsin; hyperpartisan outlets such as One America News declared a second term for the incumbent (‘MSM hopes you don’t believe your eyes’).

“News networks, platforms and other intermediaries to the public can try to contain the damage. Twitter’s aggressive labeling of misleading posts coupled with its sharing restrictions have proved fairly effective, though catching those who echo the original falsehoods is tougher.  Facebook’s label-only strategy has been somewhat less effective but still useful.  YouTube has lacked a policy almost entirely.

“Television networks also are struggling with how to handle an unprecedented assault on democracy consisting of patently incorrect but newsworthy claims. Thankfully, anchors have mostly been forceful at pushing back: Fox News’ Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, among others, have set the facts straight on many of the fanciful fraud accusations. Of course, these efforts would be more effective if their network contended with its own disinformation superspreaders, including Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, by challenging their mendacity in something closer to real time.  As Mr. Trump spewed lie after insidious lie from the White House press room Thursday evening, many networks cut away entirely. CNN continued to air his remarks, most of the time with a chyron pointing out their bogusness; Fox News’ chyron at one point simply quoted Trump saying, without proof, ‘WE HAVE SO MUCH PROOF.’

“We hope, even after so many disappointments, that other Republican leaders will stand up to this most vile attack on the integrity of American democracy and say, ‘Enough.’  Whether they do or not, we are confident that election officials across the country will continue doing their job: counting every vote.  We are confident, too, that most Americans will see these lies for what they are: desperate and despicable.”

Rich Lowry / New York Post [Fri.]

“Pending the outcome in a few key states, Donald Trump may be leaving the White House, but he’s not exiting the room.

“The fiercest Never Trump critics hoped for – and wishfully predicted – a cleansing landslide, a 2020 defeat so all-encompassing that every trace of Trump and his enablers would be erased from the Republican Party.

“That’s not happening. Trump’s poll- and pundit-defying surge toward the cusp of a second term vindicates Trump’s approach enough to give him and his potential successors continued traction, if not a dominant voice, in the party.

“Trump’s possible loss is nothing like the shellacking the GOP experienced in 2008, when a deeply unpopular George W. Bush left office amid a controversial war and a financial crisis and Barack Obama won the presidency in a landslide together with a 60-seat Senate majority.

“Trump’s party is set to retain its Senate majority and perhaps pick up House seats, while the margin of his own defeat may be a whisker in the Blue Wall states, as his 2016 margin of victory was a whisker.

“He did his own side the inadvertent favor of perhaps buffering it from the worst consequences of his own possible loss – first, by filling the Ruth Bader Ginsburg seat on the Supreme Court that otherwise would have fallen to Joe Biden, and by performing well enough to aid the cause of Republican Senate candidates, who will neuter a Biden presidency from the outset if they do indeed manage to hold the majority.

“Trump’s voters were still there for him – in fact, more so than ever. His tack of doubling down on his base wasn’t quite as insane as commentators always told us and almost worked (it was an exaggerated version of the strategy that won George W. Bush a second term in 2004 and Obama a second term in 2012).  His strong close proved his power as a campaigner, with his signature madcap rallies – featuring the intensity of a revival meeting and the yucks of Borscht Belt comedy – serving as effective organizing and messaging vehicles.

“This is not to deny that Trump’s own failings helped sink him. There are a thousand pitfalls he could have avoided if he weren’t so thin-skinned, self-involved and undisciplined. No single one of them made the difference, but cumulatively they blighted his presidency and made him radioactive in the suburbs and among college-educated whites.

“No one should want to repeat them, and the party should never again get behind such a flawed personal figure.  Nevertheless, Trump points to a viable GOP future even if he comes up short.

“He posted startling gains among Latino voters, particularly in Florida. This shows it’s possible to imagine a working-class-oriented Republican Party that isn’t a demographic dead end, but genuinely crosses racial lines, even if this potential is still inchoate.

“Given how Trump’s base showed up massively in two presidential elections, it’s also unlikely that these voters are going to be jettisoned anytime soon by some other Republican presidential candidate in favor of an entirely new coalition….

“These voters’ concerns have to figure prominently in the agenda of the GOP going forward.  That doesn’t require embracing any particular Trump policy – steel tariffs, for instance, have been a bust – but it does mean the party will inevitably be more populist going forward….

“But all this work will take place with Trump himself remaining an outsize presence.  He’ll presumably continue to rate and so will remain a fixture on Fox News and talk radio even if he’s a one-term president.  His supporters will still consider him a legendary fighter, a totem of resistance to the media and the cultural elite.  And ambitious 2024 candidates will seek to inherit his mantle.

“Trump might not win the biggest, most important prize of a second term in 2020, but there’s no doubt he has staved off political irrelevance.”

---

Covid-19 death tolls, as of tonight….

World…1,248,552
USA…242,230
Brazil…162,035
India…125,605
Mexico…94,323
UK…48,475
Italy…40,638
France…39,865
Spain…38,833
Iran…37,409
Peru…34,783
Argentina…33,136
Colombia…32,405
Russia…29,887

Source: worldometers.info

U.S. daily death tolls…Sun. 399; Mon. 522; Tues. 1,199; Wed. 1,201; Thurs. 1,125; Fri. 1,248.

In my Wednesday comparison between the Euro six (Germany, Italy, France, Spain, UK and Belgium) and the U.S., both with similar populations, this week, on Wednesday the Euro six had 147,510 cases and 1,939 deaths; the U.S. had a record 108,389 cases and 1,201 deaths.  Horrific numbers all around.

Europe’s Covid cases doubled in five weeks, propelling the region last Sunday across the milestone of 10 million total infections.  At week’s end, Europe was over 11.5 million cases and over 125,000 deaths.  Today, Europe had 317,000 cases with 4,371 deaths, per worldometers.info, which, by the way, is essentially a day ahead of Johns Hopkins’ data due to the timing cycle.

Russia is nearing full capacity in its hospital beds across the nation.  Poland is among those hitting new records in cases and deaths virtually daily.  It’s sickening.

And in my state of New Jersey, hospitalizations are spiking, as they are across America.

Covid Bytes

--Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, said in a Nov. 2 report obtained by the Washington Post, “We are entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic…leading to increasing mortality. This is not about lockdowns – It hasn’t been about lockdowns since March or April.  It’s about an aggressive balanced approach that is not being implemented.”

Birx’s internal report, shared with top White House and agency officials, contradicts Trump on numerous points: While the president holds large campaign events with hundreds of attendees, most without masks, she explicitly warns against them.  While the president blames rising cases on more testing, she says testing is “flat or declining” in many areas where cases are rising. And while Trump says the country is “rounding the turn,” Birx notes the country is entering its most dangerous period yet.  [Lena H. Sun and Josh Dawsey / Washington Post]

And then we had a number of days this week with a record 100,000+ cases.

Which was what Dr. Fauci predicted a while ago.  Last weekend he told the Washington Post, “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt.  It’s not a good situation.  All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors.  You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

Fauci said of Dr. Scott Atlas, Trump’s favored pandemic adviser, who advocates letting the virus spread among young healthy people and reopening the country without restrictions, “I have real problems with that guy…He keeps talking about things that when you dissect it out and parse it out, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Atlas last Saturday went on RT, formerly Russia Today, a Kremlin sponsored television network, and criticized lockdown measures aimed at tackling the virus.  Atlas then later apologized for the appearance, seemingly naïve to the fact it is a tool of Russian intelligence and disinformation.

--AstraZeneca said late-stage trials for the Covid-19 vaccine it is developing with the University of Oxford are on track to produce results “later this year,” with a potential rollout soon after, subject to regulatory approval.

Timing of the much-anticipated results depends on community infection rates around the world, with around 23,000 volunteers now enrolled in clinical trials of the vaccine in the U.S., the UK, Brazil and South Africa, the British drugmaker said Thursday.

AstraZeneca and Oxford have pledged to make and sell some 3 billion doses of their shot at no profit, if it is successful, for $4 each or slightly more.  The 3 billion doses are already signed into a web of global sales and manufacturing agreements designed to deliver the vaccine to every region of the globe – rich and poor – at roughly the same time.

--British Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended a second Covid lockdown in England from critics who said it was unnecessary and others who said it was too late, arguing now was the time to prevent a “medical and moral disaster.”

After rejecting calls last month for a new national lockdown, Johnson U-turned on Saturday, with new restrictions across England beginning yesterday, Thursday; the restrictions to remain in place until Dec. 2.

Britain has been dealing with more than 20,000 new cases a day and scientists have warned a worst-case scenario of 80,000 dead could be exceeded this winter.

But Johnson has come under fire from all sides over his about-turn – from those in his Conservative Party who see the measures as draconian to others who have long been urging government to introduce a national lockdown.

“We are fighting a disease… When the data changes of course we must change course too,” he told parliament, setting out to lawmakers that action was needed to avoid a “medical and moral disaster” when hospitals could be overrun.

Essential shops, schools and universities in England will remain open but pubs and restaurants will be shut except for takeaways.  Outbound international travel is banned.

The government extended its emergency coronavirus wage subsidy scheme to ensure workers who are temporarily laid off during the new England-wide lockdown receive 80% of their pay.  Britain introduced the 80% wage subsidy in March and it had been due to expire last Saturday before Boris Johnson extended it.

The rest of the UK – Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland – have their own lockdown policies and enacted tougher health restrictions last month.

--Denmark will cull its entire herd of up to 17 million mink after a mutation of the coronavirus found in the animals spread to humans, posing a risk to any possible future vaccine, the prime minister said on Wednesday.  Outbreaks at mink farms have persisted in the country, which is the world’s largest producer of mink skins, despite repeated efforts to cull infected herds since June.

Health authorities found virus strains in humans and in mink which showed decreased sensitivity against antibodies, potentially lowering the efficacy of future vaccines.

--China closed its doors to British, Belgian and Philippine visitors, ‘a temporary response necessitated by the current situation of Covid-19’ embassies say.

--And for some good news, for the first time in five months, Australia went a day without recording a confirmed domestic case of coronavirus, Health Minister Greg Hunt hailing the feat as “an enormous national effort.”

As of today, Australia had 27,645 cases with just 907 deaths.

Trump World

--Donald Trump Jr. on Thursday fired off a tweet calling for his dad to wage “total war over the election” – while parroting the same allegations of voter fraud that his father has used to explain away his dwindling hopes of staying in the White House.

Twitter quickly hid the message from view for spreading false information about the election.

“The best thing for America’s future is for @realDonaldTrump to go to total war over this election to expose all of the fraud, cheating, dead/no longer in state voters, that has been going on for far too long,” Trump Jr. wrote, repeating several conspiracy theories about the election and seemingly calling for Americans to go to war with one another.

“it’s time to clean up this mess & stop looking like a banana republic!” he added.

Don Jr. also wrote on Twitter:

“The total lack of action from virtually all of the ‘2024 GOP hopefuls’ is pretty amazing.  They have a perfect platform to show that they’re willing & able to fight but they will cower to the media mob instead.  Don’t worry @realDonaldTrump will fight & they can watch as usual!”

Eric Trump tweeted:

“The amount of FRAUD being reported in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia and Wisconsin is unreal.  Please report personal experiences. Please have all facts and evidence. #StopTheSteal”

--More than 150,000 ballots were caught in U.S. Postal Service processing facilities and not delivered by Election Day, agency data shows, including more than 12,000 in five of the states that have yet to be called for either President Trump or Democratic challenger, Joe Biden.

Despite assurances from Postal Service leaders that agency officials were conducting daily sweeps for misplaced ballots, the mail service acknowledged in a court filing Thursday that thousands of ballots had not been processed in time, and that more ballots were processed Wednesday than on Election Day.

The number of mailed ballots the Postal Service did not deliver by Election Day is expected to grow as more data is released in the coming days.

--Trump tweets:

“Last night I was leading, often solidly, in many key States, in almost all instances Democrat run & controlled. Then, one by one, they started to magically disappear as surprise ballot dumps were counted.  VERY STRANGE, and the ‘pollsters’ got it completely & historically wrong.”

“We are winning Pennsylvania big, but the PA Secretary of State just announced that there are ‘Millions of ballots left to be counted.’”

“Wow! It looks like Michigan has now found the ballots necessary to keep a wonderful young man, John James, out of the U.S. Senate. What a terrible thing is happening!”

“How come every time they count Mail-in ballot dumps they are so devastating in their percentage and power of destruction?”

“They are finding Biden votes all over the place – in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.  So bad for our Country!”

“All of the recent Biden claimed States will be legally challenged by us for Voter Fraud and State Election Fraud.  Plenty of proof – just check out the Media.  WE WILL WIN! America First!”

“STOP THE FRAUD!”

“ANY VOTE THAT CAME IN AFTER ELECTION DAY WILL NOT BE COUNTED!”

“STOP THE COUNT!”

“Twitter is out of control, made possible through the government gift of Section 230!”

“So now the Democrats are working to gain control of the U.S. Senate through their actions on John James, David Perdue, and more. Would End the Filibuster, ‘Life’, 2A, and would Pack and Rotate the Court.  Presidency becomes even more important. We will win!”

“I easily WIN the Presidency of the United States with LEGAL VOTES CAST.”

Wall Street and the Economy

Kind of funny how Wall Street staged its biggest rally since April, and President Trump couldn’t claim any credit because the Street was celebrating the prospect of a divided government, sans him in the lead, which among other things probably means less regulatory risk, and that Big Tech will face fewer antitrust issues.  Plus, no highly progressive agenda that would upset the markets.

As for the economic data, we had another solid jobs report today as the economy continues to recover from the deepest recession since the Great Depression, the Labor Department reporting that nonfarm payrolls grew 638,000 in October, a little lower than September’s 672,000, with the unemployment rate falling from 7.9% to 6.9%, far lower than expected, and down from a peak of 14.7% in April.   But the figure has been biased down by people misclassifying themselves as being “employed but absent from work.”  At least 21.5 million people were receiving unemployment benefits in mid-October.  Many people, mostly women, have dropped out of the labor force to look after children or because they fear contracting the virus.

Average hourly earnings declined to a year-over-year rate of 4.5% from September’s 4.7%, still strong.

[The Black unemployment rate dropped to 10.8%, still up five points from February’s 5.8%, while the overall 6.9% jobless rate compares to 3.5% in February.]

Separately, we had the ISM manufacturing PMI for October and it was better than expected at a robust 59.3 (50 the dividing line between growth and contraction), with the new orders component at a 17-year high.  The ISM non-manufacturing/service figure was less than forecast, but a still solid 56.6, down from a prior 57.8.  We’ll see how the surge in Covid cases across the country impacts this reading in November and December.

September construction spending was less than expected, 0.3%, while factory orders in the month were better than forecast, 1.1%.

Weekly jobless claims were 751,000, with the prior week revised upward to 758,000, per the Labor Department.

The early fourth-quarter GDP figure from the Atlanta Fed, by the way, is up to 3.5%, which is basically in the middle of Wall Street’s early consensus for growth.

The Federal Reserve held its next-to-last Open Market Committee confab of the year and once again the Fed signaled it would keep interest rates near zero and continue to buy bonds at its current pace for the foreseeable future.

Earlier this year, the central bank scaled up its purchases of Treasuries and mortgage-backed securities in response to the pandemic.  It also cut rates to near zero and introduced several new programs to buy or help banks finance holdings of corporate bonds and other debt.

The Fed has already assured investors that it will keep interest rates near zero through 2023.

Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that the labor market’s recovery was only halfway complete and that more government support would likely be needed to return the economy to full strength, calling the recent rise in virus cases “particularly concerning.”

Powell, in remarks after the FOMC meeting, reiterated that the economic outlook is “extraordinarily uncertain” and pledged to continue supporting growth for as long as needed.

Powell said the two biggest economic risks right now are the “further spread of the disease” and the likelihood that households will run through the savings they were able to accumulate as a result of government programs early in the pandemic, including stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits.

“The fiscal policy actions that have been taken thus far have made a critical difference,” Powell said.  “Even so, the current economic downturn is the most severe in our lifetimes.”

Powell said more fiscal support is needed to mitigate looming dangers, which also include bankruptcies and long-term labor market scarring.

“We’ll have a stronger recovery if we can just get at least some more fiscal support, when it’s appropriate and at the size Congress thinks is appropriate.”

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell on Wednesday cited the need for Congress to approve a new coronavirus aid bill and to do so by the end of 2020 as lawmakers return to work following Tuesday’s elections.  Saying he hoped that partisanship over such a stimulus bill will subside with voting for president and members of Congress now over, McConnell said that there was a “need to do it by the end of the year.”  He also noted the “possibility” that such a bill “will do more for state and local governments,” a key Democratic demand.

Mohamed El-Erian / Financial Times

“The 2020 election has confirmed that the U.S. remains a deeply divided country facing mounting challenges that threaten both this and future generations.  Despite a collective wake-up call in the form of a severe health and economic crisis, the country seems both unwilling and unable to embark on the decisive measures needed.

“The unwillingness comes from fundamental differences of views on how best to pursue economic and financial reforms while urgently dealing with the threats from Covid-19. The inability is due to a probably divided Congress, where the damage of the past few years to the most basic of cross-party working relationships has been accentuated by the past month’s rush to approve a new Supreme Court justice.

“What is at risk here is not just the longer-term oriented reforms seeking to limit another move down in productivity, yet more household economic insecurity, and a worsening in inequality. Also at risk is the short-term health and economic effort to help the nation recover from the considerable damage that the first Covid-19 wave left in its wake.

“Second, the deep divisions also mean that the second wave that is now gaining more momentum is likely to get a lot worse before a turnaround is even in sight. A deeply divided configuration of individual states is likely to adopt varied responses to a virus that is common to them all and knows no geographic borders. With the center initially unable to impose a uniform approach, even if it wanted to, the U.S. is likely to repeat the experience of the UK, in which regional approaches fail. What followed there were widespread lockdowns needed to protect the health system and restore a workable test-and-trace system overwhelmed by ever-rising infections, hospitalizations and tragic deaths.

“Third, the Federal Reserve will be pushed yet again to do more with increasingly ineffective and inevitably distortionary policy tools. The traditional monetary policy mindset will continue to give even more ground as the Fed faces pressure to insure risks that are difficult to price, let alone underwrite properly.

“This venturing into even bigger experimental unconventional monetary policies will do little to genuinely stimulate the economy.  Instead, it is likely to create further distortions in financial markets, increase incentives for irresponsible risk-taking and lead to the misallocation of resources throughout the economy.  This will heighten the threat of financial instability.  In the process, the already large disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street will widen, adding to political and social challenges.

“These three real and present challenges for the U.S. economy translate into a more difficult outlook for both the short and longer term. It means less dynamic supply and less buoyant demand.  The growth in the economic pie will not just be less than what’s needed.  It will also fall short of what the two sides of the political divide believe is possible under their different approaches, fueling a messy blame game that will further undermine the social fabric….

“Ultimately, the combination of another health emergency, a weakening economy and increased financial instability will force the U.S. government into decisive action – but not before considerable damage to the lives, livelihoods and mental wellbeing of this generation, and perhaps future ones as well.”

Now who wants a beer?

On the trade front…Chinese President Xi Jinping said China will import more than $22 trillion worth of goods over the next decade. 

“The Chinese economy is steadily picking up, as evidenced by the growth in the first three quarters,” he said.

Xi made the comments on Wednesday in a video appearance at the China International Import Expo in Shanghai.

“China is the world’s largest market with the greatest potential,” he added.

Xi also called for a more cooperative approach to international trade.

“The overwhelming trend for countries to move towards openness and cooperation remains unchanged.”

“All countries need to come together to jointly tackle risks and challenges, strengthen cooperation and communication and embrace greater openness,” Xi said, pledging to pursue more free trade agreements.

It’s unclear if Joe Biden would make major changes to trade policy, but both parties have been critical of Beijing’s trade policies.

Europe and Asia

We had the October PMIs for the eurozone (EA19), courtesy of IHS Markit, with the euro region composite at 50.0 vs. 50.4 in September; manufacturing at 54.8 vs. 53.7, services at a putrid 46.9 vs. 48.0 as the new coronavirus lockdowns hit.

What’s clear is that Germany’s manufacturing sector has held up the region overall.

Germany 58.2 manufacturing (31-month high), services 49.5.
France 51.3 mfg., 46.5 services
Italy 53.8 mfg., 46.7 services
Spain 52.5 mfg., 41.4 services
Ireland 50.3 mfg., 48.3 services

Netherlands 50.4 mfg.
Greece 48.7 mfg.

UK 53.7 mfg., 51.4 services

Chris Williamson, IHS Markit:

“The eurozone’s economic recovery stalled in October as containment measures were stepped up to fight second waves of Covid-19 infections. Service providers have been hit especially hard, led by intensifying weakness in consumer-facing sectors such as hospitality, offsetting the brighter news seen in manufacturing during the month.

“Optimism about the future also slumped sharply lower, sliding to the gloomiest since May as companies grew more anxious about the damaging impact of second waves of infections.

“With lockdown measures being tightened, it is becoming increasingly hard to see how the eurozone economy will avoid falling back into decline, especially as some countries, including France, Italy and Spain, are already contracting again.

“Only in Germany has the strength of the manufacturing sector countered the renewed downturn in service sector activity, leading to increasingly polarized economic trends among the euro area’s member states.  However, for all countries the outlook has grown increasingly dark.”

Separately, the volume of retail trade in September for the euro region fell by 2.0% compared with August, but up 2.2% vs. September 2019, according to Eurostat.

The European Commission, in its Autumn 2020 Economic Forecast projects that the euro area economy will contract by 7.8% in 2020 before growing 4.2% in 2021 and 3% in 2022.

The forecast projects the unemployment rate in the euro area to rise from 7.5% in 2019 to 8.3% in 2020 and 9.4% in 2021, before declining to 8.9% in 2022.

Brexit: Britain’s chief Brexit negotiator David Frost said wide divergences between the UK and the European Union remain after the latest talks to find a trade deal.  “We continue to work to find solutions that fully respect UK sovereignty,” he tweeted Wednesday.

At the same time, a spokesman for Boris Johnson said on Friday when asked about a critical report predicting trade disruption:

“We’re confident we’ve made significant preparations for the end of the (transition) period,” the spokesman told reporters.

It’s going to be a total s---show.

We have a critical EU summit coming up soon, and while Brexit isn’t as yet formally on the agenda, last I saw, it will be.

Turning to Asia…in China the October private-sector Caixin manufacturing PMI was 53.6 vs. 53.0 in September, with services at a strong 56.8 vs. 54.8.

Japan’s PMIs for October were still in contraction mode, though both up slightly over September; manufacturing 48.7, services 47.7.

South Korea’s manufacturing PMI for October was 51.2 vs. 49.8 in September, the first expansion since Dec. 2019.

Taiwan reported a manufacturing PMI of 55.1 for October.

Street Bytes

--As alluded to above, stocks staged their broadest rally since April with the outlook for divided government, traditionally a plus on Wall Street.  The Dow Jones surged 6.9% to 28123, while the S&P 500 soared 7.3% and Nasdaq 9.0%.  Covid wasn’t an issue…yet.

All three major barometers are now back to within striking distance of their all-time highs; a strong one-day rally away in the case of Nasdaq and the S&P.

--U.S. Treasury Yields

6-mo. 0.09%  2-yr.  0.15%  10-yr. 0.82%  30-yr. 1.60%

The 10-year Treasury yield initially fell sharply, reflecting traders’ bets that the results from the election will lead to smaller economic stimulus efforts than many had expected.  But then they rose late today to 0.82% after bottoming at 0.76%, down from last Friday’s close of 0.87%.

With Republicans maintaining the Senate even if Joe Biden is victorious, that would likely lead to less spending on pandemic relief and infrastructure projects than a Democratic takeover of the upper chamber, which pre-election seemed a solid possibility.

--Libya, a major OPEC oil producer, has been pumping less than 100,000 barrels a day in early September owing to the nation’s civil war, but now with a truce in the conflict, the state-run National Oil Corp. plans to ramp up to 1.3 million barrels a day by the beginning of 2021, the added supply not exactly what many want to see as the pandemic crushes global demand for energy.

As for the price of oil this week, it had staged a rally back above $40 on West Texas Intermediate, but then fell back on Europe’s new lockdowns to halt the Covid surge.

--Chinese regulators on Tuesday suspended the $34 billion initial public offering of Ant Group, the online-finance operation carved out of e-commerce giant Alibaba Group, just two days ahead of what was planned to be the world’s largest-ever IPO.

Investors, and the company, were shocked by the extraordinary regulatory action, but in hindsight, this caps a monthslong battle between billionaire Jack Ma, the co-founder of both Alibaba and Ant, and top regulators led by Vice Premier Liu He, President Xi Jinping’s point man on economic and financial policies.

Ma and his two companies have become synonymous with Chinese innovation, the media, in using Ma’s Chinese name, having called the country’s rising tech sector, “The era of Ma Yun.”

But Ma criticized regulators for stifling innovation and now the government has showed who is boss.

For Liu and financial regulators, Ant’s business model represents big risks that must be reined in.

Four Chinese regulatory bodies, led by the People’s Bank of China, held a meeting with top executives of Ant Group, with the meeting also including representatives from the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange, the currency regulator.

Ant Group’s ‘CreditTech’ business, which originates loans to consumers and small businesses, has been growing faster than its payments division.

In a statement on Chinese social media, Ant said: “We will overcome the challenges and live up to the trust on the principles of: stable innovation; embrace of regulation; service to the real economy; and win-win cooperation.”  Ant was on track to raise at least $34.4 billion in the IPO, shares offered in both Hong Kong and Shanghai.  In response to the move, shares in Alibaba, which owns about a third of Ant, fell more than 8%.

The risk in Ant is that it acts like a financial institution but isn’t regulated like one.  Ant runs China’s ubiquitous payment app, Alipay; facilitating investments, selling insurance and originating short-term loans  Ant provides just a small amount of the money it lends, with the bulk of the money coming from 100 banks it has partnered with.  Ant collects fees for facilitating transactions.

But that’s what worries regulators.  Ant takes business away from traditional lenders and leaves them with the credit risk from both consumer and small-business loans.  Big state-owned banks, who see Jack Ma’s business as a threat to their own, argue that Ant hasn’t been required to abide by tough banking regulations.  Under draft rules, Ant would be required to fund at least 30% of each loan it makes in conjunction with a bank or other financial institution.  Currently, only 2% of the loans it had facilitated were on its balance sheet, according to its IPO prospectus.

More than $3 trillion, with a ‘t’, had been bid on the IPO, or something like 870 times oversubscribed, as it was a draw for mom-and-pop investors in China and Hong Kong.

Liu, China’s economic czar, has spent the past few years cracking down on private funds and other institutions that make loans outside the traditional lending channel.

As experts on China agree, the Communist Party is showing the tycoons who’s boss, and it doesn’t matter that Jack Ma is the richest man in the world.  Ma’s public criticism of China’s financial regulations as being outdated put Ma in the crosshairs of the likes of Liu.  Remember, Liu He is also China’s top representative in the trade talks with Washington.  The dude has a lot on his plate.

--American Airlines has cut its December flight schedule because of “low demand.”  The airline will have about 50% fewer flights next month than it had in December 2019, a spokesperson said Wednesday.

American will, though, add flights in the last two weeks of December for the holidays.

According to the Dallas Morning News, American Airlines will have about 105,619 flights scheduled for December, which is about 10,000 more flights than November.  Last year, American had more than 200,000 flights scheduled for December.

Here in the New York area, American reduced flights by 86% at both JFK and LaGuardia.

[The latest TSA checkpoint travel numbers for 2020 and 2019 remain miserable….between 29% and 38% of 2019 levels the last seven days thru 11/5.]

--Air France said it would operate at 35% of its 2019 capacity in the current quarter, down from 50% it previously planned to.  Sister airline KLM will fly 45% of its typical flights, having previously planned 55% for November.

Deutsche Lufthansa SA said it would ground another 125 aircraft and reduce its planned capacity to a quarter of last year’s. It had held out an initial goal of returning to 50% of its regular operations by the end of the year.

In Europe, the sharp increase in Covid cases has the industry back on its heels, as the likes of France and Germany, and now the UK, institute strict lockdowns.

--Airbus released some positive news today, reporting it had delivered 72 aircraft in October, nearly matching its tally in the same month last year (77).  Europe’s largest planemaker said deliveries for the first ten months of 2020 reached 413 aircraft, down 36% from the same period a year ago.

Airbus has pushed Chinese carriers to take delivery now that their domestic market has rebounded to pre-Covid levels, but some are using the pandemic as an excuse to delay travelling to Europe to take jets.  I can’t say I blame them.

--General Motors Co. on Thursday posted a stronger-than-expected quarterly profit, driven by strong demand for trucks and SUVs in the United States.  The company reported net income of $4 billion, compared with $2.35 billion a year ago, as U.S. sales in the third quarter fell 10% due to the pandemic, but the results improved each month.  In China, GM’s sales in the quarter rose 12%, its first quarterly sales growth in two years.

Revenue was $35.48 billion, up from $35.47 billion the year before.

“Sales in the U.S. and China are recovering faster than many people expected, and GM is benefiting from robust customer demand for our new vehicles and services, especially our full-size pickups and SUVs,” Interim Chief Financial Officer John Stapleton said in a statement.  “These strong fundamentals and the positive impact of our transformation and austerity measures are helping us to deliver solid earnings, generate significant cash and quickly repay the debt we incurred during the early days of the pandemic.”

Total worldwide sales were 1.79 billion vehicles, down from 1.87 billion last year. Sales in North America slid to 765,000 from 863,000, while Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa were 905,000, up from 828,000.

South America sales fell to 123,000 from 176,000, and GM did not provide results for Europe, where it sold 1,000 vehicles last year.

--Mobile-phone chip-making giant Qualcomm Inc. expects a surge in smartphone sales next year as consumers flock to 5G-capable devices such as Apple Inc.’s new iPhone 12 that helped lift its latest results.

Qualcomm, a leading supplier of the chips powering 5G equipment, is projecting shipments of 450 million to 550 million 5G smartphones in 2021, at least double the expected total this year.

CEO Steve Mollenkopf said, “I would argue Covid has convinced people that these technologies are now even more important than they were.”

Telecom providers are betting that Apple’s launch last month of several 5G-capable phones will give a boost to demand for such services.

Qualcomm generated $8.3 billion in revenue in the last quarter, far more than analysts’ expected, a 73% jump from a year earlier.  The figure included a one-time payment of $1.8 billion from a prior licensing settlement with Chinese phone giant Huawei Technologies Co.

Even stripping out the Huawei agreement, sales rose 35% from the prior year.  Qualcomm’s earnings of $2.58 per share also beat the Street’s expectations.

--Shares in Biogen Inc. soared nearly 40% on Wednesday after the Food and Drug Administration said the company’s Alzheimer’s drug has shown “exceptionally persuasive” evidence that the drug is effective, elevating its chance of a swift approval. 

The agency’s documents were released ahead of a meeting on Friday of outside experts who will review, and decide whether to recommend approval of, aducanumab, an antibody designed to remove amyloid plaques from the brain.*

FDA drug reviewers said results from one pivotal trial of aducanumab were persuasive and strongly positive.  They acknowledged that a second large trial did not succeed, but maintained that it did not detract from the findings of the positive study.  The FDA is not obligated to abide by its expert panel recommendations, but typically does.

The drug was jointly developed with Japan’s Eisai Co. Ltd.

*And late today we learned the FDA panel of experts voted 8 to 1, with 2 undecided, that data from a single clinical trial with positive results was insufficient to show Biogen’s drug works.  They also voted 10 to 0, with 1 undecided, that the positive study shouldn’t be considered primary proof the drug works in light of conflicting evidence from a different trial.

“There’s a huge danger in approving something that is not effective,” said Joel Perlmutter, a panel member and neurology professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, Mo.

Shares of Biogen were halted all day Friday ahead of the news.  You can guess what will happen on Monday.

--Uber Technologies Inc. and Lyft Inc., along with DoorDash Inc. won a pivotal vote in California that exempts them from reclassifying their drivers as employees.

The companies, along with Postmates Inc. and Instacart Inc., collectively contributed around $200 million to support Proposition 22, a measure that allows them to bypass a state law intended to provide employee-like protections for their drivers.  It was the most expensive campaign for any ballot initiative in state history.

The outcome allows the ride-hailing companies to guarantee new protections.  The companies told voters they would provide health insurance for drivers who work 15 hours or more a week, occupational-accident insurance coverage, and 30 cents for every mile driven, among other protections in order to win over voters.  Opponents said the benefits fell short of those awarded to full-time employees.

The result was a blow to California lawmakers who passed a law last year that sought to force ride-share and food-delivery companies to reclassify their drivers as employees, eligible for benefits such as minimum wage, paid sick leave and unemployment assistance.

But Uber, Lyft et all have built their models around using independent contractors, known as gig workers, in order to keep labor costs low.

Separately, Uber reported mixed third-quarter financial results that continued to show both a Covid-related falloff in its core ride business and huge growth in its delivery business.

For the quarter, Uber posted revenue of $3.1 billion, down 17% from a year ago, with the company losing 62 cents a share, better than the Street expected.  The net loss was $1.1 billion.

Gross bookings fell 10% year over year to $14.7 billion, with mobility down 50% and delivery up 135%.

--Data from the Department of Agriculture notes a surge in Chinese buying of U.S. grain and meat as China attempts to boost pork production, while there is growing demand around the world for food staples like vegetable oil and starch that are keeping U.S. agriculture companies’ processing plants humming.

“China has come roaring back from the pandemic,” said Juan Luciano, CEO of Archer Daniels Midland Co.  “Their recovery has surprised everybody.”

Greg Heckman, CEO of Bunge, said higher demand had the company’s soybean processing plants running at a record pace in recent months, churning out ingredients to China’s hog farmers who are attempting to rebuild the country’s pork supply after a deadly swine disease cut deeply into supplies.

U.S. pork exports to China over the first eight months of 2020 totaled more than $1.5 billion, a record, according to the USDA.  China’s purchased or contracted sales of corn are also at an all-time high of 8.7 million tons.

However, only $12.7 billion of Chinese commitments of $23.6 billion in U.S. ag purchases so far this year has been shipped to China through September, and the total remains far below the U.S. target of $33.4 billion for 2020, according to the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

China probably won’t meet U.S. targets for imports this year, and they could back out of agreed purchases.  Plus the coronavirus is still around and further disruptions to the U.S. food industry are possible.  You see where Covid infections are surging in the U.S., in the farm belt.

--Ferrari’s shares surged more than 7 percent Tuesday after it reported strong demand for its highly profitable sports cars such as the Monza.

Ferrari expects earnings at the top of its previous guidance range, clocking in at $1.3 billion, with CEO Louis Camilleri telling analysts that orders were more or less back to pre-pandemic levels.

Camilleri likewise poured cold water on the idea that Ferrari might eventually switch its entire lineup away from gas-powered engines, saying he doesn’t think the company will ever go 100-percent electric.

Ferrari is also on track with a rapid roll-out of new sports cars aimed at sustaining growth.

--Manhattan’s marquee office market is facing its highest availability rate since 2004 as the fallout from the pandemic continues.

According to a report from Colliers, 12.9% of office space in the borough was available in October, the fifth consecutive month that its availability rate increased.  Average asking rents dropped to $76.20, down from $79.61 in October 2019.

--Johnson & Johnson’s appeal of a $2.12 billion damages award to women who blamed their ovarian cancer on asbestos in its baby powder and other talc products was turned down.

The Missouri Supreme Court let stand a June 23 decision by a state appeals court, which upheld a jury’s July 2018 finding of liability but reduced J&J’s payout from $4.69 billion after dismissing claims by some of the plaintiffs.

Johnson & Johnson said it plans to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

--Clorox Co.’s sales jumped 27%, the fastest growth in at least two decades, driven by Americans’ continuing scramble for coronavirus-killing cleaning products.

The company said it is beginning to catch up with demand for namesake disinfecting wipes and sprays, while adding production capacity and hiring third-party manufacturers to reduce lingering shortages.

Clorox is “still not at a point where we can meet ongoing elevated demand,” said CEO Linda Rendle, who started the top job in September.

The company said it expects sales growth due to Covid-19 to remain elevated compared with the prior year but slow in 2021.

As people stayed home, Clorox also had big sales gains for products from Kingsford charcoal to Hidden Valley dressing and Glad trash bags.

--AMC, the world’s largest theater chain, reported that revenue plunged 91% in the third quarter to $119.5 million, losing a record $900 million.  The company reported 90% of AMC theaters in the U.S. are open and that it is not significantly impacted by the recent closure of theaters in Europe.  AMC also said it has enough cash to last until early 2021, yet the shares rallied.

AMC is owned by Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group.

--For the sixth time this year, Lowe’s announced it would be giving its employees $100 million in bonuses for their work during the pandemic, with all full-time employees receiving $300 while part-time workers will get $150.  Lowe’s has now shared $775 million with its workers.

The company also announced it would hire 20,000 workers for the holiday season.  Throughout the pandemic it has hired an additional 155,000.

--Marriott International said on Friday that it’s seeing an improvement in demand trends even as the Covid-19 pandemic weighed on its third-quarter results, sending revenue and earnings plunging from a year earlier.

In the three months through Sept. 30, revenue sank 57% to $2.25 billion, missing consensus, but the company reported adjusted earnings of $0.06 a share when the Street was calling for a small loss.

“While Covid-19 is still significantly impacting our business, our results for the third quarter showed continued improvement in demand trends around the world,” said CEO Arne Sorenson.  He said the drop in revenue per available room improved by 19 percentage points from the second quarter, although it was still down 66% year-on-year.

Occupancy rates in North America were 37% in the third quarter, which Sorenson said was “nearly double” the second-quarter rate.  In greater China, occupancy was at 61% with travel demand showing resiliency, he added.  The pick-up comes even as cases of the respiratory disease, which led to widespread restrictions on business and gatherings, surged in many parts of the world with the onset of colder weather.

“Although the timing of a full recovery remains unpredictable, we are pleased with the significant progress we have made in restructuring and repositioning the company to successfully manage through these challenging times.”

In the third quarter, Marriott added 127 new properties and 66 exited its system, bringing its global network to about 7,600 properties and timeshare resorts.

--The New York Times Company topped seven million paid subscribers, a high, in the third quarter.  In the three-month period ending in September, for the first time, the revenue from digital subscribers was greater than the money the company brought in from print subscribers.

Total revenue during the third quarter was flat, at $426.9 million, and adjusted operating profit jumped 28% to $56.5 million.

The company set a goal of 10 million subscribers by 2025, a mark that appears within striking distance.

But digital readers were the only growth business for The Times. Every other unit fell, with print subscriptions decreasing 3.8 percent to $145.7 million, while advertising sales, once the lifeblood of the newspaper business, dropped 30 percent, to $79.3 million.

--Fox News was the top choice among viewers for coverage of the 2020 election, though fewer viewers turned to television for presidential election coverage than in 2016.

Nielsen data showed Fox News averaged 13.8 million viewers, a record for cable news coverage of a presidential election, from 8-11 p.m. ET.

CNN finished second with 9.1 million, followed by MSNBC 7.3m, ABC 6.1m, NBC 5.6m, the Fox broadcast network 3.3m, Fox Business 366,000, and CNBC 117,000.

Meanwhile, Fox Corp. reported earnings for the third quarter, with revenue up 1.9% to $2.72 billion, as well as a profit of $1.1 billion, compared with $499 million, both ahead of expectations.

Cable-network programming revenue, which besides Fox News and Fox Business includes the company’s Fox Sports 1 Network, rose 3.1% to $1.33 billion, while revenue at the company’s broadcast division was largely flat at $1.35 billion.

Advertising revenue declined 6.9% due to a pullback in live sporting events related to the pandemic, and as advertisers reduced their spending.

CEO Lachlan Murdoch said he expected a slower news cycle after Election Day, which could result in fewer viewers, though he didn’t expect Fox News to lose its first-place status among cable news channels.

Murdoch also sought to change the perception that the Fox news audience is very conservative, saying 38% is registered as independents.

--Speaking of a reduction in live sports and the impact on advertising, the New York Post first reported that ESPN informed employees Thursday that it would lay off 300 people across its business, while also not filling 200 currently open positions as the pandemic continues to harshly impact both ESPN and its parent company, Disney.

On-air personnel will mostly be spared at the moment, according to sources, though the sports network has been scrutinizing contracts in recent months.  For example, Trey Wingo’s contract is not being extended when it expires end of the year.

ESPN had around 6,000 employees before Thursday.  In 2015 and 2017, ESPN had layoffs impacting both on- and off-air personnel, adding up to around 500 lost jobs.

--Sports betting won big at the polls on Tuesday, with Maryland, South Dakota and Louisiana approving it, meaning by the end of next year more than half the country could have legal sports betting.

--McDonald’s famous McRib sandwich is expected to be made available for a limited time nationwide on Dec. 2, the first time it will be available across the country since 2012.

This could be just what the country needs in our testy post-election environment.  Then again, there could be riots if the supply runs out.

Foreign Affairs

China: From Kristin Huang / South China Morning Post

“The race between China and the United States to develop a more capable navy is expected to further intensify, with Washington planning to equip its destroyers with hypersonic missiles, outpacing China’s supersonic anti-ship missiles, analysts said.

“The move to install the highly advanced weapons came after U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in early October that the U.S. Navy would need more than 500 ships in its fleet to ensure maritime superiority over China in coming decades.

“According to military news website Defense News, which quoted President Trump’s national security adviser Robert O’Brien, the U.S. will equip its attack submarines and its destroyers with hypersonic missiles in a bid to stave off the mounting threat posed by China in the Pacific.

“More than 60 destroyers will be outfitted with the weapons that are capable of travelling at more than five times the speed of sound, the report said….

“In the meantime, China is modernizing its navy, which has acquired a wide array of platforms and weapons such as anti-ship ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.

“A report from the U.S. Congressional Research Service released last month said the Chinese navy had already turned into ‘a formidable military force within China’s near-seas regions’ and was ‘the first such challenge the U.S. Navy has faced since the end of the Cold War.’”

But, Michael Fabey, the Americas naval writer for Jane’s and the U.S. editor of Jane’s Fighting Ships, said the U.S. plan to equip its destroyers with hypersonic missiles looked too premature and there was a lot of work to be done to make it feasible.

“There are no navy hypersonics to put on ships, not even for testing. They have not even figured out what kinds of modifications would be needed for the destroyers, let alone priced them out or done the real feasibility analysis on doing that work,” he said.

“And if they were to decide to do this, where is the money going to come from for the missiles, testing, ship modifications and so on?”

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Tensions are escalating between Australia and China after Canberra pushed for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus back in April.

China is expected to ban imports of Australian wheat, putting a $395 million trade in doubt, with the grain the latest to join a list of new blocks on Australian products, including barley, sugar, red wine, timber, coal, lobster and copper ore.

Barley is Australia’s biggest grain export to China, $843 million a year.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said: “China always believes that a healthy and stable China-Australia relationship is in the fundamental interests of the two peoples.

“At the same time, mutual respect is the basis and guarantee for pragmatic cooperation between countries.  It is hoped that Australia will do more things that are conducive to mutual trust and cooperation between China and Australia…so as to bring relations back to the right track at an early date.”

The Aussies have legitimate cause to be increasingly torqued off at Beijing, including interference in its elections and major instances of espionage.

Support our Aussie brothers…drink Foster’s (or Victoria Bitter).

Russia: According to a report in The Sun newspaper, Vladimir Putin may step down next year as speculation swirls that he is suffering from Parkinson’s disease.

Moscow political scientist Valery Solovei told The Sun that Putin’s 37-year-old girlfriend, Alina Kabaeva, and his two daughters are pushing him to leave office.

“There is a family, it has a great influence on him.  He intends to make public his handover plans in January,” Solovei told the news outlet.

Solovei suggested Putin has been seen recently exhibiting symptoms of the disease, including an instance where he appeared to be in agony while shifting his legs, according to footage obtained by an observer.

I don’t like passing on stories of this kind, because it is just conjecture, however, there is one telling action long discussed and that is, currently, Russian lawmakers are considering legislation proposed by Putin that would grant ex-presidents lifetime immunity from criminal prosecution.

Vlad’s personal wealth, thought to be in the $billions, has long been a topic for the likes of opposition leader Alexei Navalny and everyone knows much of the gains came illegally.  So Putin can spend the rest of his life figuring out how to shelter and pass along his wealth to his loved ones…though no doubt he already has.

Armenia and Azerbaijan:  Russia is considering an Iranian proposal for ending the conflict between Azerbaijan and ethnic Armenian forces in the mountain enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh after three ceasefires failed to halt fighting that is now in its sixth week.  There were no details released on the Iranian plan, which was discussed by the foreign ministers of both countries in Moscow last week.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would continue working with Turkey to stop the military confrontation from escalating further.  Lavrov said he estimated around 2,000 mercenaries from the Middle East were involved in the fight.

Armenia said the enclave’s two largest cities were being shelled.  Azerbaijan said some of its cities were being hit.

Armenia has said 1,200 of its troops have been killed, while Azerbaijan doesn’t disclose military casualties.  Russia estimates 5,000 deaths on both sides.

Afghanistan: As we’ve seen in the likes of France and Austria, ISIS has not gone away.  The group claimed responsibility this week for a second heinous attack on an educational institution in Kabul, this one killing at least 35.  Gunmen barged into Kabul University on Monday, with most of those killed students, more than 50 wounded, some of them breaking limbs while jumping from windows to flee the attack during morning classes.

Austria: Islamic State claimed responsibility Tuesday for a deadly attack in Vienna, with what turned out to be a lone gunman carrying a pistol, a machine gun and a machete, opening fire on crowded bars.  ISIS posted a video of the terrorist pledging allegiance to ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashemi al-Quraishi.  The 20-year-old apparently had dual Austrian and North Macedonian citizenship.  Born and raised in Vienna, he had already been convicted of trying to reach Syria to join Islamic State.

The gunman, who was killed by police after he had killed four, wounding scores, had been released from jail less than a year ago.

Interior Minister Karl Nehammer said on Wednesday that 14 people aged 18 to 28 were arrested on suspicion of belonging to a terrorist organization.  All have a “migration background,” Nehammer said.  Some were dual citizens of Turkey or Russia, among others.

But Nehammer said he would also investigate the Interior Ministry’s actions.  “Before the terror attack began, according to the information currently available, some things also went wrong.”  In July, neighboring Slovakia’s intelligence service had handed over information suggesting the attacker had tried and failed to buy ammunition there, Nehammer and the Director General for Public Security Franz Ruf said.

“In the next steps evidently something went wrong here with communications,” said Nehammer.

At the end of 2018, authorities were aware of 320 people from Austria who were actively involved or had wanted to participate in jihad in Syria and Iraq.  58 died in the region, 93 returned to Austria.

Austria and France are planning a joint push for tougher European Union-wide measures to stamp out Islamist extremism on the continent after terrorist attacks in both countries, officials in Paris and Vienna announced Thursday.

Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz and French President Emmanuel Macron are expected to hold a videoconference next week with senior EU officials to discuss steps ranging from better screening of asylum seekers to harsher penalties for citizens who have fought with extremist groups abroad.

The two leaders want to put their proposals before other EU heads of government at a Nov. 19 summit.

“We will create a legal and political framework to fight with all our might political Islam – not only as a terrorism or a law-and-order issue, but as an ideology that is planting hatred into young people across Europe,” Kurz said in an interview.

Random Musings

--Some final poll data, since I posted last, for the archives:

Eleven incumbent U.S. presidents have run for re-election since Gallup began tracking their approval ratings in 1945. For 75 years, approval over 50 percent means a president wins a second term, while approval under 40 percent spells certain defeat.

Gallup’s final approval rating for Donald Trump was 46 percent.

And I can’t help but add that the final Gallup poll had 41% of independents approving of President Trump’s job performance, and, according to an exit poll put out by Edison Research for the National Election Pool, independents went for Joe Biden by a 54-40 margin, as in there was some symmetry.

Meanwhile, the national polls missed it badly for a second straight election…in most cases embarrassingly so.

Final Wall Street Journal/NBC News national poll of registered voters had Biden leading Trump 52-42 percent.

However, when the landscape was narrowed to a set of 12 battleground states, Biden’s lead was 51-45.

An Investors Business Daily (IBD) final national tracking poll had Biden up 49.5 to 44.7, but only a 49.5 to 46.3 margin in the battleground states (the six decided by less than 2 points in 2016).

In this one, in the midwestern states that once formed the Democrats’ solid “blue wall” – and which Trump flipped red in 2016 – Biden had only a 2-point lead.

Among the other national polls I previously gave you we had CNN/SSRS at 54-42 Biden, and Fox News with Biden at 52-44.

Once all the ballots come in, like millions in California, we’ll end up somewhere close to 51% Biden, 47.5% Trump, so the IBD survey wasn’t really bad at all.  I apologize for not paying more attention to it during this cycle.

Reuters/Ipsos battleground state polls of likely voters…

Michigan: Biden 52-42 percent
Wisconsin: Biden 53-43
Pennsylvania: Biden 51-44
Florida: Biden 49-47
Arizona: Biden 48-46
North Carolina: Biden 49-48

A Washington Post/ABC News poll of likely voters in Pennsylvania had Biden up 51-44.  A month ago, Biden was leading 54-45.

In Florida, the Post/ABC survey had Trump leading 50-48.

A Des Moines Register poll of likely Iowa voters had Trump winning 48-41, after the two were tied in the same series in September with 47 percent each.  This had been perceived on Sunday as an outlier, the Real Clear Politics average of recent polls, including this one, showing Trump up a point (0.5).

The Des Moines Register was basically spot on, the final margin 53-45, Trump.

--According to the above-referenced Edison Research exit poll, Black men went for Joe Biden/Kamala Harris 80-18, while Black women voted for him by a 91-8 margin.  Edison then said it was 80-12, overall, in terms of Blacks going for Biden. [Not 80-13, if you thought I made a typo.]

In 2016, Trump only gained the support of 8% of the Black vote, but picking up 4 points, while important, is hardly the huge inroad into the Black community that some in the media are claiming the president made.

Latino men went for Biden 61-36, Latino women 70-28.

--It was two years ago that the two congressional districts I straddle, New Jersey 7 and 11, went Democrat for the first time in my lifetime, and generations.  Tom Malinowski won in the district I’ve lived in much of my life, and the last 11 years I have literally lived a block from District 11, where Mikie Sherrill won.  Both are moderate Dems.

So this year I voted, out of principle, for Republican challenger Tom Kean Jr., son of former Gov. Tom Kean, because I loved his father and I’ve met his son a few times and he’s a good guy.

But Malinowski prevailed handily, with lots of mail-in ballots still to come in, and Mike Sherrill won her seat again easily.  It’s all about the suburban women vote, sports fans, at least in my area.

--Meanwhile, the world’s biggest iceberg, known as A68a, is bearing down on the British Overseas Territory of South Georgia (which is due east of the Falklands).

The Antarctic ice giant is a similar size to the South Atlantic island, and there’s a possibility it could ground itself offshore of what is a prime wildlife haven, which, should it happen, poses a grave threat to local penguins and seals….blocking their foraging routes.  And all creatures living on the seafloor would be crushed where A68a touched down.

Professor Geraint Tarling of the British Antarctic Survey told the BBC, “Ecosystems can and will bounce back of course, but there’s a danger here that if this iceberg gets stuck it could be there for 10 years.

At the same time, there is another extraordinary thing happening around South Georgia.  Scientists have observed a huge number of blue whales, 55 counted over a 23-day survey, an unprecedented total since commercial whaling ended; South Georgia was epicenter of hunting in the early 20th Century.

Dr. Trevor Branch of the University of Washington noted: “To think that in a period of 40 or 50 years, I only had records for two sightings of blue whales around South Georgia.  Since 2007, there have been maybe a couple more isolated sightings.  So to go from basically nothing to 55 in one year is astonishing,” he told BBC News.

--Lastly, according to a study in the journal Science Advances, more than a million tons a year of America’s plastic trash isn’t ending up where it should be.  The equivalent of as many as 1,300 plastic grocery bags per person is landing in places such as oceans and roadways.

In 2016 – the last year enough data was available and before several countries cracked down on imports of American waste – the United States generated 46.3 million tons of plastic waste, by far the most in the world.  Between 2.7% and 5.3% of that was mismanaged – not burned, placed in landfills or otherwise disposed of properly.

Between 1.2 million and 2.5 million tons of plastic generated in the U.S. were dropped on land, rivers, lakes and oceans as litter, or were illegally dumped or shipped abroad then not properly disposed of, the study found.

If you took nearly 2.5 million tons of mismanaged plastic waste – bottles, wrappers, grocery bags and the like – and dumped it in one place, “it would pile as high as the Empire State Building,” said co-author Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineering professor at the University of Georgia.

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Pray for the men and women of our armed forces…and all the fallen.

God bless America.

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Gold $1951…big rally back to levels of seven weeks ago.
Oil  $37.49

Returns for the week 11/2-11/6

Dow Jones  +6.9%  [28123]
S&P 500  +7.3%  [3509]
S&P MidCap  +6.7%
Russell 2000  +6.9%
Nasdaq  +9.0%  [11895]

Returns for the period 1/1/20-11/6/20

Dow Jones  -0.8%
S&P 500  +8.6%
S&P MidCap  -1.8%
Russell 2000  -1.5%
Nasdaq  +32.6%

Bulls 59.2
Bears  20.4…no update in weeks from these folks.

Hang in there.  Mask up, wash your hands.

Brian Trumbore

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