New polling shows seniors don't agree with Trump on lifting social distancing.— Greg Sargent (@ThePlumLineGS) April 21, 2020
Blue collar whites and rural voters also tilt against Trump on this.
What if the protests are just fringe, and there isn't actually any culture war on this topic?
New piece:https://t.co/VIbpJVMQTZ
Donald Trump and Dan Patrick need to remember that.
Is this for real??? In Australia we went into lockdown in March and if our politicians spoke like this they would gone!!! I’m sorry but the US is in worse shape than is thought globally— Suzie Calalesina (@SuzieGabriella) April 21, 2020
The Australians I've met (granted, only 3) are/were a lot like Texans. I like to think the majority of us will keep Patrick's performance in mind this November.
Adding a bit to the comments in Sargent's column: I'm old enough to be more susceptible to the virus than my daughter. I'm also old enough to be more comfortable staying home and healthy than going out and risking infection. True, I had to order some items today I'd normally go to the store for (one within walking distance, in this case) and I ended up paying more in shipping costs than the items were worth. But I'm not anxious to return to restaurants and movie theaters and stores.
My daughter is younger and technically less susceptible, but she doesn't want to get sick, either (and reading now about what this virus can do to you, who would?). She's more anxious to get out than I am (old v. young), but she's not an idiot. She's even more anxious to stay healthy.
The "culture war" narrative is old and threadbare, but we don't have anything to replace it with, so that's out "go-to" public framework. The protestors are handfuls of people, nothing more. They aren't putting pressure on even the law enforcement that has to direct traffic around them. That playbook is tattered and torn and nobody uses it anymore, except Dan Patrick and Donald Trump and John Cornyn:
#COVIDー19 The data showed that 9 of 10 patients had an underlying medical condition, including:— Senator John Cornyn (@JohnCornyn) April 21, 2020
—Hypertension: 49.7%
—Diabetes: 28.3%
—Chronic lung disease: 34.6%
—Cardiovascular disease: 27.8%
—Obesity: 48.3% https://t.co/YjabN89Bwc
You'd be surprised how many "young people" have hypertension or diabetes (my mother was a diabetic her entire adult life), just for starters. But those conditions are especially common among the elderly, the ones Dan Patrick is so anxious to sacrifice. In that context, Cornyn should have this tweet hung 'round his neck.
By November we should have buried "culture wars" as an American trope. It's not going to survive this crisis. A lot of things won't. Some of those losses will be very hard; some of them will actually be beneficial.
And a lot of it will still rest on old people voting; but they won't be voting for the old shibboleths.
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