Anybody But Trump

Biden is ahead of Trump by 9 points who better handles the coronavirus epidemic — and another 9 points on who better responds to a crisis.

https://t.co/Zo3WunnXQK via @nbcnews

— Charlie Sykes (@SykesCharlie) April 20, 2020

Biden is still pretty much a "generic Democrat" at this point.  Then again, this is what Trump's supporters are working with:

The descent in ambition from “Make America Great Again” to “governance outcomes are arguably better than Southern Europe” is pretty remarkable.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 20, 2020

I am trying to get my head around the fact that over 40,000 Americans have died from this virus in mere weeks.

The global spread may not have been completely preventable but the savaging of American life, cabining of society & economic free fall is a massive leadership failure. https://t.co/eYfsjuq4K6

— Carrie Cordero (@carriecordero) April 20, 2020

I rather liked the way Joe Scarbrough summed this up this morning:

“The president also, when Gov. [Andrew] Cuomo said, ‘Hey, if the president is not going to lead, we’ll get a consortium of governors to lead,'” Scarborough told co-host Mika Brzezinski. “You called it that moment: ‘Oh, boy, watch how Trump responds.’ He responded with his Mussolini strategy. He said, ‘I have total power, total authority,’ whatever he said that no American president has ever said before. Then, of course, he realized if he took total authority, then he would have total blame for every death that moved forward after that, in his mind. He shifted it back to the governors.”

“Then, after shifting it back to the governors,” Scarborough added, “he decided the next day he was going to actually try to attack the governors with these really dangerous, ‘liberate Michigan, liberate Virginia’ tweets, which, of course, fed into people taking military-style assault weapons, semi-automatic military-style weapons, to statehouses and carry them around.”

“So then, after that, he then responds the next day to the backlash from that by trying to praise all the governors,” he said, “just so you know, and just so everybody watching knows, that obviously are concerned by those reckless protests, where people were close together, where you did have people bringing military-style weapons to statehouses, it just — again, it’s more of the same. It is not only damaging, of course, to the health and the well-being of millions and millions of senior citizens and other people with underlying health conditions, and healthy Americans, as well, it is also damaging to Donald Trump’s political standing.”

“Donald Trump can blabber all he wants, and people can go around and carry around guns to state capitols all they want, with ‘don’t tread on me’ signs, but we’re not talking about the British,” Scarborough said. “We’re talking about American doctors, we’re talking about the very people [Trump] mocked when they told you in January and February that a pandemic was coming. You remember you did that, right? You remember you were saying that this was all a scam? Do you remember that? Like Boris Johnson was saying, ‘I’m going to live my life.’ That was you then, this is you now.”
“As we’re finally bending the curve, because unlike you, we all, as Americans, listened to those doctors,” he added. “60 percent of Americans say, you know what? I’ve had moms and grandmoms, dads and granddads, and friends I know die the most hellacious, heinous death possible. We’re going to keep listening to the doctors and stop listening to politicians that are freaking out because they’re diving in the polls right now.”

But of course we must be afraid because Trump is "getting away with it":

“I’ve been talking about, again, it’s part of this bigger theme, like liberals freak out and say, ‘Oh, Donald Trump is getting away with everything, what are we going to do?’ like we’ve been hearing it for three years,” Scarborough said. “He gets away with nothing. The voters pummel him. They pummeled him in 2017 in Virginia, they pummeled him in Kentucky in 2019, they pummeled him in historic manner in 2018, in a landslide of historic — literally historic proportions. He gets away with nothing.”

“Now he’s going out lying for two, two and a half hours a day,” he added. “I’ll just say it again, I’ve said it enough, that those rallies shouldn’t be held on TV. If I were a supporter of his, I would say those rallies shouldn’t be held on TV, they are damaging his brand. You look at the numbers.”

Polls show 65 percent of Americans believe Trump didn’t take the coronavirus threat seriously enough, and 66 percent trust their governors over the president.

As I said, Greg Abbott opened the state parks because he knows nobody goes there in packed hordes and it makes it appear he is "opening" the state.  He's also insisted he will follow the lead of the scientists.  If he doesn't, the cities and counties will, and dare the Governor to send the AG to sue them over it.  Lots of suburban GOP voters would be thrilled with that move by Austin.  Texas is already turning purple; Abbott doesn't want to turn it blue.