The Left Column

soothsayer With cash windfall, Biden adds GOP states to campaign map (AP) Joe Biden is using a campaign cash advantage over President Donald Trump to add Republican-leaning Georgia and Iowa to his paid media footprint, bringing the Democratic challengers television and digital battleground map to an even dozen states. The expansion reflects Bidens newfound status as a fundraising behemoth and his campaigns longstanding promise to set up multiple paths to the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency.

DemocratSinceBirth Things are all tied up in Georgia and Iowa (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) A new poll conducted for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution shows the presidential race in Georgia could not be closer, with President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden tied in a political environment dominated by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic as well as protests over racial inequality.



(Des Moines Register) It's a dead heat in Iowa as a new Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa Poll shows President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden locked in a tie just six weeks to Election Day.

BigmanPigman 62% agree that RBG seat should be filled by next POTUS (New York Times) "If I win the election, President Trumps nomination should be withdrawn, said Mr. Biden, who has promised to make his first appointment to the Supreme Court an African-American woman. As the new president, I should be the one who nominates Justice Ginsburgs successor, a nominee who should get a fair hearing in the Senate before a confirmation vote.



A new poll showed that the American public agrees with him and opposes Mr. Trumps plan to rush a new justice onto the court. Of those surveyed by Reuters and Ipsos since Justice Ginsburgs death, 62 percent said her seat should be filled by the winner of the November election, including the vast majority of Democrats and even half of Republicans."

Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin Biden leads Trump by 12 points among Catholic voters: poll (The Hill) Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden holds a 12-point lead over President Trump among likely voters who identify as Catholic, according to a poll released Monday. A EWTN News/RealClear Opinion poll found in a poll of 1,212 likely Catholic voters that 53 percent favor Biden, compared to 41 percent who prefer Trump. The poll was taken before the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The poll found that 50 percent of respondents voted for 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton while 45 percent voted for Trump, a sign that Biden has widened the gap among Catholic voters.

In It to Win It The Mississippi Senate race is tightening, a new poll shows (The Week) Mississippi may have a real Senate race on its hands. At least that's what the latest Tyson Group poll suggests. The survey has incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.) up just one point on her Democratic challenger, Mike Espy, who represented Mississippi in the House from 1987 to 1993 before serving as agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration for a time.

BainsBane It's a big, big swing': Trump loses ground with white voters (Politico) Donald Trump is making modest inroads with Latinos. Polls suggest hes pulling slightly more Black support than in 2016. But Trump is tilting at the margins with those groups. His bigger problem is the demographic that sent him to the White House  white voters, whose embrace of Trump appears to be slipping in critical, predominantly white swing states.



In Minnesota, where the contest between Trump and Joe Biden had seemed to tighten in recent weeks  and where both candidates stumped on Friday  a CBS News/YouGov survey last week had Trump running 2 percentage points behind Biden with white voters, after carrying them by 7 points in 2016. Even among white voters without college degrees  Trumps base  the president was far short of the margin he put up against Hillary Clinton there.

brooklynite Trump's weekend rallies showed just how unhinged his campaign is (Vox) President Donald Trump is traveling around the country and holding packed campaign rallies in the middle of a pandemic with few masks and no social distancing. These campaign rallies serve as snapshots of the presidents messaging as he heads into the home stretch of his flagging reelection campaign. The picture isnt pretty. From the podium, Trump routinely mocks local regulations against large gatherings, which he refers to without a sense of irony as protests against stupidity. Instead of touting his accomplishments or outlining a second-term agenda, Trump is praising white people for their genes and suggesting women of color who serve in Congress should be prosecuted. Hes offering apologia for the Confederacy while barely trying to conceal his authoritarian designs.

catbyte A Dangerous Moment for the Court (The Atlantic) There are so many ways that the current moment could turn out very badly for the Court. First off, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell seems ready to test just how much damage the Courts institutional integrity can take. In 2016, McConnell refused to hold hearings for Barack Obamas Supreme Court pick, Merrick Garland, because the next election was too close. Then, within hours of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburgs passing, McConnell vowed to replace her before the next election.



This damage could be compounded by the fact that, regardless of who wins this years election, many expect Joe Biden to easily carry the popular vote. If he does, that will mean Democrats have won a popular majority in seven of the last eight presidential elections. And yet no Democrat has chosen a chief justice since 1953. Democrats have not nominated a Supreme Court majority since 1969. The Court is much more conservative than the electorate, and voters know it. The number of voters who think the Court is too conservative hit a new high just last year. Historically, the Supreme Court has rarely broken too radically with public opinion without some kind of backlash. Yet today, the Court reflects the will of a smaller and shrinking slice of the electorate.