Daily Archives: October 9, 2020

If former Vice President Joe Biden wins the presidential election in November, he will almost certainly take office amid an ongoing public health and economic crisis thats in urgent need of a big bill with a big price tag. His biggest obstacle will be GOP obstruction.

It would be politically advantageous for Senate Republicans to pass a stimulus package as they head into the election, but they are instead blocking it. Back during the Great Recession, they were reluctant to cooperate with Barack Obama on a stimulus bill, which Obama got done eventually by peeling off three Republicans. Two of those are out of the Senate now, and the third very possibly will be by next year.

If Biden wins, hell likely have control of both houses of Congress, but a simple majority isnt good enough in the Senate you need 60 votes to pass the kind of bill needed. Where Obama needed three Republican votes, Biden will very optimistically need five or six, and likely more than that.

The Biden camps current position on the filibuster appears to be that they will give Republicans a chance to negotiate in good faith before they even try to do anything extreme. The difficulty, as Jonathan Chait writes, is that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell already ran interference on this play in 2009, dragging Senate Democrats into 12 months of ultimately pointless negotiations that sapped progressive enthusiasm for health reform while allowing ugly process stories to dominate the news agenda.

To allow the exact same Republican leader to fool them with the exact same trick, Chait writes, would be the proverbial definition of insanity.

As my colleague Ezra Klein emphasizes, theres simply no good defense of the filibuster on the merits other than attachment to the status quo. Nonetheless, you cant take the politics out of politics. Nothing Biden says is going to make wavering senators decide to leap out of the gate with a rule change.

Instead, avoiding failure means recognizing two key points.

Breaking the filibuster is possible, but it will take a very particular set of circumstances and it would be reckless for Biden to stake his presidency on the idea that hell get it done.

The other thing to keep in mind: The Obama administration made a series of avoidable errors in how it handled the linked issues of economic stimulus, health care reform, and George W. Bushs tax cuts. Biden does not face the exact same issues that his former boss had. But like Obama, Biden wants to stimulate the economy, expand the social safety net, and roll back his predecessors regressive tax policies.

What he really needs to do to make headway on all that is tackle it all at once.

The filibuster, it turns out, has a huge loophole the budget reconciliation process.

Reconciliation is weird. First, Congress needs to adopt a budget resolution (which it doesnt always do) laying out tax and spending priorities for the future. These resolutions are not laws, the president doesnt have to sign them, and they pass by simple majority vote. Then with a budget in place you get to write one but only one bill that aims to reconcile national tax and spending priorities with the framework laid out in the budget. This reconciliation bill cannot be filibustered. It also cannot change Social Security, or otherwise make big legislative changes that are not directly focused on the budget.

At Vox, we have often focused on the limits the reconciliation process places on what can be achieved on climate policy or aspirations for Medicare-for-all. A reconciliation bill also cant increase the budget deficit over the long run.

But while these limits are very real, they also do open up some fairly large horizons.

In particular, a reconciliation bill can do the following:

Obama did not handle his legislative agenda this way. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was a ring-fenced stimulus measure that launched no new programs and was not paid for in any way, so it required 60 votes in the Senate. And Obama wanted to use the looming expiration of the Bush tax cuts later in his term as leverage to get a bipartisan tax bill that expanded the middle-class cuts while raising taxes on the rich done.

That left Obamas health care bill as a freestanding entity, one which ultimately did use the reconciliation process, but which was not designed to stimulate the economy, and thus had benefits only come online years after enactment.

But with a Senate majority and if Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi can convince Biden to move fast Democrats can do it all.

Reconciliation does, of course, have very real limits. Its hard to use it to ban fossil fuel extraction, to legalize undocumented immigrants, or to alter labor law. But from the right point of view, these are the virtues of reconciliation. The topics it wont let Democrats touch are precisely the areas where moderates have the most qualms about a majority rules Senate. What top Democrats need to do is convince nervous moderates that a very aggressive reconciliation strategy is the key to getting the left off their back.

Consider the following ideas Biden has embraced:

Biden does not need to treat these ideas as separate from the short-term need to stimulate the economy. He can simply do all five of them, and throw in a short-term boost to unemployment insurance and state/local budgets and some cash for specific public health interventions. Then the long-term increases in spending can be offset by enacting his proposed tax increases on the rich. That will ensure the deficit falls over the long run. But since the short-term deficit is not a problem and the whole idea is to stimulate the economy, the tax cuts can be delayed until 2023.

Not every part of these Biden plans may be possible in budget reconciliation in particular, a public health care option. And legislating in this manner would cut against a lot of congressional traditions. The budget would need to get written quickly, with most of the work effectively done in the lame-duck period. And a sprawling piece of legislation that touches on the jurisdictions of many committees would need to be written via a centralized process.

But this is how Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell handled the ACA repeal and tax cut battles of 2017 and 2018 when they controlled both chambers of Congress sharply curtailing the committee process in the name of speed.

To get it done, Biden needs to convince members of Congress that its in their collective interest for him to have a successful presidency with a roaring economy and real accomplishments. And if they dont want to curb the filibuster, they need to get the job done with a massive reconciliation bill. Once thats done, Biden can pivot to the filibuster.

Or, Biden can turn to a fight over his proposal to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

This is a great issue to fight on for several reasons.

This last point is important and underrated. The GOP was often able to weaponize its intransigence against Obama into coalition-wrecking infighting. So rather than Republicans taking the blame for inaction on climate change and immigration, protesters came to blame Obama for not unilaterally blocking the Keystone XL pipeline or halting immigration enforcement.

But the minimum wage is a popular issue. Its popular in all kinds of geographies. It contains very little complexity. And only Congress can act on it. Biden can show up at any state in the union and find local politicians and workers happy to rally with him on behalf of a wage hike. And the focus will remain squarely on the GOP.

Under those circumstances, maybe Bidens optimistic rhetoric about the opposition party would prove prescient. Maybe the between six and eight Republicans who are ready to get things done would emerge.

Not only could Biden then sign a minimum wage increase, hed have the ability to pivot to bipartisan legislation on popular priorities like the DREAM Act, money-raising investments in making sure rich people pay their taxes, and a big new infrastructure bill. That would be a very successful term, which is precisely why I think its unlikely Republicans will allow it, but if they do thats great. If not, the hammer.

The point of all this: A fight over the minimum wage, unlike one over court-packing or statehood for Washington, DC, or comprehensive immigration reform, is what genuinely might move wavering senators into deciding that theyve had enough.

If American politics amounts to nothing but symbolic culture war posturing over Goya beans and the singing of the national anthem at NFL games, then its vulnerable Senate Democrats more than anyone who stand to lose. Empowering a left-wing policy agenda doesnt necessarily help them, but totally neutering a moderate one could endanger their seats.

Bidens task would be twofold convincing moderates to be bold in the fact of GOP obstructionism on an overwhelmingly popular issue, and persuading them that he is willing to take the heat from the base in terms of blocking legislation they fear.

What should follow instead is a series of lower-profile reforms that nonetheless all poll well across the country:

Expanding the Supreme Court is very unlikely to be popular with voters, absent concrete, unpopular action by the Court.

But expanding the size of federal district and circuit courts to keep pace with the increase in the volume of cases since the last expansion would be a good idea and serve as a shot across the bow of the high court. Beyond process issues, a filibuster-free Senate would let Democrats move forward with other popular legislation like marijuana legalization, universal background checks, creating a path to citizenship for most long-term undocumented residents, and a public option for generic pharmaceutical manufacturing to increase competition and keep prices down.

This would be a historic record of progressive achievement, and many voters would like it. But Biden would need to take it upon himself to keep losing ideas like drastically curtailing immigration enforcement, excessively broad student debt cancellation, reparations, or banning private health insurance off the table.

A post-filibuster Senate would be flying without a net, and vulnerable senators dont want to walk the plank, nor anger party leaders. After winning the primary with more moderate stances, Biden is ideally positioned to make the case both privately and publicly that he understands the importance of running on popular ideas and recognizes that theres an ample list of them for Democrats to focus on if they can restore Congresss legislative capacity.

In his rhetoric, Biden is not really a policy-first kind of politician.

Before Covid-19, he tended to define his candidacy in terms of healing the moral and psychic wounds of the Trump era. And for the past six months, hes been heavily focused on the pandemic itself. Bidens primary super PAC was called Unite The Country, illustrating his key campaign theme that a low-key, decent, widely respected veteran politician with a moderate platform can end the era of toxic political polarization.

Its a great message. But if Biden thinks that his personal charm can bring back the low-polarization Senate he remembers from his service there in the 1970s and 80s hes mistaken. And if he genuinely tries to do that, hes setting himself up for catastrophic failure. Times have changed, the media has changed, institutions have changed, and incentives have changed. The good old days arent coming back.

Still, Biden can break the toxic allure of obstruction by refusing to be obstructed.

McConnells key insight back in 2009 was that if you block everything, the consequences of failure ultimately hurt the president and his party. But if youre an even slightly vulnerable member of Congress, whats the point in casting futile no votes against popular bills that pass anyway?

Majority rule, more than anything else, promises to bring back bipartisanship. An empowered majority makes it potentially worthwhile for members of the minority party to come to the table and try to win concrete small-scale concessions in exchange for their votes.

Changes to bring back some semblance of political equality to Americas voting system and legislatures would have an even more salutary effect. We know from the success of governors like Larry Hogan in Maryland, Charlie Baker in Massachusetts, and Phil Scott in Vermont that Republicans can still win elections on a level playing field. What theyd have to do is put a less-unreasonable, more-disciplined foot forward as they attempt to appeal to the interests and ideas of a majority of the electorate.

Getting there would take a fair amount of hardball, but unlike musing about friendly chats with McConnell over a couple of glasses of bourbon, it could actually work. And along the way, greatly ameliorating a number of egregious social problems.

Will it happen? After living through the past nine months, I hesitate to tell anyone to hope for good things. But a tenacious Biden presidency could make it happen.

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Biden could rescue the economy with new stimulus, despite Republican obstruction. Heres how. - Vox.com

Prior to the passage of the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, health insurance companies could (and routinely did) decline to offer coverage to patients with preexisting health conditions. This behavior is common sense from the standpoint of insurance underwriting nobody is going to sell you a homeowners insurance policy if your house is already on fire and the idea that it should be allowed is a straightforward aspect of free market thinking.

Congressional Democrats and President Barack Obama banned the practice. But Donald Trump and congressional Republicans tried to bring it back with their various ACA repeal efforts, and this has become one of Democrats most potent political attacks against Republicans. Not only did Republicans try to scrap these regulations back in 2017 and 2018, they are still trying to scrap them in the form of a lawsuit pending at the Supreme Court even though Trump himself keeps lying and claiming he supports these protections.

Some people believe him. And according to Sarah Kliff and Margot Sanger-Katz of the New York Times, some of them believe him because they recognize that his real position is politically toxic:

There is not a single guy or woman who would run for president that would make it so that pre-existing conditions wouldnt be covered, said Phil Bowman, a 59-year-old retiree in Linville, N.C. Nobody would vote for him.

Mr. Bowman cast his ballot for President Trump in 2016, and supports him in this election as well.

Bowman is, of course, mistaken. But the heuristic hes using isnt crazy. I dont really know anything about Al Gross, the independent running to unseat Sen. Dan Sullivan in Alaska, but if someone told me that Gross wants to ban fossil fuel extraction I wouldnt believe him. Why? Because even though there are plenty of Americans who do want to ban fossil fuel extraction, anyone running on that platform in Alaska would obviously lose, so theres just no way he's doing it.

But in Trumps case, the inference is wrong. Its true that his position on preexisting conditions is politically toxic. But its still his position. And theres a long tradition of Republicans taking advantage of voter incredulity in this way.

The Kliff/Sanger-Katz story reminded me of Robert Drapers reporting from the 2012 cycle on the challenges that the then-new Priorities USA Super PAC faced in trying to develop effective ads to use against Sen. Mitt Romney.

One of their first ideas was to take note of the fact that Romney was advocating a bunch of unpopular ideas, and run ads highlighting that. It didnt work, because the actual Romney policy mix huge long-term cuts in Medicare in order to create budget headroom for large tax cuts for the rich sounded so absurd (emphasis added):

Burton and his colleagues spent the early months of 2012 trying out the pitch that Romney was the most far-right presidential candidate since Barry Goldwater. It fell flat. The public did not view Romney as an extremist. For example, when Priorities informed a focus group that Romney supported the Ryan budget plan and thus championed ending Medicare as we know it while also advocating tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, the respondents simply refused to believe any politician would do such a thing. What became clear was that voters had almost no sense of Obamas opponent.

Since Romneys defeat, Republicans have invested a lot of time and energy into being mad about the ways Democrats attacked his character.

I cover economic policy for a living, and have done so for 17 years now. So I know that a lot of smart, competent people who are kind and friendly in their interpersonal behavior sincerely believe that depriving working and middle-class families of economic resources to reduce taxation on the rich is the right thing to do. I am not sympathetic to that agenda, but a healthy number of decent people do think that way, and they are extremely influential in Republican Party politics.

But most voters find these ideas so outlandishly bad that theyll only believe someone espouses them if you can convince them first that the person in question is a heartless monster. Priorities USA ultimately did, somewhat wrongly, convince people to think of Romney this way, and in doing so succeeded in driving home the larger (and completely accurate) point that these were his policy ideas.

Still, its continually a struggle. Consider what happened when congressional Republicans tried to respond to 9/11 with a capital gains tax cut (emphasis added):

The struggle really began less than 48 hours after the terrorist attack, when Bill Thomas, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, tried to ram through a sharp cut in the capital gains tax. Even opponents of the capital gains tax generally acknowledge that cutting it does little to stimulate the economy in the short run; furthermore, 80 percent of the benefits would go to the wealthiest 2 percent of taxpayers. So Mr. Thomas signaled, literally before the dust had settled, that he was determined to use terrorism as an excuse to pursue a radical right-wing agenda.

A month later the House narrowly passed a bill that even The Wall Street Journal admitted mainly padded corporate bottom lines. It was so extreme that when political consultants tried to get reactions from voter focus groups, the voters refused to believe that they were describing the bill accurately. Mr. Bush, according to Ari Fleischer, was very pleased with the bill.

The point is simply that the roots of this dynamic are deep, and Trump is only somewhat incidental to them.

On a policy level, the Republican Party is deeply committed to a profoundly unpopular world view that says that progressive taxation to support broad social programs is immoral (see former Bush administration economist Greg Mankiws thoughts on moral philosophy) and inimical to economic growth. But these ideas are very unpopular, so Republican Party politicians tend to obscure them with deceptive rhetoric and try to keep the focus of national politics on other topics.

Consequently, people who align with Republicans on broad values themes whether opposition to abortion rights, love of guns, patriotism, or panic at the thought of a diversifying country find it simply not credible that their champions are actually running on a politically toxic agenda that would clearly lose elections.

This adds up to a powerful case for Trumps opponents to try to normalize his presidency to try to focus more media attention on the banal policy stakes in the election and less on the presidents bizarre personal behavior and scandals. Conservative writer Charles Fain Lehman coined the term diminishing marginal offensiveness to describe the phenomenon in which new outrageous conduct does nothing to further erode the standing of a president who has been unpopular from the beginning.

By contrast, Trumps opposition to raising the minimum wage is even less popular than his overall rating. A solid 64 percent of the public says it favors higher taxes on the rich. And theres overwhelming public support for stricter air pollution rules.

But the fact that the minimum wage, higher taxes for the wealthy, the stringency of clean air rules, and a dozen other normal policy issues are on the ballot is rarely a focus of media coverage. To the extent that voters hear about these issues, it tends to come from Democrats ads where, as we have seen, it is somewhat challenging to get voters to believe that anyone could seriously be running on GOP economics.

Thats why Sean McElwee of Data for Progress told me that an effective use of time as someone nervous about the future of the country is to harass you and other journalists personally to get you to cover health care instead of whatever else is in the news. In the real world, journalists cover all kinds of stories. But which topics get flood-the-zone style treatment largely depends on audience response.

My colleague Dylan Scott has written that if Trump gets his way on health care, 20 million Americans could lose insurance, and Joe Bidens plan would extend coverage to 25 million people. If those kind of stories routinely went viral, campaign coverage would be more issues-focused, and more people would know that this really is what Trump and other Republicans believe.

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Trump wants to end Obamacare. He has no plan to ensure preexisting conditions are covered. - Vox.com

Google CEO Sundar Pichai testifies before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law during a hearing on "Online Platforms and Market Power" in the Rayburn House office Building on Capitol Hill, in Washington, July 29, 2020.

Mandel Ngan | Pool via Reuters

Congressional Democrats sent a clear message to Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google: You havemonopoly power, and you're now at risk of being broken up.

Following a 16-month investigation into the four Big Tech companies, the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust released a blockbuster 449-page report laying out the case for why each company holds monopoly power. It also gave a slew of recommendations for how Congress can tamp that down through a rewriting of the rules.

But the report, which was originally intended to be a bipartisan effort to rein in Big Tech's power, turned into a partisan battle as the two sides bickered over the next steps.

The result leaves little confidence that any major regulation could come soon. It's been about four years since lawmakers began scrutinizing the tech industry for its disruptive role in industries ranging from the media to retail, yet no legislation regulating the industry has been passed.

Here are the key things both sides disagree on.

Republican members of the subcommittee won't let go of the idea that social media platforms like Facebook and Google's YouTube discriminate against conservative viewpoints.

There's no evidence that the social platforms intentionally censor conservative voices -- in fact, Facebook's own data shows posts from conservative personalities and news outlets are almost always the most popular content on Facebook. The issue has little to do with antitrust law.

Nonetheless, the Republican side hammered the Democratic majority for not taking it into account in the report.

The Republicans also disagree with the Democrats' recommendation for sweeping changes to antitrust law that could ultimately lead to a breakup of some of the companies. According to a draft of a report by subcommittee member Republican Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado that was viewed by CNBC, the GOP side disagrees with the Democrats' proposal for a "Glass-Steagall for the internet" law that would force tech firms to distinguish different lines of business.

In his report, Buck called the Democrats' proposal "a thinly veiled call to break up Big Tech firms," making it clear that congressional Republicans won't vote for the sweeping, groundbreaking changes Democrats are hoping for.

There's a lot of optimism on the Democratic side that legislation based on their recommendations in the report will go through. On Tuesday night, subcommittee member Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash. told CNBC she thinks there will be "significant legislation" on the matter within the first three to six months of the next Congress.

The Democrats also built a strong case against the four companies, based on reviews of over 1 million internal documents and interviews with experts and competing companies. The report found that Apple has monopoly power over software distribution on the iPhone, Amazon bullies its third-party sellers, Facebook uses its power to acquire or kill potential competitors and Google has complete dominance over online search. (Each company strongly denied the report's allegations.)

Even if Democrats fail to pass the sweeping antitrust reforms they want, at the very least they created a lengthy, written record of the questionable tactics these companies used to become dominant forces in the industry and global economy. That's going to be stapled to each company's reputation for decades.

Even as both sides quibble over the details, they're in broad agreement that Big Tech wields too much power in the market and that government needs to put more restrictions in place.

One likely starting point: providing more funding for agencies like the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission to scrutinize tech mergers and police potential anticompetitive practices. Each of the companies has virtually unlimited money to fight lawsuits and investigations from the government, and Republicans and Democrats agree that more funding for these agencies will give them a better chance to push back.

Those also happen to be the agencies that are conducting their own investigations into Big Tech. The DOJ is expected to file an antitrust lawsuit against Google any day now. The FTC has its own antitrust investigation into Facebook. And practically every state attorney general in the country is investigating at least one of the four companies in some capacity.

If we see see any real action taken against Big Tech, it's most likely to come from regulatory agencies than from a divided Congress.

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Democrats and Republicans disagree on how to curb Big Tech's power here's where they differ - CNBC

"Sen. Grassley's doctors have not recommended he be tested as he has not come into close contact with anyone suspected of having or confirmed to have coronavirus," his aide Michael Zona said, suggesting that while Grassley was near and around those sick senators his contact with them was not close enough or long enough to warrant getting tested.

Grassley's decision is different than other top officials above and below him in the line of succession -- like Vice President Mike Pence, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and key members of the President's Cabinet -- who are being tested regularly, especially now that President Donald Trump has contracted the disease. But it puts Grassley in line with some GOP senators who told CNN they don't believe they need to be tested based on US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Capitol Physician guidelines, despite working alongside members who are positive for the disease.

An aide to Indiana Sen. Mike Braun, one of a handful of GOP senators who does not wear a mask at all times, said the senator is "following the advice of the Capitol Physician," who said "if you experience symptoms you should get tested, and he has not experienced symptoms."

Sen. Roy Blunt, a Republican from Missouri who chairs the Rules Committee and an advocate for more coronavirus testing on Capitol Hill, has not been tested because he "has not had any recent interactions that meet the CDC guidelines for testing," according to an aide.

Same with Sen. Mitt Romney a Republican from Utah, according to an aide. "There's no known exposure risk to him at this time, though we are monitoring," the aide said.

Senate Republicans spend a lot of time together. They met three times as a caucus last week, holding regular policy lunches in a large room in the Hart building with tables spread apart for social distancing. They remove their masks to eat and to speak, according to attendees. The senators who have tested positive -- Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina -- attended the lunches last week.

Grassley typically attends those lunches although his staff did not respond to multiple requests to confirm he attended them last week. But the senator did attend two Senate Judiciary Committee meetings last week, where most senators took off their masks when they spoke. During a hearing Wednesday with former FBI Director James Comey, Lee and Tillis were seen not wearing masks, although Grassley was not seated near them.

Also at the hearing was GOP Sen. John Cornyn of Texas whose spokesman declined to say if he's been tested. Drew Brandewie said the senator "followed all CDC guidelines last week during the Judiciary meetings and has not interacted with any of the members who tested positive."

A handful of other Republican senators have declined to say whether they've been tested for coronavirus.

Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his staff have refused to say if he has been tested for coronavirus in recent days, or explain why he doesn't want to disclose the information. He resisted questions on the issue at a news conference in Kentucky on Friday.

"Have I ever been tested? Yes. I'm not going to answer questions about when," McConnell said.

Some Democrats on the Senate Judiciary committee said they were tested for coronavirus after attending meetings with the Covid-positive senators, even though they did not come into close contact.

"Senator Leahy was tested for COVID-19 earlier today since he attended the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Thursday, where it is now known that two senators were present who have tested positive for the virus. While he did not come into close contact with these two senators for an extended period of time, he took the test at the advice of the Capitol Physician," said David Carle, a spokesperson for Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who tested negative for the virus.

Similarly -- Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who also sits on the Judiciary committee and attended the hearings -- was tested for coronavirus out of "an abundance of caution" and he was negative, according to his press secretary Karolina Wasiniewska.

Sen. Dick Durbin, Democrat from Illinois, also reported testing negative on Twitter.

Although some Republicans are not pushing to get tested, others have done it and tested negative, including: Sens. Rick Scott of Florida, Pat Toomey of Pennsylvania, Rob Portman of Ohio, Todd Young of Indiana, David Perdue of Georgia, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Cory Gardner of Colorado and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, among others.

Three senators who fear they were in contact with Lee, Tillis or Johnson said they would self-isolate to ensure they did not contract the virus. They are Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska and Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma.

On Monday, McConnell was silent and did not respond to questions from CNN on whether he would allow coronavirus positive senators to vote on Barrett.

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Senate Republicans split on the need for coronavirus testing - CNN

WASHINGTON President Donald Trump's personal battle with the coronavirus has made it much harder for his Republican allies in tough House and Senate races to play down the public health risk of the pandemic.

Trump proclaimed Monday that getting the coronavirus had improved his health.

"Don't be afraid of Covid," he tweeted as he announced he would be leaving the hospital. "Don't let it dominate your life. We have developed, under the Trump Administration, some really great drugs & knowledge. I feel better than I did 20 years ago!"

Download the NBC News app for breaking news about the president's health

But for the 210,000 dead in the United States, most of the millions who have lost their businesses or jobs because of the coronavirus, and many parents trying to keep their kids wired into distance learning, the disease has been the dominant force in their lives.

And a Trump tweet isn't going to change widespread awareness that the most heavily protected person in America not only contracted the disease, but also had to be taken to the hospital and supplied with exotic drugs and supplemental oxygen to treat it.

"Downplaying or denying the severity of the coronavirus is no longer an option," longtime conservative strategist Rick Tyler said. "The best congressional Republican candidates can do now is to try to convince voters that divided government is the only way to stop a rollout of liberal policies, starting with a Supreme Court expansion by the Democrats if they control both the White House and the Congress."

Before Trump was diagnosed with the virus, many Republican incumbents followed his lead in accusing Democrats and the news media of exaggerating the threat. Since then, most of them have been silent about the grave nature of the disease, while three senators are contending with the fallout of their own positive tests and a fourth is backtracking on past statements.

At a debate in Des Moines, Iowa, on Saturday night, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst apologized to health care workers for having expressed doubt about the veracity of Covid-19 death statistics.

"I am so sorry that my words may have offended you," she said. "I know that you are tremendous workers. You are essential workers. You are providing care for our loved ones every single day."

Ernst, once such a favorite for re-election that the state's most prominent Democrats chose not to run, is now trailing challenger Theresa Greenfield by several points in most recent polls.

In addition to Trump, several of his aides and Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Mike Lee of Utah have revealed positive test results in recent days.

It follows that if the president, his White House aides and three members of the Senate can get the virus at the same time, so can anyone else who doesn't follow safety protocols.

Democrats say all of that has put more focus on the president's coronavirus policies for the rest of the country. He has long trailed Democratic challenger Joe Biden in polling on the question of who would better handle the federal response, and Democrats say that will hurt Republicans in House and Senate races.

"The longer the national conversation is focused on how reckless Trump and Republicans in Congress have been in dealing with the coronavirus, the worse it is for Republicans at every level of the ballot," said Josh Schwerin, a senior strategist for the Democratic super PAC Priorities USA.

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Schwerin pointed to Democratic Senate challenger Jaime Harrison's use of a plexiglass barrier to separate himself from Sen. Lindsey Graham in a South Carolina debate Saturday as a physical representation of the argument against Republicans who have backed Trump's approach.

"He was not only taking a necessary step to keep himself safe he was highlighting that Republicans have put every American at greater risk of getting sick," Schwerin said. "This pandemic affects every part of American life, and Democrats at all levels of the ballot will continue to hold Republicans accountable for their failures."

Graham, who is running behind the president in his own state, made no effort to distance himself from Trump's message.

"The virus is going to pass," Graham said, but "what kind of country are you going to have" if Democrats control the White House and both chambers of Congress?

Republican consultant Matt Gorman, a vice president at the firm Targeted Victory, suggested that there is a silver lining for GOP candidates in the focus on Trump's health rather than on his political pronouncements: It means they aren't operating completely in the shadow of his domination of political discussions.

"While the presidential race is essentially frozen, those down-ballot races are not, and candidates can't confuse the two," Gorman said. "You need to still do everything you can and use the time to make an unfiltered pitch to voters."

That would be easier for Tillis if he hadn't tested positive after meeting with Trump when the president officially unveiled his latest Supreme Court nominee, federal appeals Judge Amy Coney Barrett.

Over the weekend, Tillis' Democratic opponent, Cal Cunningham, apologized for sexually suggestive messages he sent to a woman who isn't his wife. Normally, that would be an unmitigated boon for Tillis. But questions about the senator's ability to participate in hearings and a confirmation vote for Barrett are competing for attention in the state, along with reports about the progress of Trump's recovery.

Veteran Republican strategist Doug Heye said it's difficult for local stories to break through because national news about Trump dominates media in the state.

"This blocks it out even more, and this is one perfect example," Heye said of Tillis' diagnosis, which connects easily to Trump's health and the broader coronavirus narrative. "It's a separate story that plays into that larger story."

One incumbent was frank about the political risks inherent in the president's approach. I think he let his guard down, and I think in his desire to try to demonstrate that we are somehow coming out of this and that the danger is not still with us I think he got out over his skis and frankly, I think its a lesson to all of us that we need to exercise self-discipline, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, who is up for re-election this year, told the Houston Chronicle on Monday.

He tries to balance that with saying, Well you know, we got this. And clearly we dont have this."

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Trump is leaving the hospital. GOP candidates are still stuck in a box. - NBC News