Vox: Weed was the real winner of the 2020 election

 On November 3, four American states voted to legalize marijuana: Arizona, New Jersey, Montana and South Dakota. Combined with the other states that have done so in recent years, one in three Americans now live in a state where access to marijuana has been legalized. It shows that Americans are souring on the harsh drug policies that have put millions of people in prison.

But America’s national drug policy is a different story. Under federal law, marijuana is still classified as a “schedule 1” drug, meaning it’s considered to have little medical value and a high risk of abuse, along with drugs like LSD, heroin, ecstasy and psilocybin mushrooms. In states where marijuana has been legalized, that conflict with federal law creates numerous problems for legal marijuana sellers and users. And few national politicians talk about legalizing marijuana throughout the country. But advocates are hoping that by introducing new state laws one by one, Americans who are ready to move on from the country’s decades-long war on drugs will eventually force the federal government’s hand.

FiveThirtyEight: Election Update: Polls Are Good For Biden Pretty Much Everywhere — Except Florida (SEP. 9, 2020)

 But even though the topline numbers haven’t changed all that much, that doesn’t mean there hasn’t been some movement at the state level. It’s not super easy to find patterns where Biden is gaining or losing ground — still a lot of noise at this point — but it does seem as if, on the whole, there’s been mostly good news for Biden. Except for Florida, which, as you can see in the chart below, is where Trump has closed the gap the most.

And at this point, though, it’s really only Florida that’s moved all that much. In most other states which have been polled about as much as Florida — there’ve been 12 polls there since the start of the Democratic convention — they’ve seen far less of a change or barely any movement at all. Four other states have at least 10 polls in the same timeframe — Pennsylvania (17 polls), Wisconsin (12), Michigan (10) and North Carolina (10) — yet their numbers have budged only a little.1 What’s more, it’s mostly good news for Biden at this point. [...]

As for what’s happening in Florida, we’re still a little unsure of what to make of it, as we’d expect the numbers in fellow Sun Belt states Arizona and Texas to have moved in similar ways — but they haven’t. Some of this might have to do with Florida’s Hispanic population, however. Whereas Mexican Americans comprise more than 80 percent of the Hispanic population in Arizona and Texas, Cuban Americans form a plurality — 29 percent — of Florida Hispanics, and on the whole they are much more conservative.

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FiveThirtyEight: New Polling Shows Trump’s Electoral College Advantage Is Slipping

The Times/Siena is one of the most highly-rated pollsters in FiveThirtyEight’s Pollster Ratings — one of six with an A+ mark — so these new surveys did adjust our averages a bit, most notably in Pennsylvania. There had been few high-quality polls conducted in the Keystone State, so our polling average did shift roughly 1.5 points in Biden’s favor because of the Times/Siena survey, which found Biden up by 10 points.

It wasn’t just the Times/Siena survey that found Biden up, either. We got two more polls of Pennsylvania today that showed Biden with double-digit leads. One from GOP pollster Hodas & Associates gave Biden a 12-point lead, and one from Redfield & Wilton Strategies put him up 10 points. [...]

But perhaps what’s even more significant about this batch of recent polls is that Trump’s possible Electoral College advantage is slipping. Biden doesn’t lead by as much in most of the battleground states as he does nationally, but his leads are big enough — anywhere from 5 points in Arizona to 9 points in Nevada — that it won’t matter that many battleground states lean to the right of the country.[...]

And the fact that Biden now has multiple paths to the White House is the biggest problem facing Trump. He needs a notable shift in voter sentiment that makes the national environment less favorable for Biden. With four months to go, that’s quite possible, but at the moment, our polling averages suggest that he’s in a lot of trouble.

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Mish Talk: Trump is Trailing Badly in All Recent Florida Polls: Why?

Biden tops Trump by 9 points, 49-40 percent, in a Fox News survey of Florida registered voters. That’s up from a 3-point edge in April (46-43 percent). [...]

The former vice president owes his advantage to the backing of Hispanics (+17 points), women (+18 points), and Millennials born between 1981 and 1996 (+30).

Some groups that are key to a Trump reelection split down the middle, including men (46 Biden vs. 44 Trump) and voters ages 65 and over (47-48 percent) -- Trump’s 8-point edge among white voters (42-50 percent) also trails expectations. [...]

It is by no means impossible for Trump to win. I have Trump's odds at about 30%.

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FiveThirtyEight: The Latest Swing State Polls Look Good For Biden

In Michigan, the most notable result comes from long-time Michigan pollster EPIC/MRA, which found Biden up by 12 points in a poll conducted between late May and early June, 53 percent to 41 percent. For context, in 2016 the pollster never found Hillary Clinton with more than 47 percent in a single general election poll. However, in Wisconsin, Biden’s lead might not be that secure. The Marquette Law School Poll — often seen as the gold standard in the Badger State — had Biden up only 3 points in early May, 46 percent to 43 percent. Biden and Trump also ran about even in Pennsylvania, another pivotal state in 2016, which might seem at odds with the data from Michigan and Wisconsin. But unlike those states, Pennsylvania didn’t have any surveys from highly rated pollsters, and what they found was a bit noisy — two put Trump up by 4 to 5 points, while another put Biden ahead by 9 points. We wouldn’t read too much into this yet without higher quality polling, but the inconsistent results here could be evidence that Pennsylvania will remain competitive.

As for the polling picture in the Sun Belt states — Arizona, Georgia and Texas — they all seemed more or less in line with what you would expect, once you account for Biden’s lead in the national polls and how these states voted in 2016. But they do signal potential trouble for Trump. For instance, the fact that Trump carried Arizona by 3.5 points in 2016 seems to have been erased by Biden’s polling lead. On average, Biden led by 3 points, including a high-quality early June survey from Fox News that showed him up 4 points. In Georgia and Texas, on the other hand, Trump was still in the lead, by 1 and 2 points, respectively. Yet this is not as cushy of a margin as one would expect for Trump, considering he carried Georgia by 5 points and Texas by 9 points in 2016. If this trio of states are all in play — and Arizona is possibly even leaning Democratic — that would give Biden many additional paths to 270 electoral votes. [...]

There are two big takeaways here. One, Biden is in an enviable position in many of these battleground states. However, the second takeaway — which is the caveat we mentioned earlier — is that all of these battleground states save Michigan are more Republican-leaning than the national average. In other words, most of the states that will decide the presidential election are to the right of the country as a whole, and that speaks to Trump’s advantage in the Electoral College. Should Biden continue to hold a sizable lead, the chances of an Electoral College-popular vote split will probably be low. But if the polls get closer, the odds will increase because the eventual tipping point state is almost certainly among these eight states. But as it stands now, if Trump carries Arizona along with every state that’s more Republican-leaning in those recent polls, he would almost certainly win the presidency.

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Time: The coronavirus is causing Trump's supporters to abandon him

One of the defining questions of the 2020 election is how many Trump voters feel in November like Heidi and Dennis Hodges do now. Over the past four years, Trump has developed a Teflon mystique: no matter what he says or does, nothing seems to stick to him. Predicting that the latest outrage will finally sever his bond with supporters has been a mug’s game. And even as the coronavirus crisis escalated in March and April, there have been few signs that this is changing: 93% of self-described Republicans said during the first half of April that they approved of Trump’s performance, according to Gallup—up two points from a month prior.

Yet there is also little question that the pandemic has transformed the election. Two months ago, Trump was an incumbent president riding a strong economy and a massive cash advantage; today, he looks like an underdog in November. The RealClearPolitics polling average has former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, leading Trump 48.3% to 42% nationally. Trump’s prospects aren’t any brighter right now when broken down by states that were key to his 2016 victory. According to Real Clear Politics polling averages, Biden leads Trump by 6.7 points in Pennsylvania, 5.5 in Michigan, and 2.7 points in Wisconsin. Biden is also leading Trump narrowly in Florida and Arizona. [...]

Republican strategists note the pendulum could easily swing back in Trump’s direction before the election. “Three months ago we were all certain that this election was going to be about impeachment, and three months before that it was all going to be about the border wall,” says Brad Todd, a Republican strategist and co-author of The Great Revolt. But he sees signs of trouble in the polling of voters who dislike both candidates. In 2016, those voters picked Trump; in 2020, they favor Biden. “It is a warning sign” for Trump, Todd says.

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The New Yorker: The Right Wing’s War on the L.G.B.T.Q. Community

An Arizona Supreme Court ruling on Monday provided further evidence that gay rights are under siege in this country. Other recent events show that the Trump Administration is leading the assault. The Arizona court held that Brush & Nib Studio, a Phoenix-based company that makes customized wedding invitations, has the legal right to reject a gay couple as customers. Even though Phoenix has a local law that prohibits discrimination against the L.G.B.T.Q. community, the court ruled that the religious convictions of the business owners exempted them from the obligation to treat all customers equally. According to the court, designing wedding invitations is a creative act; to compel the owners to design an invitation against their will violates their rights both to freedom of religion and freedom of speech.

The opinion treats the business owners—two women—as a beleaguered minority. Their “beliefs about same-sex marriage may seem old-fashioned, or even offensive to some,” the court wrote. “But the guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion are not only for those who are deemed sufficiently enlightened, advanced, or progressive. They are for everyone.” This, to put it charitably, is nonsense. The owners of Brush & Nib are free to believe anything they want. What they should not be allowed to do is to use those beliefs to run a business that is open to the general public but closed to gay people.  [...]

Of course, it’s not clear that the Supreme Court will uphold these discriminatory practices. In the famous Masterpiece Cakeshop case, in 2017, which involved a Colorado baker who had refused to make a wedding cake for a gay couple, the Court dodged the issue. (The Court ruled for the baker, on the ground that Colorado officials, specifically the Colorado Civil Rights Commission, had behaved improperly, in a non-neutral manner.) But anyone counting on the current Supreme Court to protect the rights of any minorities, including the L.G.B.T.Q. community, is almost certainly looking for disappointment. That may become even clearer this term, when the Justices hear three cases on the question of whether the Civil Rights Act forbids employers from discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity as it does on the basis of race or sex. These cases will be the first to address the rights of gay Americans since Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was clearly supportive of them, stepped down and was replaced by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who is not. The President and his allies boast of their tolerance and enlightenment on L.G.B.T.Q. issues, but facts stubbornly suggest that they are hurting the cause in every way they can.  

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The Daily Wire: Will Trump Win? The Latest On Trump’s National And State-By-State Approval Ratings

Historically, presidents have fared well in re-election campaigns when they maintain approval ratings above 50%. This president, to be sure, has never had such an approval rating at any point throughout his presidency. But President Trump oversees a soaring economy, with record-low unemployment rates, and has a hardened base of core supporters. One must also never forget the sheer power of incumbency: Since FDR, only Presidents Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush were elected and then subsequently not re-elected four years later. [...]

The Daily Wire will be tracking Trump's state-by-state approval rating as the general election nears. Here is the latest Trump approval rating information from across all the various swing states.

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Vox: The real reason streetcars are making a comeback (Aug 9, 2017)

 Starting in the late 20th century, modern streetcar proposals started rippling across municipalities in the United States. They’re touted as infrastructure carrying benefits ranging from the social to economic and the environmental. But these projects often make appearances in the news as costly, blunder-filled experiments in public policy.

Cities are willing to bet big on this technology for its potential to develop the local economy. But there is some disagreement as to whether the streetcar is driving this progress, or if it is simply the result of planning *around* the streetcar.

FiveThirtyEight: The 2018 Map Looked A Lot Like 2012 … And That Got Me Thinking About 2020

But it does mean that pretty much every political battle is going to be pitched with an eye toward 2020. And 2020 will be a unique year in that the House, Senate and presidency are all potentially in play.1 How the presidency goes is anybody’s guess. But Trump took advantage of the Electoral College last time around, winning the tipping-point state (Wisconsin) by about 1 percentage point even though he lost the popular vote by 2 percentage points. If Trump has the same edge in 2020, that could go a long way toward winning him a second term. [...]

With those caveats aside, here’s the map you come up with if you count up the popular vote. It ought to look familiar. In fact, it’s the same exact map by which Obama defeated Mitt Romney in 2012, except with Ohio going to Republicans. It would have equated to 314 electoral votes for Democrats and 224 for the GOP. [...]

The pink states — where Republicans won by fewer than 5 percentage points — are also interesting, mostly because they include Texas, where Democrats lost the popular vote for the House by only 3.6 percentage points and Democrat Beto O’Rourke lost his race for the Senate by just 2.6 points. It’s not as though Texas is exactly at the tipping point yet: Democrats came close to winning it, but they didn’t get over the top, even in a pretty blue year. But it probably deserves to be included in a group of Sun Belt states with North Carolina, Arizona and perhaps Georgia (where Democrats lost the popular vote by 6 points) as places where Democrats can compete in a good year. Among these, Arizona was the best one for Democrats on Tuesday night; they currently trail in the popular vote for the House there by 1.7 points and could make up further ground, as a lot of ballots from Maricopa County are still left to be counted.

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Associated Press: GOP unsettled by narrow win in US House race in Arizona

Tuesday's narrow victory by Republican Debbie Lesko over a Democratic political newcomer sends a big message to Republicans nationwide: Even the reddest of districts in a red state can be in play this year. Returns showed Lesko winning by about 5 percentage points in Arizona's 8th Congressional District where Donald Trump won by 21 percentage points. [...]

"They should clean house in this election," said Coughlin, longtime adviser to former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. "There's a drag on the midterms for Republican candidates that's being created by the national narrative. And it would be very hard to buck that trend if you're in swing districts, much less close districts, if you can't change that narrative between now and November." [...]

National Republican groups spent big to back Lesko, pouring in more than $1 million for television and mail ads and phone calls to voters in the suburban Phoenix district. On Election Day, Trump and Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey urged Republicans to go to the polls and vote for Lesko. National Democratic groups, meanwhile, didn't commit money to the race, a sign they didn't believe the seat was in play.

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Rolling Stone: Welcome to the Age of Climate Migration

In 2017, a string of climate disasters – six big hurricanes in the Atlantic, wildfires in the West, horrific mudslides, high-temperature records breaking all over the country – caused $306 billion in damage, killing more than 300 people. After Hurricane Maria, 300,000 Puerto Ricans fled to Florida, and disaster experts estimate that climate and weather events displaced more than 1 million Americans from their homes last year. These statistics don't begin to capture the emotional and financial toll on survivors who have to dig through ashes and flooded debris to rebuild their lives. Mental-health workers often see spikes in depression, PTSD and suicides in the months that follow a natural disaster. After Harvey, one study found that 30 percent of residents in flooded areas had fallen behind on their rent or mortgage. One in four respondents said they were having problems paying for food. [...]

One recent study in the journal Nature Climate Change predicts that by 2050, as much as 30 percent of the world's land surface could face desertlike conditions, including large swaths of Asia, Europe, Africa and southern Australia. More than 1.5 billion people currently live in these regions. In the U.S., a recent study by Mathew Hauer, a demographer at the University of Georgia, estimates that 13 million people will be displaced by sea-level rise alone by the year 2100 (about the number of African-Americans who moved out of the South during the Great Migration of the 20th century). In Hauer's study, about 2.5 million will flee the region that includes Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach. Greater New Orleans loses up to 500,000 people; the New York City area loses 50,000. The biggest winners are nearby cities on high ground with mild climates, good infrastructure and strong economies: Atlanta; Austin; Madison, Wisconsin; and Memphis. [...]

The likelihood of another catastrophic levee collapse has been greatly reduced, thanks to $14.5 billion spent in the aftermath of Katrina on bigger, stronger barriers against the sea. But the city has other problems. For one thing, the protective coastline around it is vanishing. Louisiana is losing a football field of land to the sea every hour, due to a combination of subsidence, sea-level rise and reduced sediment flow from the Mississippi River. For -another, large parts of New Orleans, which was originally built on a swamp, have been sinking for 100 years – some parts of the city have subsided as much as 15 feet. As a result, even ordinary rainstorms are becoming existential threats. Last August, nine inches of rain fell on the city in three hours, and it looked like Katrina all over again. "The city is like a big bathtub," says Ed Link, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Maryland who led the effort to rebuild after Katrina. "You can build barriers to protect it from storm surges, but when it rains, you still have big problems."

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