| | |  | BY MICHAEL KRUSE | With help from Renuka Rayasam and Myah Ward THE ID VS. THE LID — This morning, 20 days from Election Day, the Biden campaign called a lid and the Trump campaign called foul. President Donald Trump seemed to have settled on the Joe Biden “lid” as a line of attack in rallies in the run-up to his coming down with Covid. “They have a thing called the lid,” Trump told a crowd in Pennsylvania late last month. “A lid is when you put out word you’re not going to be campaigning today,” he explained two days later in Florida. “It’s an expression,” he said the day after that in Virginia. “Means he’s not working.” On the eve of Thursday night’s dueling town halls in the place of the nixed second debate, the contrast in this campaign has never been more clear. It’s The Id vs. The Lid. Biden isn’t the “basement”- or “bunker”-bound hermit Trump and his campaign have tried to make him out to be. But it’s true that he’s campaigning cautiously — in essence, it seems, to avoid attracting attention. And it’s working. The preponderance of polling says it is. On most days, Biden’s not calling a.m. lids. On Tuesday he was in Florida, on Monday he was in Ohio, and so on. But today, less than three weeks out, all he did was hold a virtual fundraiser in the afternoon, and then in the evening pre-taped remarks played at an event honoring American Muslims. Trump, on the other hand, is “Mr. Id,” as the biographer Tim O’Brien once wrote , referring to the part of the Freudian psyche that dictates a person’s most primitive urges and wants. “He just plows forward into any situation in which he can get attention.” The president couldn’t even convalesce with the coronavirus without insisting on busting out of Walter Reed to get his hit from his fans outside. Now he’s in the midst of a rally spree. Given Trump’s worrisome standing in the polls, in national tallies, in states he needs to win, in crosstabs of groups he can’t lose, and also how closely he is said to monitor all this, one might think he’d at least consider tweaking his homestretch strategy. And dropping out of Thursday’s debate in theory could have been a seemingly rash and calamitous decision that then paid unexpected dividends — by giving folks a break … from him. Plot twist! For months, after all, Trump and his aides have been attempting to goad Biden out of “hiding,” to make him more accessible, to have voters pay more attention to him. That moment was set up: 90 minutes of Biden, not counterprogrammed, not interrupted: “Sleepy Joe,” in the crude parlance of the Trump campaign, solo in the spotlight. “It’s not clear that seeing more of the president is necessarily a help to his campaign,” Republican pollster Whit Ayres said this week. And on Thursday night, the nation was going to be with Biden, and Biden alone. That, though, was something The Id could not abide. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out at mkruse@politico.com and rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @michaelkruse and @renurayasam.
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| THE SWING-STATE PANDEMIC — After months of simmering Covid infection rates, the virus is surging in many states, Nightly’s Renuka Rayasam and Myah Ward write. The country’s daily death rate from Covid never fell below 500, a bottom hit during a late June lull. Now it’s hovering around 700 and set to grow to about 950 daily deaths by Nov. 3, according to the University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. Those rising rates so close to Election Day could have an unpredictable effect on the presidential election and other races. A growing number of voters have fallen ill, or know someone who has. “The virus has moved from big cities to smaller towns to a large extent,” said Eric Toner, senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Isolated rural communities, many lacking adequate health care facilities, are now being overtaken with new cases. “Nothing compares to New York City, but for a small town it can be just as impactful,” he said. POLITICO says there are eight states that will decide the election. Renu and Myah broke down the virus trajectory in those states using 7-day averages from the Covid Tracking Project. Arizona — Deaths are down more than tenfold from a mid-July spike, but case counts and hospitalizations have been creeping upward over the last couple weeks. Cases: 686 daily cases
Deaths: 7.71 daily deaths
Hospitalizations: 686 currently hospitalized Florida — Cases are down from mid-July and have remained steady since September, with new cases hovering between 2,000 and 3,000 a day. Deaths are down from an August peak. Cases: 2,661 daily cases
Deaths: 111 daily deaths
Hospitalizations: 2,134 currently hospitalized Georgia — Cases are down from mid-July, deaths are down from mid-August and hospitalizations also continue to fall. Cases: 1,236 daily cases
Deaths: 32.14 daily deaths
Hospitalizations: 1,702 currently hospitalized Michigan — Cases are on the rise, with a 7-day average of new daily cases that is double the mid-July numbers. Hospitalizations are starting to catch up, though for now, deaths have dropped and remain steady. Cases: 1,283 daily cases
Deaths: 13.4 daily deaths
Hospitalizations: 848 currently hospitalized Minnesota — Cases in Minnesota are growing out of control. New daily cases are more than double the July numbers. Hospitalizations and deaths are also spiking. Cases: 1,262 daily cases
Deaths: 9.14 daily deaths
Hospitalizations: 452 currently hospitalized North Carolina — New daily infections have ebbed and flowed in North Carolina, but remained fairly steady until this fall. Deaths are hitting a peak this month and hospitalizations have been increasing after a dip last month. Cases: 1,889 daily cases
Deaths: 20.86 daily deaths
Hospitalizations: 1,062 currently hospitalized Pennsylvania — Cases are spiking again. Deaths have fluctuated between 10 and 20 a day. Hospitalizations have been growing since the end of September. Cases: 1,343 daily cases
Deaths: 20 daily deaths
Hospitalizations: 716 currently hospitalized Wisconsin — The state is seeing some of the worst infection rates since the start of the pandemic, with deaths and hospitalizations steeply rising since September. Cases: 2,861 daily cases
Deaths: 15.43 daily deaths
Hospitalizations: 901 currently hospitalized
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Illustration by Ryan Inzana | DEMS LOOK FOR UNITY ON POLICE UNIONS — Earlier this year, House Democrats were close to pushing through a bill that would have cemented the power of police unions across the country, national political reporter Laura Barrón-López writes. The bill would have granted the federal right to form a union and bargain contracts to firefighters, emergency medical personnel and police, including in states that currently prohibit some in public safety from negotiating collectively for wages and working conditions. As talk of moving the bill increased in March, Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro was a rare voice raising alarms. He warned his colleagues on the Education and Labor Committee that the bill would formalize the authority of police unions to determine misconduct standards in their contracts, which are increasingly viewed as a barrier to holding police accountable for wrongdoing. But labor organizations weren’t pleased with the idea of singling out police affiliates by restricting their ability to bargain over disciplinary standards in the bill. Then the coronavirus pandemic exploded, and negotiations stalled. Today, that bill is dead, and not because of the pandemic. This fight has created a political squeeze for Democrats, especially in the progressive wing of the party, whose historic support for unions is in direct conflict with their new mandate to wring the racial unfairness out of American policing.
| | PLAN ACB — With Trump’s reelection prospects looking slimmer by the day, Republican groups and lawmakers are betting on Amy Coney Barrett as the future of conservatism. In the latest POLITICO Dispatch, White House reporter Gabby Orr breaks down what this week’s confirmation hearings have revealed about Trump’s nominee to the Supreme Court — and how she became the GOP’s Plan B.
| | | | COVID IN THE RESIDENCE — Barron Trump, the president’s teenage son, contracted coronavirus along with his father and mother earlier this month, first lady Melania Trump revealed today. In a blog post about her experience recovering from Covid-19, the first lady said that her first thought when she received her diagnosis was her son. “To our great relief he tested negative, but again, as so many parents have thought over the past several months, I couldn’t help but think ‘what about tomorrow or the next day?’” she wrote on the White House website. “My fear came true when he was tested again and it came up positive.” The first lady wrote that Barron, 14, exhibited no symptoms.
| | Nightly asks you: What’s the one question you would ask President Trump and the one question you would ask Joe Biden? You only get one each. Send us your answers via our form, and we’ll include select responses in Friday’s edition.
| | TROUBLE FOR THE TIDE — Alabama coach Nick Saban and athletic director Greg Byrne have tested positive for Covid-19, four days before the Southeastern Conference’s biggest regular-season showdown. Both said their tests this morning came back positive. Saban said he didn’t have any symptoms by late afternoon. The second-ranked Crimson Tide is set to face the No. 3 Georgia Bulldogs on Saturday, and may be without their 68-year-old coach. “I immediately left work and isolated at home,” Saban said. Saban said he informed the team via a Zoom session at 2 p.m. today and that offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian will oversee game preparations while he works from home.
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Voters fill out their ballots during early voting at the KFC YUM! Center in Louisville, Ky. | Getty Images | | | MONEY MONEY — Campaign finance nerds have two very important filing deadlines on the horizon: Thursday is the deadline for congressional candidates to report their third quarter finances to the Federal Election Commission, while presidential campaigns open their books for the month of September a few days later, on Tuesday. Besides the obvious question — how much money did Joe Biden and Donald Trump raise? — here’s what Morning Score author Zach Montellaro is looking out for. He emails us: The Democratic Senate candidates are raising absolutely bonkers amounts of money, and many are expected to outraise the Republican they’re challenging. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) announced today that he raised $28 million, which his campaign said was an all-time record for Republican Senate candidates. But it was less than half of Democrat Jaime Harrison’s $57 million. But what, exactly, are the Democrats doing with it? There’s been some grumbling that Democrats cannot spend that much money effectively (there’s plenty of digital strategists happy to disagree). We’ll get our first look at how they’re putting it to work tomorrow. Another thing we’re watching is where big donors — the folks who can cut six (or seven) figure checks — are directing their dough. Super PACs will report either Thursday or next Tuesday, depending on their filing schedule. Where deep-pocketed donors are giving can be a good indication for what races are thought to be most competitive. Will Senate-focused super PACs see a rush of cash, as the battle over the upper chamber intensifies, or will donors keep spending their dollars on Biden and Trump? HOW MAIL VOTING WENT PARTISAN — In the latest 2020 Check In, Eugene Daniels talks to Zach about mail-in balloting’s long bipartisan tradition, Trump’s constant attacks on increased postal voting and how the big bump in mail voting will affect the election.
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| | | ERIN GO BIDEN — Laurita Blewitt knows how deep Biden’s Irish roots run. When the White House contacted her to help put together a family lunch ahead of the then-vice president’s 2016 visit to Ireland, she struggled to limit the crowd. “He’s loads of cousins living here, in and around Ballina, and that’s just one side of his Irish family,” said Blewitt, 37, a fourth cousin who lives near the County Mayo tourist town along the River Moy. Today, a pop-art mural of a beaming Biden greets visitors to Ballina, one sign of growing excitement here that the U.S. might soon get its most Irish-American president since John F. Kennedy. Declaring ties to Ireland has often been a vote-winner in an America where, according to the last census, one in 10 people — 33 million — claims Irish descent. Ever since Kennedy’s landmark visit here in 1963, a succession of U.S. presidents have crossed the Atlantic to highlight the Irish branch of their family tree. And while Trump’s only apparent tie to Ireland is his ownership of an oceanside golf resort in County Clare, Biden for decades has tied his identity to Ireland. Shawn Pogatchnik has more on the history of U.S. politicians’ Irish links, and the ties that bind the fifth-eighths-Irish Biden to the Emerald Isle.
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51 The percentage of the vote for Joe Biden in Georgia, in a new Quinnipiac poll released today. Trump received 44 percent support in a poll, which showed an increased lead for Biden from Sept. 29’s 50-47 result. |
| | | TURNING OFF OOO — Nightly’s Tyler Weyant emails, from (really!) POLITICO Global Headquarters in Rosslyn, Va.: Newsrooms aren’t supposed to be like this. I’m sitting at my desk, here to pick up things I want to take home for the election’s final weeks, and I’m looking out on a dark, empty office. I’ve been in jauntier mausoleums. A colleague’s description of the POLITICO newsroom right now — the physical office, not the virtual mindspace we now call a newsroom — as “bleak” didn’t do it justice. To get here, I thought I might take Metro for the first time since mid-March. I thought better of it, though, after peeking at the weather. I laced up my sneakers and walked here from my Southwest D.C. home. Joggers and bikers, including a man on an adult-size tricycle sporting the flags of Poland, Guinea and the University of Notre Dame, had replaced the capital’s besuited masses. Across the Potomac in Rosslyn, the professional class looked to be dressed to binge the next episode of Great British Baking Show. The POLITICO machine is still humming along, even if the workers aren’t on the factory floor. The usual newsroom sounds have been replaced by the low din of fans. There’s a plant growing in a Snapple bottle on my desk that somehow has stayed alive. To Andrew Beaujon of Washingtonian’s misfortune, there are no snacks. What surprised me most was a feeling of sadness. Since March, I have been in the “Let’s never go back” camp. But sitting amid dead flowers and empty chairs, I felt like I had arrived home after a burglary. Oh, to complain lightly about a colleague spilling a coffee and not cleaning it up. What a luxury.
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