STATUS CHECK: ALL TOGETHER NOW, LET’S POLARIZE FURTHER
WASHINGTON (MaceNews) – The following is Tuesday’s status check of developments in the U.S. that can influence economic, health and political outcomes:
Democrats and President Trump and some Republicans and President Trump traded insults through the day and into prime time. “Colin Powell is a Neocon WMD hoaxer, so of course he’s appearing at the #DemConvention,” said Trump in a snarling evening tweet directed at the Republican.
Of Michelle Obama, Monday night’s keynoter at the Democratic National Convention, “You know, she gets these fawning reviews. If you gave a real review, it wouldn’t be so fawning.”
Tuesday night’s lineup of Democratic convention speakers, almost a dozen and a half of them, focused on the theme, “Leadership Matters,” as they pinned responsibility for the high tolll of virus deaths on the president, along with a long litany of other alleged shortcomings of both competence and style.
Earlier House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told MSNBC she’s looking forward to an “after action report” next year on the Trump administration, a somewhat chilling threat of retribution on those she hopes will be the losers in November.
“When this president goes overseas … it’s a blooper reel,” says John Kerry, once a presidential hopeful himself. You can almost see President Trump keying in his riposte.
At 10:19 p.m. ET Tuesday night Joe Biden became no longer the “presumptive” but the actual official Democratic presidential candidate.
All in good fun? Hardly. Politics is, as is often said, not beanbag. Were the electorate not sufficiently polarized before, the two weeks of Democratic and Republican conventions will take care of any remaining fence sitting, or at least attempt to move the middle one way or the other.
Amid the thundering fusillades of invective, blame-casting and opposing TV ads, the state of the nation continued to be hard to measure, a calm before a storm of joblessness and hunger or before a massive sign of relief as a vaccine is perfected?
Again, for those who look to the U.S. stock markets as beacons of hope, both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq reached record highs Tuesday, for the S&P, the first time since February. Advances outside of the booming tech sector have been halting, however.
Although seven states showed increases in virus cases, another 24 states were no worse and 22 states were definitely improved (NYT Tracker). The daily death toll seemed to be decreasing, with 574 the total for Monday, not as bad as Mexico for a change. Hundreds more volunteers were being injected with Moderna’s candidate vaccine, now in Phase 3 trials. But, but … there are signs that for many people, millions of people, things are getting worse.
· Otherwise, not much news on Tuesday. Anyone reading the Senate Intelligence Committee’s fifth and final volume of its probe of Russia’s influence on the 2016 presidential election, a bipartisan report, there were many, many additional factoids that showed how eager were the neophyte Trump campaigners for help from beyond, whether Wikileaks or Russian intelligence operatives. If there was no collusion, it was not for want of trying.
· Speaking of sideshows, the Democratic narrative of a president bending the Postal Service to his will got another boost when the Postmaster General said he’s freezing the reforms until after the election. Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell hardly needed to make it explicit but no, the Senate won’t echo the House when it votes Saturday to send the USPS $25 billion or so and order what the administration calls reforms to a halt. Meanwhile, no movement at all toward virus relief legislation.
· In upcoming economic data, the Mortgage Bankers Assoc. reading of weekly applications at 7 a.m. ET. In the afternoon the minutes of the most recent Federal Open Market Committee meeting at 2 p.m. The morning’s report on housing starts was a startingly strong increase, 22.6%, but the annual rate of single-family house production was not as high as it was in January and February.
—
Edited by Denny Gulino (denny@macenews). Content may appear first or exclusively on the Mace News premium service. For real-time email delivery contact tony@macenews.com. Twitter headlines @macenewsmacro.
