The mark of Zelenskyy: History awaits his address to Congress

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… In mid-June 1940, as Paris was falling, the Gallup Poll offered Americans four options about how much aid should be provided to England and France. Despite a loud isolationist bloc, an overwhelming 73 percent of those polled supported doing “everything possible to help England and France except go to war.”

Except go to war.

That is the limitation that America again faces in Ukraine. CONTINUED

Walter Shapiro, Roll Call

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Public Expresses Mixed Views of U.S. Response to Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

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Three weeks into Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, nearly half of Americans (47%) approve of the Biden administration’s handling of the Russian invasion, while about four-in-ten (39%) disapprove; 13% say they are not sure.

Roughly a third of Americans (32%) say that the United States is providing about the right amount of support to Ukraine as it fights to hold off the Russian invasion. A larger share – 42% – say the U.S. should be providing more support to Ukraine, while just 7% say it is providing too much support. About one-in-five (19%) say they are not sure. CONTINUED

Pew Research Center

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Misinformation: susceptibility, spread, and interventions to immunize the public

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The spread of misinformation poses a considerable threat to public health and the successful management of a global pandemic. For example, studies find that exposure to misinformation can undermine vaccination uptake and compliance with public-health guidelines. As research on the science of misinformation is rapidly emerging, this conceptual Review summarizes what we know along three key dimensions of the infodemic: susceptibility, spread, and immunization. Extant research is evaluated on the questions of why (some) people are (more) susceptible to misinformation, how misinformation spreads in online social networks, and which interventions can help to boost psychological immunity to misinformation. Implications for managing the infodemic are discussed. CONTINUED

Sander van der Linden (Cambridge), Nature Medicine

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Code Red on the Democratic Brand

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Politics is not a complicated game to win. Either your party fields compelling candidates that voters mostly like or your party offers a compelling and relevant enough agenda that voters mostly support. The one thing a party can’t do and expect to win is suffer double-digit deficits to the other party on the issues that matter most to voters.

Yet this is exactly where Democrats find themselves today according to fresh new polling from Impact Research and Fabrizio Lee for The Wall St. Journal. CONTINUED

John Halpin, The Liberal Patriot

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Don’t rely on voters’ poll answers on gas prices or a no-fly zone

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Voters, most of whom do not follow politics hour by hour, are unreliable indicators of what they want. Given how little time many voters spend “studying the issues,” the media and elected officials should be wary about finding clarity, let alone consistency, in what the people want. A case in point is gas prices. CONTINUED

Jennifer Rubin, Washington Post

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Biden states will decide who controls the Senate

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The one silver lining for Democrats on an otherwise stormy political horizon may be the map of states with competitive Senate races this fall. All of the Senate contests both sides consider the most competitive will be in states that Joe Biden won in 2020, albeit in most cases narrowly.

That geography could provide a critical boost for beleaguered Democrats in an era when both parties are finding it more difficult to win Senate races in states that usually vote the other way for president. That dynamic has grown so powerful that each party now holds just three of the 50 Senate seats in the 25 states that voted against their presidential candidates in the 2020 election.

None of the three Democratic senators in states that then-President Donald Trump won in 2020 is on the ballot this fall, which leaves the battlefield centered overwhelmingly on terrain Biden captured. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, CNN

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