California: Voter Views about Covid and K-12 Schools

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In its latest survey, the Berkeley IGS Poll examined a range of issues relating to how the k-12 schools are dealing with the coronavirus. Below are some of the poll’s main findings.

There is strong bipartisan agreement among the overall electorate that the coronavirus has had a negative impact on the educational quality of the public schools in their own local area. …

Parents of school-age children display broad support for allowing in-person instruction to proceed at their child’s own school, with 79% in favor. …

Similar two-to-one majorities of the state’s voters approve of two policies aimed at containing the spread of the virus in the schools — adding coronavirus to the list of required vaccinations for k-12 students, and requiring students, teachers, and staff to wear masks while in school this year. CONTINUED

Mark DiCamillo, Berkeley IGS Poll

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Biden always behind the curve

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… Joe Biden’s progressive policies have driven his popularity and credibility with the American people down a steady slope over the past year, and now he faces a steep climb out of a deep hole for both himself and his party. Yet this president seems totally unable or unwilling to change direction in order to get ahead of emerging issues, languishing in a no man’s land of inaction, indecision and head-scratching poor choices. CONTINUED

David Winston (Winston Group), Roll Call

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Foreign Policy Unlikely To Save Democrats in the Fall

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… While we don’t know the trajectory that the Russia/Ukraine crisis will take, and there are many factors that can impact on midterm elections, we do know that in the absence of a large number of U.S. military deaths, Americans rarely vote on foreign-policy issues, particularly in midterms. The state and direction of the economy, particularly change in real disposable personal income, is far more determinative. …

In my view, Biden and his team are handling this incredibly challenging crisis far better than many other things over the last year. But this is unlikely to save Democrats from what is increasingly looking to be a pretty horrible midterm election. CONTINUED

Charlie Cook

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As Ohio became reliably red, the Republican Party was changing

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Once upon a time, Ohio was a swing state. While it was slightly more Republican than the country as a whole, the Buckeye State voted with the winning presidential nominee fourteen consecutive elections, from 1964 to 2016. But that now seems like ancient history. …

What is strange is how the Republican Party has changed. The party used to nominate and elect mainstream conservatives like Jim Rhodes, George Voinovich, William Saxbe, John Kasich, Rob Portman and Mike DeWine, who is seeking reelection as governor.

But this cycle’s crop of Republican Senate hopefuls includes ideological extremists who are pandering to the party’s Trump and Freedom Caucus wings. CONTINUED

Stuart Rothenberg, Roll Call

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Russia’s objective in the U.S. has already largely been achieved

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Russia’s desired outcome in the months before Donald Trump’s election in 2016 was not simply to see him elected. It aimed, instead, to more broadly “undermine the US-led liberal democratic order” (in the words of a January 2017 intelligence assessment), an effort that Russia believed would be aided far more by Trump’s election than Hillary Clinton’s. This overlapped with its desire to “provoke and amplify political and social discord in the United States” (in the words of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III), leading it to weigh in not only on electoral politics but cultural fights — investing in amplifying and exacerbating contentious social debates.

That desired outcome has seen some significant success. That’s not primarily due to Russia, certainly, but it is to Russia’s benefit now as it engages in an effort to seize Ukraine. A divided America has political factions seeking unity with foreign allies instead of domestic partners. CONTINUED

Philip Bump, Washington Post

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A Test for Biden, a Test for Democracy

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Russia’s all-out invasion of Ukraine confronts President Joe Biden with complex challenges at a time when he is already beleaguered—but it also presents him with an opportunity for a reset on the core foreign-policy promise he made to voters during his 2020 campaign.

As a candidate, Biden offered voters not so much a change in specific international policies as an alternative approach to interacting with other nations. In managing America’s foreign policy, Biden pledged to be steady and stable, competent and collaborative. …

But through his first year in office, Biden’s record on delivering that change was, at best, mixed; his moves to revitalize international organizations and alliances were overshadowed by tension and disillusionment at home and abroad over his chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. …

Now in the Ukraine crisis, a wide variety of foreign-policy experts agree, the Biden on display looks more like the version he promised 2020 voters: a senior statesman coordinating a unified Western response against an autocratic threat to the global order. CONTINUED

Ronald Brownstein, The Atlantic

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