StatNews:
AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine study put on hold due to suspected adverse reaction in participant in the U.K.
A large, Phase 3 study testing a Covid-19 vaccine being developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford at dozens of sites across the U.S. has been put on hold due to a suspected serious adverse reaction in a participant in the United Kingdom.
A spokesperson for AstraZeneca, a front-runner in the race for a Covid-19 vaccine, said in a statement that the company’s “standard review process triggered a pause to vaccination to allow review of safety data.”
It was not immediately clear who placed the hold on the trial, though it is possible it was placed voluntarily by AstraZeneca and not ordered by any regulatory agency. The nature of the adverse reaction and when it happened were also not immediately known, though the participant is expected to recover, according to an individual familiar with the matter.
This is why you can’t rush these things. Here’s another example:
This, despite the WH hype.
Mickey Mantle to Congress: I agree with what Casey said.
Stan Greenberg/American Prospect:
How Trump Is Losing His Base
Focus groups with working-class and rural voters show the deep health care crisis in America, and trouble for Trump’s re-election.
These are mostly low-wage families, many with children raised by a single parent. They are consumed with rising opioid deaths and disabilities and a deadly expensive health care system. That was a big part of why they voted for Donald Trump in 2016: so he could end Obamacare and its costly mandate, and deliver affordable health insurance for all. When he failed to do so, many voted against the Republicans in the midterms.
But the pandemic was the perfect storm. I have never seen such a poignant discussion of the health and disability problems facing families and their children, the risks they faced at work, and the prospect of even higher health care and prescription drug costs. The final straw was a president who battled not for the “forgotten Americans,” but for himself, the top one percent, and the biggest, greediest companies.
That is why most in the Zoom focus groups pulled back from President Trump. Three-quarters of these voters supported Trump in 2016, but less than half planned to vote for him now.
David Frum/Atlantic:
Everyone Knows It’s True
As Trump vehemently disputes reports that he has disparaged veterans, some silences speak loudly.
Donald Trump generates a lot of noise. He talks. He tweets. He is echoed and amplified by a vast claque, on TV and online, made up of Americans and foreigners, humans and bots.
Never has he shouted louder than in the days since my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg reported the president’s disparaging comments about those who have fallen, been maimed, or taken prisoner in war...
Amid the clamor, it’s easy to overlook those who are not yelling, those who are keeping silent. Where are the senior officers of the United States armed forces, serving and retired—the men and women who worked most closely on military affairs with President Trump? Has any one of them stepped forward to say, “That’s not the man I know”?
How many wounded warriors have stepped forward to attest to Trump’s care and concern for them? How many Gold Star families have stepped forward on Trump’s behalf? How many service families?
The silence is resounding. And when such voices do speak, they typically describe a president utterly lacking in empathy to grieving families, wholly uncomprehending of sacrifice and suffering.
Ron Brownstein/CNN:
How Biden is pressing a two-front war against Trump
Joe Biden has described himself as a "bridge" between the Democrats' current and future generations of leaders. But he may also be a bridge between its present and future on the electoral map.
Exactly eight weeks before Election Day, Biden has strong opportunities to recapture states that President Donald Trump won in 2016 both in the Rust Belt and the Sun Belt. But public and private polls consistently show that Biden is running slightly better in the former group of battlegrounds -- centered on Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin -- than the latter, which include North Carolina, Florida and Arizona.
That's something of a surprise, because Trump has focused his message and agenda so precisely on the priorities and resentments of the older, rural and non-college Whites who dominate the electorate in Rust Belt states, while the Sun Belt states are adding many more of the younger non-White voters who increasingly compose the Democrats' base…
That's how Biden could offer Democrats a bridge: His potential to improve on Hillary Clinton's showing with older and blue-collar Whites means that even if falls short in some or all of the Sun Belt states that many in the party see as its long-term future, he could still reach 270 Electoral College votes by recapturing Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the three big Rust Belt states that Trump dislodged from the Democrats' "blue wall."
Alex Seitz-Wald/NBC:
Democrats are leading in the polls. That means it's time for them to panic.
Some say it's in the DNA of the party to always think the worst is about to happen.
The summer is coming to the close of an even-numbered year and Democrats are
up in the polls, which means it's time for them to freak out about the upcoming election.
Democrats are nothing if not a self-doubting bunch, and the 2016 election left such a psychic scar that many in the party are now conditioned to assume they'll somehow blow it again and snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Some, indeed, say that.
AJC:
Joe Biden is beefing up his campaign in Georgia
Joe Biden’s campaign is expanding its footprint in Georgia with 11 additional staffers for the final stretch of the presidential race.
The operatives will join a small campaign apparatus in Georgia that launched in July with the hire of five well-known strategists. The new additions include data and digital directors, a communications strategist and a “voter protection” guru.
Democrats are challenging President Donald Trump’s campaign in a state that’s a must-win for his campaign. Republicans have carried Georgia in every presidential cycle since 1996, but some recent polls show Trump deadlocked with Biden this year.