This is getting some traction again thanks to @jonathanweisman’s piece yesterday and the controversy regarding his framing of it (which I have mixed feelings about), so here it is again: acasignups.net/21/11/17/red-s…
Here’s what the cumulative COVID county-level death rate looked like by Trump’s 2020 vote as of July 2020, after the first wave ended. It was 7.6x higher in the Bluest tenth of the country than the Reddest tenth.
By Election Day 2020, the Reddest counties had already started to @catch up:” The bluest bracket was only twice as high cumulatively as the reddest bracket:
By New Year’s Day 2021, the death rate in the Bluest bracket was just 12% higher than the Reddest bracket:
As @LOLGOP noted, this made my jaw drop when I noticed it: January 20, 2021, just happened to be the day that the cumulative COVID death rate in Red America began to surpass that of Blue America. Even the *averages* of the bluest 50% & reddest 50% brackets are almost dead even.
By July 2021 (right when Delta started to hit the U.S.), the script had flipped: The rate in the reddest tenth was 14% *higher* than in the bluest tenth:
That brings us to mid-November: The last bracket is now nearly 50% higher than the first cumulatively:
Here’s what it looks like in 2-week increments from March 2020 - November 2021:
Here’s my post from a month ago (an update to an earlier version from September) which made the same points that Weismann did yesterday. The debate is over the *framing* of the same ugly realities: acasignups.net/21/11/03/simpl…
Finally, here’s the post with the actual data cited by Weismann in his NY Times story yesterday for completeness: acasignups.net/21/11/22/weekl…
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🧵 People have asked me why I started an organized project to raise money *directly* for Democratic candidates up & down the ballot when there's already so many other organizations out there doing this. There's a couple of reasons. 1/
The first is that most of the existing organizations/PACs/etc seem to (in my view) *either* focus ONLY on the true swing districts *or* they raise money for races which are clearly unwinnable without being up front about how long the odds in those races are. 2/
I try to walk the line between these--for district-level races I cast my net wider than most "tossup only!" advocates, but not absurdly wide; for statewide races I *do* include deep red states but also make it absolutely clear that those races are *very* long shots. 3/
A little fun Die Hard trivia for those who don’t know:
The first Die Hard was based on a 1979 novel called Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp. In the novel McClain’s character was named Joe Leland. This was a sequel to a 1966 novel by Thorp called The Detective. 1/
The Detective had been made into a film starring Frank Sinatra as Joe Leland in 1968.
This means Bruce Willis plays the same character as Frank Sinatra.
In fact, the studio was contractually required to offer the role to Sinatra if he wanted it. Sinatra was 73 at the time.
As for the novel Nothing Lasts Forever (title since changed to “Die Hard”), it follows most of the same storyline and characters, but with a few VERY important differences…
How does the @nytimes know that these are actual federal officials who actually signed it if they did so “anonymously?”
Does that mean the Times is redacting their names? Or does it just say “signed, 400 officials” at the bottom of the letter?
@nytimes I’m not being snarky here—I can’t read the original NY Times article without a subscription; do they clarify how they verified that these 400 people actually are federal officials and that they did in fact sign off on the letter in it?
1. DON'T DELAY; #GETCOVERED BY *DECEMBER 15th* IF POSSIBLE!
#ACA Open Enrollment officially runs from 11/01/23 - 1/16/24, but if you want your coverage to start in JANUARY you only have until December 15th in most states!
Here's a table of the deadlines & when coverage starts for every state +DC (some may be extended at the last minute):