Mediaboss Marketing

It's no secret that our county, and our congressional district (Virginia's 5th), lean to the right. But this year's Fifth District candidates offer such a stark contrast that even conservatives should give the race a second look.

On one hand, there's Dr. Cameron Webb. A physician (who also holds a law degree), Dr. Webb served presidents from both parties -- Obama and Trump -- as a White House health care policy advisor. He now teaches at UVA's School of Medicine. A centrist, Dr. Webb would bring desperately needed real-world competence to Congress as it tries to fix our dysfunctional health-insurance system.

On the other hand, there is Bob Good. Mr. Good, a former banker best known as an athletics booster for Liberty University, has centered his campaign on re-litigating the culture wars. He declared the U.S. Supreme Court "lawless" for recognizing same-sex marriage, and his campaign has focused on attacking the Virginia Values Act, a state law (over which a congressman would have no power) that protects LGBT Virginians from housing and employment discrimination.

The "issues page" on Mr. Good's own website focuses on bathroom laws but makes no mention of health care, job creation, fighting COVID-19, or plans to help rural communities -- all issues Dr. Webb discusses in depth.

The choice is clear: One candidate is a pragmatic doctor with national leadership experience and real policy chops. The other is an avowed culture-war partisan. Even in our moderately right-leaning district, Dr. Webb is the obvious choice.

Adam Gerchick

Delaplane

See the original post here:
Letter: Dr. Cameron Webb is the obvious choice for the 5th District - Fauquier Times

We interrupt your latest binge of breaking political news, fear-provoking campaign commercials and angry posts from your favorite pundit to report that politics can be stressful.

That stress can be bad for your health. But some good news here you can take steps to manage it.

If the election has your heart racing and stomach churning, you have company. According to the American Psychological Associations Stress in America survey for July, 77% of Democrats and 62% of Republicans said the political climate was a significant source of stress.

A study published last September in the journal PLoS ONE hinted at the toll such stress can take: Roughly a fifth or more of 800 respondents reported losing sleep, being fatigued or suffering depression because of politics. More than 11% said politics had hurt their physical health at least a little.

Thats a lot of stress-sick people, said the studys lead author, Kevin B. Smith, the Leland J. and Dorothy H. Olson Chair of Political Science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Youre talking about tens of millions of people who say, Im losing sleep because of politics. Ive lost a friend because of politics, Smith said.

Melissa DeJonckheere, an assistant professor in the department of family medicine at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, had similar findings in a smaller survey that questioned 14- to 24-year-olds about the 2016 presidential election. Before the election, 86% reported issues such as anxiety, fear or the feeling that things were out of their control. About a fifth reported physical problems not being able to sleep, and even nausea.

It was a nonpartisan problem, she said. Even people who said that they dont follow politics, or theyre explicitly not interested in any of the candidates, were still having negative emotional responses to the election.

That research, published in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Mental Health in 2018, noted that stress in youth has been linked to cardiovascular disease, depression, substance abuse, behavioral problems and more in adolescents, plus problems in adulthood.

Smith, who has done extensive work on the biology of political behavior, said the question of whether political stress affects us differently than other types of stress hasnt been answered. But he suspects a few modern factors might be making things worse.

We have an incredibly polarized political environment right now, he said. And thanks to smartphones and computers, were constantly soaking in it. Its just omnipresent in our lives, he said. He contrasted it to the stress that comes from, say, being a football fan. He is one, and every year, I produce a lot of stomach acid over the Dallas Cowboys playoff chances. But the football season ends, and that stress goes away.

The political season never ends.

The anxiety is not always accidental. Campaigns can feed off of fear, said Dr. Robert Waldinger, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston and director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development. After all, theyre trying to make voters choose sides.

Couple that with the divisions that have been fanned about how to respond to the coronavirus, he said, and our bodies are much more in chronic fight-or-flight mode than they probably were before the pandemic.

To cope, Waldinger who is also a Zen priest recommends regulating your exposure to the constant stream of scary political news.

One of my meditation teachers has a quote that I really like. She said, Your mind is like tofu; it tastes like whatever you marinate it in, he said. He stays informed by reading the newspaper in the morning, later listens to a little radio, but avoids TV entirely. And I try my best to stay away from the news feed on my phone.

However you choose to get news, be careful and be deliberate, Waldinger said. And dont do it late in the day as youre wanting to settle down and sleep.

DeJonckheere said unpublished findings suggest that her young participants found relief by becoming more civically engaged.

The youth in our study talked about taking on activist roles, volunteering, taking more classes to learn about how politics affects them, she said. She thought that could be particularly important for people who are too young to vote, because it could give them a sense of control and purpose, which can help reduce stress and improve mental health.

Finding common ground with neighbors is a good idea, Waldinger said. Im not going to change the minds of my neighbors who are on the other side of the divide. But theyre still my neighbors. Connecting around a cause such as a walk to end hunger could benefit everybody.

And dont let political dramas divide you from family, he said. I would say, see the culture wars as the enemy, the thing to be fended off.

Because, he said, This moment is going to pass. We dont know what its going to morph into, but its not going to stay the same.

Read the original:
Surviving the election: How to protect yourself from the stress of politics - Steuben Courier

American defense is dancing with its old nemesis. No, it is not an adversary per se, but the reemergence of questions on organization, enabled by the creation of the Space Force. This new service has attracted the ire of scholars, politicians, and even one of Starfleets most famous captains. It has also been subjected to no shortage of parody. The creation of the Space Force nestled under the Department of the Air Force has ignited debate and rivalries not dissimilar to those which nearly crippled American defense in the post-World War II decade.

The post-war defense unification debates were centered on the shape and scope of the roles and missions of the military services. Those who sought to referee the interservice rivalries found themselves searching for procedural panaceas that would lead to an organizational utopia. Questions pertaining to the role and function of each of the military services were not resolved with the abolition of the free-standing military departments. This led to compromises in the 1940s and 1950s, which focused on the unity of efforts towards workable strategy and defense policy. Although significant differences remained, it was agreed upon that if another service was ever created, combined experience and unity should emerge as its guiding ethos. Congress rejected the possibility that the American military would be held hostage to a system where one military department could alone control thought and theory, particularly where new frontiers of military activity occurred such as space. This is seemingly forgotten with the creation of the Space Force.

Congress, as the final arbiter on defense, increasingly fought service cultures and rivalries as the unification debates distracted decision-makers. This distraction made time an ally for the communist threat. Central to these debates were bitter divisions between the Navy and Air Force. The pitting of experience and new concepts against one another resulted in the rejection of limitations placed upon developing a coherent national doctrine where any single approach rooted in ideology became prominent. At the time, the near loss of the war on the Korean Peninsula exposed the perils of relying upon a single philosophy, doctrine, or weapon delivery system. The unification debates and global events resulted in pressure on Congress. They pushed for access to a broad pallet of concepts, experience and historical analysis from the strategic thinking community, because it was crucial to American defense. The newly formed Department of Defense was encouraged to not suppress free debate and thought. As a result, the Department of Defense faced the challenge of how to balance limits on emotive arguments and ideological dominance against being able to use and encourage open debate effectively. The challenge led to decades of the use and abuse of jointness. The experience of unification which highlighted that limiting breadth and depth of debate only served to hinder addressing strategic realities and the development of sound strategic thought. This was starkly apparent when reorganization related to changes to existing services or the prospect of the creation of a new service came to the fore.

The Perfect Solution That Never Was

The creation of Space Force was accompanied by debates that have demonstrated well-travelled and familiar divisions, which are rooted in rivalry, prejudices, and false narratives of the past. Arguments over space resonate with the rivalries of old, which were driven by loyal air power theorists. These theorists have viewed the creation of the Space Force as final vindication to not only the dominance of their theories but also misguidedly that space is an Air Force and air power domain alone. However, these debates which vary on a range of topics related to the Space Force and spacepower frame questions over the foundations, efficiency, and effectiveness of unified defense, and ask if rivalry and service culture reigns supreme against strategy-making.

Within months of the creation of the Space Force, air power advocates quickly turned to their prophet, Army aviator Billy Mitchell, who was the protagonist for an independent Air Force in the 1920s. His ghost deployed to define the culture of Space Force. The Air Force and their supporters attempts to expand their dominance are to service their cultural paranoia and perpetual insecurity over the question of the air forces existence since the 1920s. They sometimes add capabilities to their portfolio to prop up arguments for their existence rather than questioning if it serves their best interest or the interests of the Department of Defense. Notably, the Space Force underwent less scrutiny than the U.S. Navy or Marine Corps had undergone in the 1940s, when bitter conflicts between the Navy and Air Force mission were at their peak and the very existence of the Navy was in question. Suggestions and concerns raised across the defense community about the future of the Space Force were placated with offers of jointness. This ignored the fact that that organizational culture defines the environment in which thought can occur and that jointness should not be used to placate constructive criticism and feedback, nor manipulated to further single service agendas. Often, suggestions by naval thinkers were rejected and argued under the auspices that the Space Force needs a blank slate. Blank slates rarely exist or become possible when they are set within an existing organization that has already rejected ideas and set bounds and limits. Those who promote blank slates for the Space Force will presumably be the first to support removing the Space Force from the Department of the Air Force, enhancing the spacepower doctrine by protecting it from developing an ideological service bias.

Building a Strategic Space Community

Debates such as these echoed similar unification debates of the twentieth century. Unification debates fractured relationships, divided opinions and attempted to dismiss long-established experience while pushing new boundaries on civil-military relations, political oversight and fiscal control. The process of military unification failed to resolve anxieties of many of the services and culturally embedded concern of how easy it was to squander hard-earned experiences while demonstrating the perils associated with attempting to create something new. This was foremost in the mind of U.S. Navy Adm. Arleigh Burke. In the late 1950s, he observed other services rejecting changes to military funding of space and the creation of NASA. He realized that space would be a battleground for policy and warfare which would awaken old and long-held divisions, as he attempted to explain why space was best viewed in a maritime context but not bound to any specific doctrine, yet iterated space was still the best opportunity for all service participation. The negative response driven by interservice rivalries convinced Burke that the U.S. Navy would support the creation of NASA. Support for space through a different organization came with little surprise considering that navies had long been involved with exploration and working in conjunction with explorers, who often inherently militarized new frontiers space was no exception. Although hopes that space would be a frontier in which humanity would escape some of the trappings of its bloody past, the space race of the 1950s and 1960s was as much about beating the Soviets as it was about the challenge of a new frontier.

It can be no surprise that maritime thinkers and air power theorists debate space. A maritime strategic view of space is evidenced against the ideologies of warfighting and air power doctrine. Space warfare thinkers have lined up their complex assumptions, attempting to mold air power doctrine to space like it is a square peg in a round hole. The maritime-minded use Sir Julian Corbetts Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, identifying that similarly to the sea, space influences events on earth in support of military activity. Some of these concepts have started developing a spacepower doctrine. However, strategic space policy needs to be understood beyond military power instead, like maritime policy, where a broad spectrum of inter-relationships cross-ranging from science to trade, and from foreign relations to communications, amongst others. This is a reminder that organizations view mediums in different manners strategically, tactically and operationally. These are determined by how organizations view the art and theory of war, which reflects individual service specialties and preferences.

Those building a new strategic community to best serve strategic space theory and spacepower policy only have to look to NASA for inspiration on how to build a community of talented intellectuals. NASA avoided any particular culture, shaping its community by drawing on a diverse range of talent. The Space Forces substantial draw from the Air Force could undermine the rationale to its existence by pursuing a policy of cultural eliteness. This may be useful in limited circumstances but may be out of step with the Space Force mission such as special warfare. By contrast, Space Command has demonstrated the value of having a range of talent by being a joint operational command. Although intense scrutiny by Congress is vital, diversifying transfers would provide a crucial first step to enhance longer-term aspirations and funding for space within defense. At the present, hopes that space would avoid the fierce rivalry akin to the past have increasingly disappeared and have been accelerated by the creation of the Space Force. This acceleration has been further enhanced by the singlemindedness of some who view space more in a warfighting air power model than a domain in which to address strategic concepts first. The optics of an Air Force takeover of space aggravated deep wounds and concerns in the culture of each service. Understandably, military services facing great power competition and the cost from the exhaustion of decades in the Middle East approached the political mandate to create the Space Force with skepticism. They could ill afford to risk service or broader defense budgets by fiscally maintaining yet another service and potentially jeopardizing already struggling modernization programs.

Leave Behind the Eulogies

Todays vision for the Space Force, presented by the Air Force, hopes for a lean and agile organization with redirected Air Force funds within the Department of the Air Force. This was justified to reduce bureaucracy, costs and rivalry. Yet, it will have to be seen if it materializes as this has been elusive to planners across defense since 1947. The rise of the more is better philosophy demonstrates a lack of thoughtful reasoning and a requirement for an economy to support it. During the late 1940s, the Air Force criticized retaining the U.S. Marine Corps within the Department of the Navy, as according to them, it was an excuse to further justify the existence of the Navy. With Space Force increasingly within Air Forces control it could be argued that it presents similar optics. Depending upon the budget requirements to operationalize the Space Force, the military branches, primarily the Air Force, may face difficult choices or turn to Capitol Hill to face voices who already doubt space forces funding. If they are to retain strategic readiness across defense, revisiting long term planning may be the only option. If funding is not forthcoming, it could impact the broader defense budget, potentially deepening rivalry, where other service advocates reject funding changes that could impact their services.

Service loyalties become useless if they betray the development of sound thought and if minds are closed to being challenged by new, alternative and classic theories. Although jointness remains operationally essential, it should not hinder challenges that jolt thought patterns from comfortable paths of thinking. Challenges present the opportunity to hone and refine doctrine, policy and strategic models. Air forces around the world have pursued continental air force space models similar to the U.S. Air Force. Their own national air power dominance doctrines have also resulted in them promoting airpower and space as one, inflaming rivalry and doing little to advance thought and theory. For example, advocates for the British Royal Air Force openly declared that air force ownership of space forces and space operations is about the justification for an RAF, its funding and role in British defense. They promoted this role using outdated and distorted myths, such as the Battle of Britain in 1940. This demonstrates how space could be misused by advocates in the defense debate for alternative agendas. This undermines urgent calls to build a broad constructive forward-looking strategic space community, which is not disconnected from the wider strategic community behind a singular or departmental perspective.

Unification and Strategy: An Ancient and Troubled Relationship

The creation of the Space Force provides a warning marker that lessons identified in unification period had been lost: the dangers and damage of rivalry, the potency of old arguments, and the embrace of technicism over experience and outdated models. These are all emboldened by tightening resources. This may force fundamental questions buried wishfully or otherwise from the past to the fore. Strategic space strategy and space warfare will continue to grow in importance because of all-service usage of spaces resources and concerns in space itself with competitors, while retaining first and foremost its classic ability to influence events on Earth. The creation of new organizations presents the opportune moment for strategists to think again by utilizing past knowledge and experience while not being held back by it. Space forces should be looked at as an opportunity, rejecting dogmatic often-schizophrenic compromises where departmental oversight and agenda automatically defines culture and thought, displacing strategic realities. Furthermore, outdated land analogies place unnecessary cultural boundaries to the space community developing new concepts. Those interested in the affairs of other domains should be scrutinizing space forces due to the potential of division over resources, which renews old problems. Air power theorists demand that debate, thought and theory remain exclusively their own domains should be consigned to history, as an outdated and a negative force. Building a community that focuses on advancing strategic space theory through engagement between strategists, researchers and defense practitioners should be free from the culture wars. Retaining the development of defense space strategy, space theory and space warfare concepts within the cultural ideology of one service will hinder progress, giving new impetus to explore questions long avoided: How many services are needed, what are their roles, how are they funded, and how does this all work together to form a national defense strategy?

Americas space force has been brought to the forefront, showing that many of the hallmarks of a system that unification was meant to be superior to have been renewed and replaced in a new monolithic organization. Defense and service departments are temporary constructs, reflecting national choices that are therefore worthy of continual examination as they often lose sight of their beginnings. Considering all the promises of abolitionists of military services and the free-standing service departments, many should be reminded, at the creation of a new service, that many questions and problems remain unsolved by unification. The first U.S. Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, stated in 1947: Defense organization is driven by emotion, not by intelligence. He could have added that sentimentality worshipping prophets and false narratives when creating an organization defines its culture and hinders its ability to find wisdom from the repository of experience while thinking of how to address and respond to genuine questions and challenges. Adversaries are unlikely to share such sympathy and sentimentality over their organizations as they develop and execute their strategies.

James W.E. Smith is a final year Ph.D. researcher in the School of Security Studies and Department of War Studies at Kings College London. His Ph.D. research focuses on British and American defense unification and its relationship with the development of strategic thought and theory. He was awarded grants to explore a variety of threads related to defense unification; one focuses on the relationship between maritime strategy theory and strategic space theory.

Image: U.S. Space Force

Read more from the original source:
Space Force Creation Warrants Revisiting Defense Unification - War on the Rocks

With no clinical trials underway, a COVID-19 vaccine for children is unlikely before the fall of 2021. Other news stories report the latest on vaccine development by Sanofi, Merck and AstraZeneca.

The New York Times:A Kid's Covid Vaccine Isn't Coming Anytime SoonParents, brace yourselves: You may be able to get a coronavirus vaccine by next summer, but your kids will have to wait longer perhaps a lot longer. While a number of vaccines for adults are in advanced clinical trials, there are currently no trials in the United States to determine whether theyre safe and effective for children. (Nierenberg and Blum, 9/23)

Fox News:When Will Coronavirus Vaccine Trials Begin In Children? Top Companies Weigh InWhile four coronavirus vaccine candidates have now entered into late-stage clinical trials amongadults, some may wonderwhen children will be enrolled. Pharmaceutical giantJohnson & Johnson,for example,announced Wednesday it ismoving ahead with a Phase 3 trial of a single-shot dose to treat the virus that causesCOVID-19, enrolling 60,000 adults from diverse backgrounds, including significant representation from those that are over 60 years old, to test for efficacy. (Rivas, 9/23)

Stat:Here Come The Tortoises: In The Race For A Covid-19 Vaccine, Slow Starters Could Still Win OutThe race is not always to the swift, as the cocky hare learned in Aesops classic fable, The Hare and the Tortoise. Those handicapping the so-called competition to develop Covid-19 vaccines would do well to keep an eye on the slower runners in this pursuit. (Branswell, 9/24)

Reuters:AstraZeneca Still Waiting For FDA Decision To Resume U.S. TrialAstraZeneca is still waiting for the go-ahead from the U.S. drug regulator to restart the clinical trial of its potential COVID-19 vaccine in the United States, Chief Executive Pascal Soriot said on Thursday. We are the sponsor of the U.S. study. We then provided all this information to the FDA (U.S. Federal Drug Administration) and we are waiting to hear their decision, Soriot told a virtual World Economic Forum discussion. (Burger and Copley, 9/24)

San Francisco Chronicle:Why Bay Area Coronavirus Vaccine Trial Was Halted Before It Ever StartedBay Area researchers who had been poised to start enrolling patients in a coronavirus vaccine trial have suspended those plans after the vaccine developers and federal regulators halted the trial in the United States over safety concerns. Phase 3 trials for the vaccine, made by the drug company AstraZeneca and Oxford University considered one of the front-runners in the race for a vaccine were temporarily halted worldwide Sept. 6 after a participant in the United Kingdom developed a neurological illness. (Ho, 9/23)

Also

Kaiser Health News:These Secret Safety Panels Will Pick The COVID Vaccine WinnersMost Americans have never heard of Dr. Richard Whitley, an expert in pediatric infectious diseases at the University of Alabama-Birmingham. Yet as the coronavirus pandemic drags on and the public eagerly awaits a vaccine, he may well be among the most powerful people in the country. (Pradhan, 9/24)

ABC News:Bioethicists Condemn DIY COVID-19 Vaccine EffortsAcross the country, a small handful of scientists are brewing up their own homemade and unproven COVID-19 vaccines and giving them to friends, family and themselves. These scientists hail from disparate groups. Some are shadowy and anonymous, while others are highly organized and Ivy-league affiliated. (Salzman, 9/24)

FiveThirtyEight:How To Know When You Can Trust A COVID-19 VaccineScientists around the world are currently undertaking one of the fastest vaccine-development programs in history, trying to get the novel coronavirus under control as quickly as humanly possible. But the vaccines being tested sit at a nexus of misinformation and mistrust. Between Trumps apparent meddling in federal health agencies decision-making, skepticism about the seriousness of the disease, and long-standing culture wars around the safety of vaccines in general, its easy to find yourself floundering, unsure who you can trust. So I spoke with a handful of people who really know how vaccines, clinical trials and COVID-19 work to find out how to know when its a good idea to get the vaccine. (Koerth,9/23)

Read more here:
Kids Will Likely Be At The Back Of The Vaccine Line - Kaiser Health News

Bill Clinton's strategist, James Carville, famously coined the phrase, "the economy, stupid," ahead of the 1992 presidential election. As America recovered from a recession, Carville knew that this was one of three key areas in which Clinton's campaign team should focus if it wanted to win. They took his advice and Clinton stormed to victory, unseating President George H.W Bush after just one term in office.

Over the last few months, I have been wondering which issue would become pivotal in the 2020 election. Would it hinge on which candidate has the best plan to rebuild the economy after the havoc wrought by the world's reaction to COVID-19? Or might it boil down to who inspires the most confidence when it comes to handling the COVID-19 crisis itself, and its aftermath?

The answer to both of these questions is, "no." In fact, after the death this month of the liberal Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, I now have no doubt that the Senate battle to replace her means that this election will be dominated by America's ongoing culture wars. After months of riots and increasing violence and disorder in cities across America, the time has come to deliver a verdict on the Black Lives Matter movement. And in this context, I am certain that President Trump just got lucky.

The primary appeal of Joe Biden that he is busy selling to America is that he is not Donald Trump. Polling tends to confirm that this is his strongest pitch. The image that Biden wishes to project is that he is the calm, experienced, all-around good guy who has endured personal hardship, including the death of his first wife and infant daughter in 1972, with fortitude. Another card he is willing to play is that President Trump has handled the COVID-19 crisis badly. (As it happens, we see much the same approach from Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the Labour Party in Britain. Having caught up with Boris Johnson in the polls, Starmer has been making the COVID argument, as well.) Biden's other main claim is that, having served as vice president in both of Barack Obama's terms, he bequeathed Trump a strong economy.

Newsweek subscription offers >

Biden may be able to wield a certain amount of capital out of any or all of these arguments, but one sphere in which he is on much shakier ground concerns the problems on the streets and the anti-police narrative that now engulfs America. Biden's problem is that he cannot condemn the Antifa and Black Lives Matter movementswhich want to "defund" the policein the trenchant terms that would appeal to law-abiding Americans. The simple reason for this is that the rest of his party is working hand in glove with these groups. Their obsession with political correctness will, ultimately, do Biden great damage.

Trump, meanwhile, is currently working out who should replace the late Justice Ginsburg. A Supreme Court nominee who represents the Christian values of the United States of America and the rule of law would certainly appeal to the middle-class suburbanites and the elderlytwo key groups that will help to determine November's result. Small wonder that Amy Coney Barrett, a devout Catholic, is considered the leading candidate as of this writing. Adding to Biden's difficulties, incidentally, is that he also has a fire to fight in the form of fresh allegations that his son, Hunter, has made a considerable fortune working with the Chinese. This unhelpful distraction will be hard for him to shake off.

For Trump's base, a Supreme Court that moves from a 5-4 to a 6-3 majority in favor of conservative values will be a cause for celebration with consequences for American cultural life that could last for many years. A court of this complexion may further embolden the president in his quest to tackle the "woke" cultural revolution that is spreading at speed.

Newsweek subscription offers >

With that said, Trump's support from his base is solidand some people that I have spoken to, including pollsters, fear that he is already focusing on this group too heavily. At the same time, his handling of the pandemic has upset some older Trump voters, and comfortable suburban middle-class voters have never really liked his brashness. Therefore, a campaign centered on values is his best opportunity.

With this in mind, I expect to hear even more from him in the coming weeks about patriotism, as well as further denunciations of the various "hateful lies" about America that he feels are being told by the Left. Trump has already begun to crack down on 'critical race theory" training in federal agencies, calling it a "cancer" and a "hateful Marxist doctrine." He believes this agenda is not in favor of hard work, the family and everything else that decent Americans traditionally prefer. He did talk about this two weeks ago, but there was little pickup. As the Senate debates the new Supreme Court nominee, however, this line of attack will become increasingly important for Trump. Ordinary, honest Americans will, I have no doubt, recoil when they learn in greater detail what these new theories from the Left actually involve.

This argument over values will, I predict, push talk of COVID-19 lower down the agenda, and will be a very valuable diversion to the Republicans. Huge numbers of older voters are appalled that they are now considered "racist" when criticizing an individual or a group, even though race is actually very far from their minds. For them, being branded in this way is the equivalent of being in what Hillary Clinton memorably referred to four years ago as Trump's "basket of deplorables".

The 2020 election is all about what kind of country America wants to be. My belief that Trump will win in just under six weeks' time is now stronger than ever.

Nigel Farage is senior editor-at-large of Newsweek's "The Debate" platform.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

See original here:
How the Election Will Be Won | Opinion - Newsweek