One of the things that is mostly unchanged during the pandemic is going on walks and bike rides. No one ever wears masks, including us, and there's really no reason to. The main difference is that we step into the street when we meet people on walks, and we ride more on streets than bike trails.
We live in a second-tier suburb west of Minneapolis, an area that was reliably Republican 20 years ago. Our representative for the longest time was a decent, moderate Republican, who was replaced by a toady Republican, who was replaced by a Democrat a few years ago.
Riding around the western suburbs you see a lot of campaign signs in people's yards. The most common yard signs are for local races -- city council and school board. The next most common signs are for state legislative races. Then Black Lives Matter signs. Then federal House and Senate candidates. Then signs for the presidential campaigns. (Higher state office elections are in two years, so there are no governor or attorney general races.)
Now, this is a fairly wealth area, with mostly white residents, a fair number of Asian Americans, but few African Americans. But there are a lot of Black Lives Matter signs in the yards, and most of those homes are owned by whites.
The majority of campaign signs are for Democrats, with a smaller number of Republicans. The most common sign for a Republican is the sacrificial lamb they put up to run for the House of Representatives: that living oxymoron, a Black Republican. I can imagine how he pitched his candidacy at the convention: "Hey," he must have said. "We got to at least pretend Republicans aren't racist. So pick me!"
I've seen a large number of Biden signs, far too many to count, often in a yard along with one or two signs for local Democratic candidates. I've even seen half a dozen punny "ByeDon" signs. But I've only seen two or three Trump signs in all my travels through the western suburbs, even to the western-most suburbs, which are semi-rural and often very wealthy with giant estates and horse farms.
One of those suburbs I ride through is Shorewood, where Trump held a fundraiser and exposed rich Minnesotans to the coronavirus the day Hope Hicks was symptomatic and the day before he announced he was infected.
Now why are there so few Trump signs? I assume that a lot of the signs for Republican city council and the House candidate are in front of houses owned by Republicans. But they don't have Trump signs. That's not the case for Biden: most Biden signs are in yards with other Democratic signs.
Now, usually supporting a Republican for the House or city council means you'd vote for the Republican presidential candidate, and usually that would mean putting that candidate's sign in your yard. That's how it was in 2012, with Romney, and even 2016, with Trump's first go-around. But not this time.
Why not? It can't be that Trump has written Minnesota off: he's come to Minnesota twice, one a while back and again a couple weeks ago, right before he came down with COVID.
By the way, nine COVID cases have been traced to that Trump rally in northern Minnesota, and as of two days ago one of Trump's victims was still in the ICU.
I think three things are going on with the signs.
First, Republicans are ashamed to show their support for Trump. They know what a scumbag he is, how horribly he has botched pretty much everything in this presidency, from his tax giveaway to fatcats like himself, to foreign policy giveaways to Putin and Kim Jong Un, to the trade war fiasco, to his attempted shakedown of the Ukrainian president that resulted in his impeachment, to his insults to the military (calling service members suckers and losers and saying that Gold Star families infected him while bragging about how much they hugged and kissed them), to the cataclysmic failure of his coronavirus response.
Second, Republican candidates don't want their signs next to Trump signs. They don't want their names to be associated with the dumpster fire in the Oval Office. They're hoping to squeak by anonymously based on how normal their name sounds.
Third, a lot of these Republicans just aren't going to vote for Trump. They have grown tired of the antics and the outrage. They know the outrage and unrest in Minneapolis is in large part because of Trump.
Now, there's definitely some support for Trump in rural Minnesota, and support on the Iron Range because of his support for expanded copper and nickel mining there. But it's not clear how widespread that support is -- the Boundary Waters Canoe Area will be ruined if those mines go forward, and a lot of people's livelihoods depend on tourism in that pristine area.
Foreign companies are behind the mining proposals, and they'll bail as soon as they've ripped all the metal out of the ground, leaving the BWCA a toxic waste dump.
What Trump won't tell you is that in 2017 Ivanka and Jared got a sweetheart deal on a house in the Kalorama neighborhood in Washington, DC, which was owned by the Brazilian billionaire who was suing the US government over the Minnesota mine.
Again and again, the Trumps are guilty of one huge conflict of interest or another. The guy is a giant security risk who is just not fit to be president.
And I think that fact has finally sunk in with suburban voters.
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