Biden has more support from women than Hillary did, poll shows
Joe Biden’s lead among women over President Donald Trump is now even larger than Hillary Clinton’s in 2016, according to a new poll.
Biden leads Trump by 21 percentage points in a NBC/Wall Street Journal poll published Sunday. Biden has 56% support among female voters compared with Trump’s 35%. NBC exit polls from 2016 had Clinton with a 13 percentage point lead over Trump among women.
The poll also found Biden with double digit leads among African American voters, 82% to 9%, Latinos, 57% to 33%, voters 18 to 34, 54% to 35%, whites with college degrees and independents, 45% to 35%. Biden had an 8 percentage point lead over Trump among voters 65 and older, 51% to 43%.
Trump led Biden among men, 50% to 42% and all white voters, 49% to 43%. His biggest margin over Biden was among whites without college degrees, where Trump led 55% to 37%.
Biden’s national lead of 7 percentage points among all registered voters over Trump remained unchanged from the NBC/WSJ poll in April.
Meanwhile, results are awaited from Saturday’s primary in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Primaries are coming up Tuesday in West Virginia and Georgia.
— Bloomberg News
Trump signals he’s ready to battle again over NFL players kneeling during anthem
Drew Brees apologized for saying he’d never support those who kneel during the national anthem because it disrespects the flag.
Roger Goodell admitted the NFL was “wrong” for not listening to players earlier about inequality and police misconduct, and encouraged “all to speak out and peacefully protest.”
But President Trump doesn’t seem to have changed his stance a bit since 2017, when he rallied his supporters by criticizing players who did not stand during the national anthem. At one point, he challenged owners to fire any player who protested in such a manner.
In 2018, the league tried instituting a rule that banned on-field protests during the anthem. That policy was put on hold after objections from the NFL Players Assn. Still, the protests had all but faded away by the end of the 2019 season.
But recent events, including the death of George Floyd and the unrest that followed, may spark a new round of pregame protests in 2020.
Trump seems ready to battle again on that front.
He tweeted Sunday night: “Could it be even remotely possible that in Roger Goodell’s rather interesting statement of peace and reconciliation, he was intimating that it would now be O.K. for the players to KNEEL, or not to stand, for the National Anthem, thereby disrespecting our Country & our Flag?”
Trump responded to Brees’ apology Friday by tweeting: “He should not have taken back his original stance on honoring our magnificent American Flag. OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high. We should be standing up straight and tall, ideally with a salute, or a hand on heart. There are other things you can protest, but not our Great American Flag —NO KNEELING!”
During a deposition in a grievance filed by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones said that Trump told him about the kneeling controversy, “This is a very strong, winning issue for me,” and “Tell everybody you can’t win this one. This one lifts me.”
With everything that has transpired since then, it remains to be seen whether the issue will be a winner for Trump in 2020.
— Los Angeles Times
MLB makes a new pitch to players: 76-game season and a smaller pay cut
Major league owners made their latest pitch to players Monday: a 76-game season, but not at the prorated salaries on which the players have held firm.
The players would make a collective $200 million more than they would if the league imposed a 50-game season, a person familiar with the proposal told The Times. The owners also pledged to remove free-agent compensation this winter, meaning a team signing a free agent would not have to surrender draft picks in return.
But the owners’ proposal translates to the players getting 75% of prorated salaries, with a critical caveat: If the postseason is not completed for any reason —most likely a second wave of the coronavirus —the players would instead get 50% of prorated salaries. That would erase the collective $200 million gain.
The players’ union is unlikely to accept the proposal. The players could counter with an offer of their own, or the owners could impose a shorter season of about 50 games. So long as the owners pay the prorated salaries provided in a March 26 agreement, that agreement also allows owners to set the schedule.
The players could argue the owners did not negotiate in good faith, but that would require a grievance that likely would be heard long after games would resume.
As the NBA, NHL and Major League Soccer have announced plans to return, MLB owners and players have spent a month arguing about how baseball should return. The owners proposed an 82-game schedule with a sliding scale of pay cuts; the players rejected that. The players proposed a 114-game schedule with full prorated salaries; the owners rejected that.
MLB also floated the concept of 50-50 revenue sharing for this season only, in part given the uncertainty of whether fans might attend games at any point this season; the players shot down that idea because of concerns over exactly what revenue would be shared, and MLB never formally proposed it.
— Los Angeles Times
