obama returned to the white house yesterday for the unveiling of their official portraits. president biden resuming a tradition that stalled under donald trump. we ll play more from the white house reunion. it was lovely. including poignant remarks from mrs. obama about why traditions like this are important for democracy. plus, former attorney general bill barr continues to speak out about the trump records case, saying the justice department is close to having enough evidence to indict him, but shouldn t. we ll discuss his reasoning. and the 60-day sprint to the midters begins today, and it seems whoever is managing the money for the republican senate candidates can t get it right. how republican senator rick scott explains burning through loads of cash with little to show for it. good morning and welcome to morning joe. it is thursday, september 8th. along with joe, willie, and me, we have the host of way too early, author of the big lie, white house bureau chi
49% to 21%. i m curious how this may vary by state, too, david, as you look through this. governor desantis in florida is leaning into the way he handled the pandemic. all his ads in the re-election campaign has an ad where floridians who run businesses or kids who went back to school thank him for not following some of the restrictions we saw in other states. look, i m sure it ll vary by state. northern virginia, that s a place where you really do still have significant frustration about how long schools were closed. you have that in some other parts of the country, as well. but i think on the whole, this is going to benefit democrats. it s on the margins, right? first of all, many americans have kind of moved on. covid is not dominating their lives. i don t think there are have many voters out there who have covid the top of their mind. but the important thing here is that it fits this larger pattern, that on abortion, on january 6th, on covid, we see
we didn t have a couple years ago. david, the interest i have in this story is perpetual, given the fact it is going to be with us for a long time, but the underpinnings of this story, joe mentioned it and you just eluded to it, using a few numbers from the poll, and i would submit maybe it is the most undercovered aspect of covid by both the print and electronic media not covering it. by it, i mean the millions of children and the millions of households who have been stripped of two years of education, socialization, and it is an incomparable loss, one difficult to measure, but it is out there. you can find it no matter where you are in talking to parents of school-aged children. why first of all, do you think it is undercovered? secondly, where do we go from here on that issue? it is undercovered. it is deeply alarming. it is unequal, the data make
run-up to the midterms. they have wins on the table they can talk about. they have the obvious looming criminal investigation of former president trump. they have january 6th. they have lots of different options. the question is how to sympathize it all into a coherent and powerful message. well, and really, before i read this article yesterday and looked at this poll, i must say, david, like this people, i thought that covid played against democrats with swing voters. we certainly know parents were angry that their children were kept out of schools. you had a lot of democratic candidates pay for that. i saw polls out of miami-dade county that showed in the 2020 election, the so-called shutdown of the country because of covid actually hurt democratic candidates. so i thought that covid was just
look, i know the last year, few years have been tough, but, today, covid no longer controls our lives. more americans are working than ever. businesses are growing. our schools are open. millions of americans have been lifted out of poverty. america is about to take off. i hope you see it, as well. just look around. i believe we can lift america from the depths of covid. i made a bet on you, the american people, and that bet is paying off. proving that from darkness, the darkness of charlottesville, of covid, gun violence, of insurrection, we can see the light. that was president biden one week ago in philadelphia. joining us, senior writer for the new york times, david leonrardt. it is fair to say that democrats have a lot to work with in the