Weekend Roundup [40 - 49]

Sunday, April 19, 2020

Weekend Roundup

Covid-19 continues to dominate the news, as it will for months (or maybe years) to come. You can subdivide the pandemic into two essential topics: public health issues, and economic consequences of fighting the pandemic by shutting down a big part of the economy. Unemployment in the US has surged to about 20%, and despite wild talk about reopening businesses, it looks like those numbers have yet to peak -- not least because infections and deaths continue to rise. The US has more deaths than any other country in the world, and the number of deaths has blown past previous markers like the number killed on 9/11 and the larger number of Americans sacrificed in the post-9/11 Bush Wars (sure, Obama and Trump have extended them, but the initial decision rests clearly with GW and his "Vulcans").

A third dimension has started to appear: the struggle for control of the political narrative around the pandemic. The Democratic Party primary campaign has ended with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren endorsing Joe Biden, who won Wisconsin 62.93% to 31.78% over Sanders, and Wyoming 72.18% to 27.82% -- both states that had favored Sanders over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Still, Biden has been all but invisible during the crisis, so virtually all of the political maneuvering has been by Republicans: Trump denies any responsibility for mishandling the crisis, and vows to re-open the economy real soon now; supporting him are the "protesters" who have turned out for various photo-ops demanding an end to state lockdowns. (The Michigan protest has been clearly identified as funded by the De Vos family, and I expect the others will be linked to other billionaire donors. The placards are blatantly tied to Trump, some so extreme you have to doubt it's been officially sanctioned -- although with Trump it could be.)

Some Democrats would like to blame Trump for the whole crisis -- at least one article below refers to the "Trump plague," and many point out various failures to recognize the pandemic early and act decisively to stop or at least mitigate it. I don't see much point in singling Trump out -- I doubt any president would have grasped what was happening much faster or moved much more decisively, as most of the problems I've seen look to me like they have much more systemic roots. Of course, it is fair to note that Trump and his minions have made the system more fragile and inept than it already was. The desire to wring every ounce of profit out of the economy has left us with fragile supply chains and woefully inadequate public support. (I'm surprised not that the "national stockpile" is inadequate but that such a thing exists at all.) Then there's the fact that we don't have universal health care, and that private insurance is tied to employment. And there's a dozen other things, most tied back to a system designed not to do what people need but to make money off those needs, dumping waste as it goes.

What you're welcome to blame Trump for is having a blathering, careless idiot at the helm of the federal government. If you weren't embarrassed by that before, you certainly should be now. He may not be to blame for the economy collapsing, but he's petty enough to want credit for attaching his name to relief checks. He may not be to blame for thousands of people dying, but he still wants credit and praise for . . . well, beats me, but you better be nice to him. I'm not sure when or why the media decided we need to hear from the president every time a news story breaks, but Trump is one president who never has anything enlightening or comforting to say.

Another thing: Laura suggests you watch Vic DiBitetto, the man with a plan.

Also: I've cut way back on links to New York Intelligencer after running into a paywall. I saw my first warning a few weeks back, and decided at that point to stop clicking on articles by Jonathan Chait and Ed Kilgore, as I usually wound up arguing with them anyway. Missing Eric Levitz and Sarah Jones, but still seems pricey for my taste. I cut way back on The Atlantic a few months ago, and Foreign Policy a year or two back (no link handy; as I recall, even more expensive for even less value). At this point, I don't know what I would do if Vox starts to tighten the screws: they're my first go-to each week, and far and away my most valuable source. I should also note that while I don't spend for web access, my wife subscribes to a bunch of things, and I sometimes piggyback on her accounts. She's the true news junkie in the family. Without her, I doubt I'd bother finding any of this.

Some scattered links this week:

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Sunday, April 12, 2020

Weekend Roundup

I have little to add to the comments below, and frankly am exhausted and want to put this week behind me. Seems like I could have found more on Bernie Sanders, the end of his campaign, and the consolidation behind Joe Biden. Still seems premature for that, not least as Biden continues to be such an underwhelming front-runner. I watched only a few minutes of Steven Colbert's interview with the Pod Saves America crew last week. They're usually sharp guys, but their "ecstasy" over Biden's win seemed awfully rehearsed and forced. They all previously worked in the Obama White House, and one couldn't help but think they're lining up for new jobs under Biden.

Looks like Joe Biden won the Alaska Democratic primary, 55.31% to 44.69% for Bernie Sanders. The primary was conducted by mail. No results yet in last week's messy Wisconsin primary. Biden was averaging about 53% in polls there. We've voted by mail in Kansas, where the primary is run by the party, not by the state. Ballots here are due May 4. We voted for Sanders. Ranked choice was an option here, but in a two-person race, I didn't see any point in offering a second choice (which could only have been Elizabeth Warren; with five names on the ballot, had I ranked them all Biden would have come in fifth).

I've seen some tweets touting Warren as a VP choice, and I wouldn't object. Indeed, I think she would be very effective in the role. I'm reminded of a business maxim I associate with David Ogilvy, who passed it on to his middle management: if we always hire people greater than ourselves, we will become a company of giants; if we hire people lesser than ourselves, we will be a company of midgets. Biden would probably prefer a safe, mediocre pick like Tim Kaine (or Joe Biden), but this is one chance to rewrite his story (assuming his handlers let him).

Some scattered links this week:

PS: Right after I posted Weekend Roundup, I noticed a pretty inflammatory tweets

Reza Aslan @rezaaslan: Breaking news: @DemSocialists endorses Trump for President.

DSA @DemSocialists: We are not endorsing @JoeBiden.

I'm not a member of or in any way involved with DSA, but I don't see any problem with them, as an organization, not endorsing Biden, especially at this time. (Had I been involved, I would have advised them keeping the door open by adding "at this time.") Assuming Biden is the Democratic Party nominee against Trump, I wouldn't be surprised if they endorse Biden as the November election approaches. That would be consistent with what I assume is their raison d'être, which is to advance socialism within the Democratic Party and to support the Democratic Party in general elections.

However, non-endorsement now (4-5 months before the convention) doesn't even remotely imply a preference, let alone an endorsement, for Trump, so Aslan is just being deliberately, provocatively stupid. Sadly, he's not alone in this regard, as I've run into a constant stream of presumed Democrats who are so hepped up on attacking what Howard Dean memorably called "the democratic wing of the Democratic Party" -- an obsession that actually does little more than further discredit "centrism" in the eyes of those who actually care about progressive reforms for real and pressing problems. It's especially hard to credit that people engaging in this kind of innuendo or slander think they're actually helping Biden (or helping defeat Trump -- by the way, I'm not doubting their sincere loathing of Trump, although they do like to doubt others, as Aslan does above).

Relevant to but not directly à propos of this, I noticed this tweet (and later a follow up):

'Weird Alex' Pareene @pareene: I truly thought the fact that no one really feels personally invested in a Biden presidency would make the timeline a bit less wild this time but it's actually somehow worse because they're already preemptively blaming you for him losing

'Weird Alex' Pareene @pareene: (To be clear I do not believe it's a fait accompli he will lose which makes it even weirder that we're already on the recriminations stage.)

By the way, good chance I will eventually write an endorsement for Biden before November's election, much like the one I wrote for Kerry in 2004. But not until he is definitively the nominee, and not until it's reasonably close to the election time. And sure, it's going to focus more on how bad Trump is than on how good Biden will be, because the former is proven, while the latter is at best hypothetical, and not strongly grounded in the track records of Biden and whoever is likely to be involved in his administration.

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Sunday, April 5, 2020

Weekend Roundup

I wanted to write an intro this week objecting to people who are still ragging on "Sanders-ites," as in:

one of the most discouraging things about the Sanders-ites who continue to rail against Biden is their appalling lack of understanding of how government works. Their schematic recitations of corporate behemoths who apparently control the every move of Biden, Schumer, and Pelosi reflect a profound lack of any grasp of the realities of American political life, which is that action and reaction occur in a lot of different and even hidden places.

I don't have any problems with arguing that it's more realistic to aim for incremental reforms than for ideal solutions, but this isn't about tactics or goals. The point here is to disparage people for wanting something more than the centrists/moderates are willing to argue for. I can't help but take these attacks personally. Even if there are people on the left too pig-headed to compromise their principles, I don't see any value in attacking them personally, let along generalizing and slandering them as a group. But every day I see attacks on "Sanders-ites" like this, and I'm getting sick and tired of them, and their high-handed authors.

Should write more, but will leave it with I'm more sad than angry or anything else that Joe Biden is the presumptive Democratic Party nominee. I'm not especially bothered by his positions or his record -- needless to say, not for lack of points I'd argue with -- but I do worry that he'll prove an inarticulate and hapless campaigner (as we already have much evidence of). Still, the sad part has little to do with Biden personally. It shows that most Democrats are reacting to fear -- not just of Trump and the Republicans, but of their expected reaction to the changes Sanders is campaigning for. That may go hand in hand with being uninformed and/or unimaginative, but I can't fault anyone for excessive caution -- especially in the middle of a crisis so unprecedented no one can honestly see their way beyond.

Some scattered links this week:

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Sunday, March 29, 2020

Weekend Roundup

News this week is pretty much all coronavirus. Most striking number below is Anthony Fauci's projection that coronavirus will kill more than 100,000 Americans, and that millions will be infected. The US now has more confirmed cases than any other nation -- even China, despite a head start and nearly four times as many people (see How the US stacks up to other countries in confirmed coronavirus cases; note the graphs, which plot spread over time; also note how little testing has actually been carried out in the US).

Or, if you're more concerned about money than people, the number of new unemployment filings last week broke the previous record, by a factor of five. We're now seeing projections that unemployment will shoot to 20%, and that this quarter's GDP will drop by more than 10%. For comparison, the total drop in the 2008 "Great Recession" over two quarters was 4.3%. Congress passed a $2 trillion "stimulus" bill late last week. I'd call it more of a stopgap. I'm especially struck by how eager Republicans are to break the bank when one of their own is president, compared to how chintzy and vindictive they are when a Democrat is in the White House. Much like Republicans managed to undermine Obama's $700 billion stimulus bill in 2009, Democrats worked hard to make this bill more fair to workers and the newly unemployed than Trump initially wanted.

Ran through this rather quickly, without many comments. You can look up the technical stuff yourself (here's the Vox index; American Prospect has a relatively good political-oriented series, including David Dayen's "COVID-19 Daily" briefs). Occasionally I note speculation on what happens "after" -- still, I find this impossible given that I don't have any real idea how far this falls apart, or when (if ever) a "new normal" stabilizes. I've seen pieces comparing coronavirus to global warming, but don't find them to be very credible (yet). Also, not much below on politics. Nothing in the last week (or month) has convinced me that Biden is the right person to take on Trump, yet it feels unseemly to try to convince his Democratic supporters of that at this particular moment. It seems significant that this poll shows only 24% of Biden supporters to be very enthusiastic, vs. 53% of Trump supporters. (His 24% not only compares poorly to Trump, but to Hillary Clinton's lame 32% four years ago.)

Some scattered links this week:

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Sunday, March 22, 2020

Weekend Roundup

I usually start gathering links with Matthew Yglesias's page at Vox. For a while I was putting his links up front -- back when he was writing a regular "most important stories of the week" feature -- but later I moved him back into alphabetical order. This week he wrote quite a bit, and I commented there with a few things I might have saved for an introduction, so decided to list him first.

One subject I didn't get to is business bailouts. Probably premature for that anyhow, although the option to postpone debt and rent payments, bankruptcy and foreclosure, is something that will be needed soon. Also, bridging loans, with various restrictions -- just enough to keep dormant businesses viable when/if the time comes to re-open them. I should also note that while I'm skeptical/hostile to short-term stimulus proposals, I do think it would be a good idea to start moving on longer-term efforts, like Green New Deal. One big problem with the 2009 stimulus package was the failure to include any infrastructure projects that weren't "shovel ready." (Reed Hundt's book, A Crisis Wasted: Barack Obama's Defining Decisions makes this point.) We need a lot of infrastructure work going forward, and that needs to be factored into any recovery plan.

There's going to be an attempt to stampede Congress to pass all sorts of business bailouts, because that's the way the whole system is designed to work. You and I are lucky if we have representatives who even remotely care about us (given where I live, I'm especially unlucky in that regard), but business interests have scads of lobbyists looking for profit angles, and lots of politicians already in their pockets.

As this plays out, we would do well to recall what happened in 2008-09: we heard a deafening cry for help from the big banks, which unquestioningly had to be bailed out to keep the economy from collapsing. They indeed got what they wanted -- a $700 billion slush fund and much more through the Fed's back door -- and survived, quickly returning to profitability, even as the rest of the economy continued collapsing. And once the banks were safe, only the most marginal efforts were made to help anyone else. (The auto industry bailout was a comparatively paltry effort, saddled with stringent requirements the banks never had to face.)

I was sympathetic to the bank bailouts at the time, but dismayed by the failure to protect more of the economy, especially the workers who wound up bearing the brunt of the recession. Only later on did I see an alternative approach that should have been obvious: let the businesses fail, but protect the workers and other people at the bottom. Business would bounce back, and the change of ownership would ultimately be a healthy thing. That sort of turnover may be even more beneficial this time: when/if the economy recovers, it is almost certain to be changed significantly from the one before the crash, reflecting changed views of what matters and how we want to live. We may, for instance, find that we still need airlines, but not as many. The cruise ship industry is probably finished, and would that be such a bad thing? A much larger potential collapse is in fossil fuels: even before the crash, demand for coal was falling, as were oil prices, and both will fall further as recession lowers demand. Given how they contribute to climate change, I don't see any reason to encourage their rebound. (In fact, this would be a good time for a stiff carbon tax.) On the other hand, we may decide that we need to have health care systems for all, including some excess capacity even before the next crisis. The list, no doubt, goes on and on.

While it's easy to jot down what you'd like to see happen, it's much harder to even guess about how this crisis will play out in the minds and attitudes of people around the world. Will we learn and adapt, or flail about, trying to force the new world into our old minds? I can't help but wonder whether the panic over Covid-19 hasn't been preconditioned by the (mostly denied) fear of global warming. A large political segment seemed determined to ignore or even denounce the science of climate change, only to find themselves desperate for scientific direction when faced with the pandemic: there is something immediate and personal about the latter that climate change never triggered. (I'm reminded of the adage about there being no atheists in foxholes. It seems there are no science-deniers in emergency rooms.) The 2008 financial collapse, like previous recessions, could be written off to bad business practices and even to periodic cycles, but this one is a direct assault on one's worldview. No one can predict where that kind of psychic shock may lead.

Meanwhile, I've been plodding through Adam Gopnik's A Thousand Small Sanities: The Moral Adventure of Liberalism. I picked it up in the library, thought it might be interesting to read an unapologetic defense of liberalism. I grew up believing in what Louis Hartz called "the liberal tradition in America," only to find that self-proclaimed liberals in the 1960s had turned into pretty unsavory characters -- especially in their rabid anti-communism, most immediately evident in their support for near-genocidal war against the Vietnamese. At the time, there wasn't much of a conservative threat (Barry Goldwater won the Republican nomination in 1964 but lost in a landslide), so I came to view "cold war" liberalism as the main enemy of fairness, decency, and justice in American politics. I read books like Kenneth Minogue's The Liberal Mind and Robert Paul Wolff's The Poverty of Liberalism (but no longer remember the specific critiques), and I delved further into Marxist critiques (not really of liberalism, but of its handmaiden, capitalism), and came to identify with the New Left (which was openly contemptuous of the Sino-Soviet orbit of Communist regimes, but more focused on our own world, especially of America's world-straddling hegemony).

But I stopped reading Marxist analyses after I left college, and while my practical political impulses never changed much, I've found myself growing sympathetic to liberal reformers over time, notably of Keynes in economics. Ever since I was a teenager, I've had a soft spot for utopian imagination, and I've often returned to that over the years, at least as teleology. But I lost whatever desire I might have had for revolution, and as I've aged have become increasingly willing to settle for liberal reformism, even in tiny. So I thought I might be open to Gopnik's formulation. Unfortunately, all he has to offer is a weird mixture of dashed hopes and anti-left vitriol. Regardless of whatever ideals liberals think they hold dear, their main function in politics today (and basically over the last 50-100 years) seems to be to castigate anyone who still believes that the liberty secured by a few in the great bourgeois revolutions of the past should be extended to everyone (i.e., the left).

I probably should have read David Sessions' review, The emptiness of Adam Gopnik's liberalism, before I wasted my time. Especially:

We might not have expected much more from Gopnik, but A Thousand Small Sanities' aimless joyride of free-associated clichés and its stubborn refusal to look at reality may indicate more broadly how little the American establishment has learned since the turn of the century. The climate crisis, more than anything, has highlighted the inadequacy of the liberal orthodoxy's self-congratulatory moderation and celebration of glacial incrementalism. It poses, in stark terms, the need for dramatic action and the inescapability of confronting the powerful interests behind the deadly carbon economy. The rapid degradation of the planet has made radicalism rational and incrementalism a kind of civilizational death drive. In this context, Gopnik's blissful ignorance reads not as comical but as deeply sinister.

The Democratic Party split in 1968 over the Vietnam War, with many of the hawks winding up as neoconservatives (a mostly Republican clan which still exerts powerful influence over today's Democratic hawks, especially the Clintons). Democrats are further split between middle class professionals and the working class base, with most successful Democrats (including Obama and the Clintons) gaining among the former while thanklessly banking the dwindling votes of the latter. In 2016 and 2020, those splits became clearer, with the left (dovish, mostly working class) rallying behind Bernie Sanders and the "moderates" (or merely cautious liberals, including hawks and/or professionals) ultimately flocking to Joe Biden.

Gopnik is an atavism in this split world, railing against a left that no longer exists in favor of an idealized center that is unable to accomplish anything (not least because their anti-left instinct keeps it from building a broad base, and because they are always willing to sell their reforms short). The key chapter in Gopnik's book is "Why the Left Hates Liberalism," but it should really be called "Why Liberals Hate the Left," where you could just as easily substitute "Masses" or "People" for "Left." But then it's hard to explain that without giving the impression that liberals are simply self-satisfied snobs -- dilettantes who imagine liking the idea of more people enjoying their comforts, but who hardly ever lift a finger to help them.

Some scattered links this week:

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Sunday, March 15, 2020

Weekend Roundup

News this week was totally dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. A good overview is Dylan Matthews: 9 charts that explain the coronavirus pandemic. (For more, see: A coronavirus reading guide for the perplexed, the anxious, and the obsessive.) This has produced a lot of political and economic turmoil, most obviously (or at least best reported) in the United States. The Trump administration, which has worked so hard over the last three years at proving how incompetent, corrupt, and politically blinded government can be, has come off as insensitive, uncaring, and bumbling -- especially the president and his inner tier of henchmen. The one concern they do seem to have is how the disease effects the economy -- especially as the economy has long seemed to be the silver lining in their own political fortunes. The most obvious effects have been the cancellation of nearly all public gatherings (including the NCAA "March Madness" tournaments and the NBA season) and major (mostly but not all self-imposed) reductions in travel. That, in itself, is a big chunk taken out of the economy, with ripple effects to follow. I expect this will extend to a psychology averse to spending, which will persist for months or years.

Meanwhile, Joe Biden has continued to mop up Democratic primaries, winning Mississippi, Missouri, Michigan, Idaho, and probably even Washington last week. (Bernie Sanders did win in North Dakota.) More states will vote soon, but unless Biden stumbles catastrophically there is no chance Sanders can catch up. There is a debate between Sanders and Biden tonight. It should clearly favor Sanders, but I doubt it will have any effect. We seem to be primed for disaster, and willing to settle for just barely less.

Some scattered links this week:

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Sunday, March 8, 2020

Weekend Roundup

The Democratic presidential primary took a dramatic turn over the last ten days. The relevant event sequence:

  1. Joe Biden became the immediate favorite when he announced his run for president. His polls held relatively solid well into last fall, when he started to lose ground in the intensely contested bellwether states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
  2. About the same time, Bernie Sanders caught up and passed Elizabeth Warren in the polls, becoming the main challenger to Biden, and more generally to the Democratic Party establishment.
  3. As Biden began to fail, billionaires Tom Steyer and Michael Bloomberg entered the race, as did Deval Patrick. The latter had no traction, but Steyer spent $100 million to make a splash in Nevada and South Carolina, and Bloomberg $500 million on Super Tuesday states. All that advertising money didn't help them much as candidates (Steyer finished 5th in Nevada and 3rd in South Carolina; Bloomberg's sole Super Tuesday win was in American Samoa, where Tulsi Gabbard finished second), but they defined issues that ultimately helped Biden.
  4. Sanders won the popular vote in Iowa, increased his margin in New Hampshire, and won a very solid margin in Nevada. Meanwhile, Biden had faltered badly in Iowa (4th place in first-round voting, 14.9%) and in New Hampshire (5th place, 8.4%). Sanders pulled ahead of Biden in national polls for the first time, and was widely considered to be the front-runner in the race.
  5. With the "threat" of Sanders firmly established, and Bloomberg pretty severely hobbled in his first debate performance, panic ensued among mainstream Democrats. They lashed out frantically at Sanders, but cooler heads realized that Biden was their most viable alternative, and they organized a raft of endorsements and money to inject into his struggling campaign. He had always polled better in South Carolina than any other "early state" -- and his most effective "moderate" opponents (Buttigieg, Klobuchar) had never had any organization or appeal there, so it's not like they had any other options.
  6. Following an endorsement by Rep. Jim Clyburn, Biden bounced back with a very strong showing in South Carolina -- not as high as he had polled for most of 2019, but stronger than most of us expected.
  7. Biden's South Carolina win became a signal for Democratic Party regulars to unite behind him, against Sanders (and Warren, who helped split the progressive vote). Steyer, Steyer, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar ended their campaigns, the latter two endorsing Biden.
  8. Biden won big on Super Tuesday, winning 10 states (Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia) vs. 4 for Sanders (California, Colorado, Utah, Vermont). See breakdown below.
  9. After Super Tuesday, Bloomberg withdrew and endorsed Biden. He also promised to keep his campaign organizations active, redirected at supporting Biden, so in effect he's running a huge pro-Biden PAC. [PS: This opens him to charges like: Fox's Ingraham Angle labels Michael Bloomberg a "puppet master".]
  10. Warren also withdrew, without making an endorsement. She has, however, spent most of the week bad-mouthing Sanders supporters for their alleged misbehavior toward her campaign.

I imagine someone will eventually emerge claiming to be the genius behind Biden's transformation, but it's possible there's no conspiracy here. It's not that I can't identify actors or linkages -- you can be pretty certain that when David Brooks wrote his "never Bernie" column or when James Carville crawled out from under his rock to declare that nominating Bernie would be insanity that there were people (and money) behind the scenes pushing them forward. To my mind, the most suspicious sign was Harry Reid's endorsement of Biden only after the Nevada caucus, where he might have had an effect similar to Jim Clyburn's in South Carolina. Sanders' big Nevada win both drove his enemies together and set up expectations that made Biden's South Carolina win look even more impressive.

One lesson from this is that Sanders' appeal is limited, mostly to people who understand his key issues -- a trait he shares with Warren, although until now, one could imagine him not being so limited by it. Also, that he is not immune from media attacks, which have accelerated to new heights recently, and that seems to have scared many people into looking for a safer choice. Why Biden should be that choice isn't very clear, other than that he's the only one unlikely to get shafted by the people who've run the Democratic Party into the ground since the 1970s. Even people who substantively agree with Sanders, and who respect and admire him, have non unreasonable fears that the money people behind the party will do anything to undermine him (a faction that Bloomberg gave an explicit face to), even if that results in Trump winning a second term.

There are a lot of Democrats who only have one real concern in 2020: who can beat Trump? Biden has never seemed like a very solid answer to that question, but if you can't have someone progressive, at least he seems less limited than Bloomberg, Buttigieg, or Klobuchar. He has a long record of going along with whatever the party wanted -- be it wars, free trade deals, favors to the big banks -- without ever picking up the scent of ideology. He represents continuity with the Clintons and Obama, but wasn't necessarily culpable for their failures. He can still feign an emotional attachment to the working class, even though in the end he always winds up siding with the moneyed interests. He comes off as a cipher you can project your hopes onto. He is, for instance, the favorite candidate both of blacks and of culturally conservative whites (the kind most likely to be racists). The South has a lot of both, and that's where he cleaned up on Super Tuesday.

The weak link in Biden's campaign is Biden himself. He's 77, looks fit for that age, but it's easy to find clips where his mind wanders and his mouth goes elsewhere. He failed miserably in the first two contests this year, where voters have a year or more to check the candidates out up close. On the other hand, he won several states on Super Tuesday where he never appeared, and didn't have much if any campaign presence. He has a long record with a lot of dubious votes and speeches, and he'll get a lot of flack over that record. It is far from certain that he can withstand the intense scrutiny that a presidential campaign will entail. Sanders is unlikely to go beyond Biden's political record, but expect the Republicans to be ruthless not just at picking apart Biden's weaknesses but on inventing things from whole cloth. His mental agility, such as it is, will be tested severely.

Sanders will continue to contest the nomination. As Yglesias points out (see below), next month's primaries present some rough challenges for Sanders, and he is playing catch up now, in a process which is biased (if not necessarily rigged) against him. He has gained one big thing from Super Tuesday: he now has a single opponent to define himself against. He needs to do three things viz. Biden: he needs to emphasize the moderation of his views and ingratiate himself with the main current of the Democratic Party (which, issue-wise, is now well to the left of Biden's record, although it's important to make those positions less threatening and more intuitively reasonable); he needs to expose Biden's dangerous incompetency, and the risks the Party is taking in entrusting him with the nomination; and he needs to convince voters that he can be much more effective than Biden at standing up to Trump.

That may be a tall order, but I for one am already convinced on all three counts. The challenge will be in making those points resonate with less informed voters, and in effectively dodging the flak that the media will hurl at him, based on prejudices that are already ingrained.

When I started thinking about what to say this week, I came up with three possible scenarios for Elizabeth Warren. She's since taken one of those off the table, so I won't belabor it, but simply note that had she stayed in the race, she would have needed to do two things. The most obvious one is to attack Biden's personal competency (while respecting, if not necessarily agreeing with, "moderate" positions). The other is that she would need to catapult herself to the front of Bernie's movement, usurping his positions but arguing that she would be more effective at implementing them. The hope would be that after the near-death experience of Super Tuesday, Bernie's supporters may be more open to her taking charge, especially if she proves herself the more effective opponent to Biden. She could even wind up making Bernie her VP. Of course, this would have been difficult to pull off, and she wouldn't have much time, especially for the period when she is dividing the progressive vote. But she was pretty effective at knocking Bloomberg off his chariot, and she could go after Biden more directly than 78-year-old Bernie.

Her other choices were to quite the race (as she's done) and pitch herself to be VP either under Bernie or Biden. She could conceivably be very effective in that role. The problem with going with Bernie is that it's an uphill fight. The question with the latter is whether Biden thinks he needs her that much (after all, many Biden backers hate her as much as they fear and loathe Sanders). The plus side is that it would end the primary process almost immediately, limiting the risk that Bernie might expose Biden's ineptitude. Besides, VPs are historically insignificant (but given Biden's age and problems and Warren's vigor, she could take advantage of the role).

Note that Bernie Sanders says he will drop out if Biden gets plurality coming into Dem convention. He's argued that Biden should do much the same thing if Sanders is leading going into the convention, but with his reserve of unelected second-round delegates, Biden hasn't agreed. This anticipates a graceful exit if his campaign can't rebound in the couple months remaining. I can't blame Bernie if Democrats prefer to go with Biden and his long record of indifference and failure. Greg Magarian commented in Facebook on the article:

Bernie Sanders promises to make the nomination of Joe Biden painless if the moderate is leading come July. He says Elizabeth Warren deserves time and space to decide her own path forward. He won't run on a unity ticket with Biden because two old white guys is at least one too many.

If you've been swallowing, or parroting, the tired narrative that Sanders is nothing but a crazy, misogynistic ideologue who constantly trashes the party and only cares about himself, I respectfully suggest that you listen to what the man says -- all of it, not just the pieces that fit your ingrained narrative. He's an exceptionally decent politician, with plenty of flaws, who's in this to help people.

Elsewhere in my Facebook feed are a bunch of diatribes against Sanders, some complaining about his "arrogance" (for running in the first place?), many more explicitly aimed at his supporters, accusing us of all sorts of vile behavior. I try not to take this personally, but after repeated slanders it's hard not to feel some solidarity with the victims. Sure, maybe some people say some things that are ill-advised. I'll even admit that I can say some disrespectful and even hurtful things about politicians I seriously disagree with, but I usually try to focus on issues and rarely project my critiques onto ordinary people who merely happen to favor someone I don't. The most famous recent case of a campaign generalizing about its opponent's followers was Hillary Clinton's "basket of deplorables," and that proved to be bad politics as well as a gross generalization. She was, of course, talking about Trump supporters, who by definition are at least willing to tolerate one of the most hateful, corrupt, and dishonest campaigns in US history, but even so, calling people names just turns them off and estranges them further. I'm sick and tired of being called names by partisans of Democratic candidates who themselves have little to offer and not enough self-consciousness to recognize their own past failures.

Of course, in addition to the name-calling every now and then you have to fend off some plain old faulty logic. For example:

If money is everything in politics, why is Biden, who has recently spent so little compared to other candidates, doing so well? Well, you can say it's all those "elites" and secret oligarchs, but I don't buy it (no pun intended).

Start with a faulty premise (money isn't everything in politics) and pile on other misleading and spurious claims. Biden started with name recognition, credibility, and long-standing political links -- things that even with incredible amounts of spending Bloomberg and Steyer were unable to buy in such a short time, things that even more legitimate politicians like Klobuchar and Buttigieg were unable to compete with. So when the election pivoted to becoming a race to stop Sanders, the choice who benefited most was the obvious one, Biden. On the other hand, do you really think that Biden, who can barely put together two coherent sentences in a row, was brilliant enough to pull this off? You don't have to be very conspiracy-oriented to suspect that there are "elites" and oligarchs lurking in the background, pulling on the various strings that orchestrated this turnaround. After all, we live in a world where these sorts of things happen all the time. And that doesn't necessarily mean they have Biden in their pocket, but he is the beneficiary of their machinations, and if he does get elected, he will very likely wind up paying for their favors.

The Super Tuesday breakdown by state (delegates in parens, vote if 5% or more):

  • Alabama: Biden 63.3% (44), Sanders 16.5% (8), Bloomberg 11.7%, Warren 5.7%.
  • Arkansas: Biden 40.5% (17), Sanders 22.4% (9), Bloomberg 16.7% (5), Warren 10.0%.
  • California: Sanders 33.7% (186), Biden 26.4% (148), Bloomberg (13.6% (15), Warren 12.7% (5), Buttigieg (5.6%).
  • Colorado: Sanders 36.1% (20), Biden 23.6% (10), Bloomberg 20.5% (9), Warren 17.3% (1).
  • Maine: Biden 34.1% (11), Sanders 32.9% (9), Warren 15.7% (4), Bloomberg 12.0%.
  • Massachusetts: Biden 33.6% (37), Sanders 26.7% (29), Warren 21.4% (25), Bloomberg 11.8%.
  • Minnesota: Biden 38.6% (38), Sanders 29.9% (27), Warren 15.4% (10), Bloomberg 8.3%, Klobuchar 5.6%.
  • North Carolina: Biden 43.0% (67), Sanders 24.1% (37), Bloomberg 13.0% (4), Warren 10.5% (2).
  • Oklahoma: Biden 38.7% (21), Sanders 25.4% (13), Bloomberg 13.9% (2), Warren 13.4% (1).
  • Tennessee: Biden 41.7% (33), Sanders 25.0% (19), Bloomberg 15.5% (10), Warren 10.4% (1).
  • Texas: Biden 34.5% (111), Sanders 30.0% (102), Bloomberg 14.4% (10), Warren 11.4% (5).
  • Utah: Sanders 34.6% (12), Biden 17.4% (2), Bloomberg 16.7% (2), Warren 15.5%, Buttigieg 9.8%.
  • Vermont: Sanders 50.8% (11), Biden 22.0% (5), Warren 12.6%, Bloomberg 9.4%.
  • Virginia: Biden 53.2% (66), Sanders 23.1% (31), Warren 10.7% (2), Bloomberg 9.8%.

Some scattered links this week:

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, March 1, 2020

Weekend Roundup

Joe Biden gets his first primary win in South Carolina, winning by a larger margin than polls had indicated. With 99.91% reporting, Biden had 48.45%, Bernie Sanders 19.91%, Tom Steyer 11.34%, Pete Buttigieg 8.24%, Elizabeth Warren 7.06%, Amy Klobuchar 3.15%, and Tuli Gabbard 1.28%. He will have three days to enjoy the win before Super Tuesday next week.

Before the election, Nate Silver posited three possible Super Tuesday projections estimates based on how well Biden does in South Carolina. According to the "Biden wins big" scenario, Biden is expected to win Texas, North Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Arkansas next week, with Klobuchar favored in Minnesota, and Sanders ahead in California, Massachusetts, Colorado, Utah, Maine, and Vermont. Bloomberg will be on the ballot then, but Silver doesn't expect him to win any states. His best bets seem to be in Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Virginia (with 28-25% share of delegates). That would leave Sanders with 39% of committed delegates, Biden 29%, Bloomberg 13%, Warren 10%, Buttigieg 6%, Klobuchar 3%. Sanders best upset prospects are in Virginia, Minnesota, Oklahoma, and Texas (where he's led several polls; see NBC News polls: Sanders has the edge in Texas, is tied with Biden in North Carolina).

Following his big win in Nevada, a bunch of Bernie Sanders pieces, including a lot of hysteria from Democratic Party elites and "Never Trumpers," and a little more on the race:

  • Zack Beauchamp:

    • Pete Buttigieg drops out of the presidential race. Given how little time there is between South Carolina's primary and "Super Tuesday," and how much of an outlier South Carolina is compared to other Democratic primaries, I'm surprised that anyone would fold up their campaign between the two, but we now have two candidates (Steyer and Buttigieg) doing just that. Given that Steyer was self-funded, you can be pretty sure that his decision was his own. It makes some sense: in the rich egomaniac lane, he was certain to get crowded out by the even richer Michael Bloomberg, so at least he's exiting on a plateau. Buttigieg, however, came into the race as one of the poorest and least promising of candidates, and he's actually had a pretty remarkable run. He may have never had the money or oganization to run a national campaign, and his prospects weren't great, but he would certainly do better on Super Tuesday than he did in South Carolina, so why not give it a few more days? I have no doubt that the answer was that his donors pulled the plug, hoping to move his votes to Biden or Bloomberg in a frantic effort to stop Sanders. I never shared " the level of contempt directed toward Buttigieg from Sanders supporters," but I do think he hurt himself and his future credibility by going so far out of his way to badmouth Sanders. I think he could have tried to bridge the gap between business and its many victims, in a way which would help reduce the social toll while still growing a healthy economy. He could, in short, have made himself seem concerned and committed, as well as cautious and pragmatic, but he didn't. Rather, he let himself be a spokesperson for a bunch of rich assholes who discarded him as soon as he became inconvenient. As Molly Ivans put it, "lie down with dogs, get up with fleas." [PS: I finally got around to reading Masha Gessen: The queer opposition to Pete Buttigieg, explained, and found I couldn't care less. Her conclusion, that "he is profoundly, essentially conservative," explains why his gayness turned out to be so boring.]

    • What David Brooks gets wrong about Bernie Sanders: "The New York Times columnist is a perfect exemplar of the baseless centrist freakout about Sanders's supposed authoritarianism." Brooks' column is titled No, not Sanders, not ever, where the guy who got rich voicing conservative attacks on liberals declares "I'll cast my lot with democratic liberalism," which for him means anyone but Sanders. Beauchamp answers by quoting a Jedediah Britton-Purdy tweet:

      The Sanders campaign is an effort to make real the principles of personal dignity, autonomy, free association, plurality, & self-development that liberalism prizes. To say the opposite sells criminally short both liberalism and Sanders.

  • Jamelle Bouie: The case for Bernie Sanders: "Despite his age, he promises a true break from the past." Part of a series, with: Michelle Goldberg on Elizabeth Warren; Ross Douthat on Joe Biden; Frank Bruni on Pete Buttigieg; David Leonhardt on Amy Klobuchar; and David Brooks shilling for Mike Bloomberg. Bouie also wrote: The Trumpian liberalism of Michael Bloomberg: "He may be running as the anti-Trump, but when it comes to the politics of racial control, there is a resemblance."

  • Zak Cheney-Rice: Fear powered Joe Biden's South Carolina victory.

    Rather, it suggests another calculation at work. There's a yawning chasm between black people's recognition that we deserve better from the political order and our belief that elected officials will deliver it. More likely than not, Biden didn't win South Carolina because he built the best case for himself. He won because black people have seen what it looks like when he fails them. Saturday was not a glowing endorsement of his candidacy. If anything, it was a concession to a politics of fear.

  • Thomas L Friedman: Dems, you can defeat Trump in a landslide: The idiot-savant of the New York Times argues for a "national unity" ticket, combining Sanders and Bloomberg, with cabinet-level positions for everyone from Mitt Romney (Commerce Secretary) and William McRaven (Defense Secretary) to Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (UN Ambassador). Once again, Friedman shows off his boundless faith in the benevolence of the rich and famous. I wonder if he realizes that the track record for pairing antagonists on the presidential ticket has a pretty checkered record: especially Lincoln-Johnson and Harrison-Tyler, where death elevated unpopular vice-presidents who were politically opposite to their mandate, but I can think of other Friedmanesque dream tickets that could have gone as badly (e.g., Jefferson-Burr, Jackson-Calhoun).

  • Masha Gessen: What Bernie Sanders should have said about socialism and totalitarianism in Cuba: Actually, I don't have any problem with what Sanders said, except that I might have been more impolitic in pointing out that Castro started with one of the most corrupt and savagely inequal nations in Latin America -- a state can can be traced to its last-in-the-hemisphere abolition of slavery and to colonialism by American economic interests -- and struggled heroically to fashion one of the most egalitarian ones, despite constant hostility from the US, including the imposition of crippling blockades and sanctions. I'd also point out that America's hostility had nothing to do with concern for the civil or human rights of the Cuban people, and everything to do with spite engendered by Castro's expropriation of American business property and the threat international companies felt from the existence of the revolutionary government. I'd also point out that anti-communism in America has always been dictated by business interests, and has been especially effective at undermining unions and the left inside as well as beyond US borders. It also bugs me when emigres from the Soviet bloc have so completely internalized cold war propaganda that they continue to use it reflexively to promote militarist, anti-left, and anti-democratic political agendas.

  • Sarah Jones: Who's afraid of Bernie Sanders?

    To deny Sanders victory if he conjures up a plurality rather than a clear majority is to make Sanders's evaluation of the party its epitaph. Democrats would confirm to the public that the party isn't working for anyone who isn't well-educated and well-off -- and that they don't really want to change. They would damage not only their credibility but the lives of the nation's poor, for whom another Trump term would be catastrophic.

  • Akela Lacy: Bloomberg has hired the vice chairs of the Texas and California Democratic parties.

  • Branko Marcetic: Joe Biden has a long history of giving Republicans what they want: "For Republicans, Joe Biden has long been the ideal negotiating partner -- because he's so willing to cave in on most anything Republicans want." A excerpt from the author's forthcoming book, Yesterday's Man: The Case Against Joe Biden.

  • Dylan Matthews: If anti-Bernie Democrats were serious, they'd unite around Joe Biden right now. This is basically a taunt, but ego aside (and sure, that's a big aside) Bloomberg got into the race because he doubted Biden's up to the task. Biden's first win doesn't prove otherwise, but his comeback does seem to reflect a belated recognition that the other "center lane" candidates no longer look promising -- as Jonathan Chait argues: Joe Biden now the only Democrat who can stop Bernie Sanders. Also: Heading into Super Tuesday, Biden gets big funding boost, although "big" here is still way short of what Sanders is raising, let alone how much Bloomberg is spending. [PS: Buttigieg dropping out looks like his donors pulled the rug out from under him to move votes to Biden. By the way, the ducks are lining up: Wasserman Schultz endorses Joe Biden for president.]

  • Media Matters:

  • Ella Nilsen: Bernie Sanders posts a record $46.5 million February fundraising haul.

  • Alex Pareene: The selling of the Democratic primary. [PS: Pareene tweet: "my no-irony take is that Biden would've won in 2016 but he's incoherent now and it would be deeply irresponsible to nominate him."]

  • Steve Phillips: Bernie Sanders can beat Trump. Here's the math.

  • Charles P Pierce: The biggest challenge for the Sanders campaign is its own premature triumphalism. Sample bloviage:

    Bernie Sanders has surrounded himself with people so utterly pure in their own opinion of themselves that they object to compromises that they themselves made. . . . Bernie Sanders is not a Democrat. He is an independent who quadrennially cosplays as a Democrat because he wants to run for president. For this, he should be eternally grateful that a) nobody makes the point that at least Ralph Nader had the stones to be an independent and run as an independent; and b) that he is running now and not back in the days when there really was a Democratic establishment that would have been able to crush him like a bug. . . . It turns out that many of the Bernie stans can be more insufferable in victory than they were in defeat. I say this in all love and Christian fellowship: Bernie Sanders and his more fervent followers and the many sanctimonious ratfckers who run his campaign can fck right off.

    It's hard to tell where the various smear campaigns against Sanders supporters start and end (if indeed they have any limits at all). I'm not involved in the campaign, and I doubt I know anyone who is, but it's hard not to feel personally insulted by such blanket slanders. Makes me feel like one of Hillary Clinton's deplorables, which I guess we were even before she took aim at Trump's minions.

    Admittedly, I'm less bothered when Pierce applies his vocabulary to something like What a day it's been for the paranoid little terrarium that is the modern conservative mind, or Trump's coronavirus press conference was the apotheosis of 40 years of Republican philosophy.

  • Leonard Pitts: Sanders' most rabid fans on the left no improvement over Trump's on the right. Pitts is nationally syndicated, and the Wichita Eagle runs his weekly column as its sole token liberal alternative to Cal Thomas, Marc Thiessen, and a host of other reactionary cranks. This is the most disappointing column I've ever read from him, as he casts even wider shade on Sanders' supporters than Pierce did (while also reminding us that Sanders is not a real Democrat). A self-appointed moderate, Pitts likes to assume that left and right are symmetrical, so he asserts that "Sanders could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose any supporters" -- Trump has actually made that boast about his supporters, many of whom are into guns and violence. But more basically, you don't get to the left without developing the critical and moral faculties to question the use and abuse of power and wealth, and that makes it impossible to blindly follow anyone -- for examples of Der Führerprinzip, look to the right.

  • Andrew Prokop: Tom Steyer drops out of the presidential race: "It turns out Democratic voters were not seeking their own billionaire to save them from Trump." One might argue that they were waiting for a richer, more obnoxious billionaire. The jury's still out on Bloomberg, but Steyer's campaign casts doubts on how easily one rich guy can buy a primary.

  • Robert Reich: Bernie Sanders' plans may be expensive but inaction would cost much more.

  • David Roberts: America's crisis of trust and the one candidate who gets it. He identifies a core problem: "how to break out of the doom loop and get on a trajectory of better governance and rising trust." His one candidate is Warren, "on the right track, substantively," but "on the wrong track, politically."

  • Alex Shephard: Bernie Sanders is winning his war on cable news. My primal fear is that the so-called liberal media, much more than the hapless DNC, is going to go all-out to sabotage Sanders' candidacy. For example:

    There's little love for Bernie Sanders on the television news circuit. After his landslide win in Saturday's Nevada caucuses, MSNBC host Chris Matthews compared the victory to Nazi Germany's successful invasion of France in 1940. Also on MSNBC, James Carville, who ran Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign, deemed it a big win for Vladimir Putin. On CBS, former Obama chief of staff Rahm Emmanuel fretted that Democrats were making a suicidal choice in going for Sanders. Donna Brazile, the former Democratic National Committee chair turned Fox News contributor, and Joe Lockhart, the former Clinton administration press secretary and current CNN contributor, were irked by a Sanders tweet that read: "I've got news for the Republican establishment. I've got news for the Democratic establishment. They can't stop us." . . . Trump has a cable news channel in his pocket -- Sanders does not. His campaign has responded by building a media infrastructure that could withstand attacks from mainstream networks. So far, it's worked wonders.

  • Andrew Sullivan: Is Bernie the American version of Jeremy Corbyn? Gulp.

  • Paul Waldman: Why Bernie Sanders drives so many people out of their minds.

For whatever it's worth, my take on the presidential election is that as long as it remains a referendum on Trump and his Republican cohort, any at-all-reasonable Democratic candidate (which includes Sanders and Biden but maybe not Bloomberg) will beat Trump. He is, after all, very unpopular, both as a person and even more so for his issues and policies. The only way Trump wins is if he can make the campaign be about his opponent (as he did in 2016), and find in that opponent flaws that he can exploit to make "persuadable" swing-votes fear that opponent more than they are disgusted with him. This will be harder for him to do this time around, because he has his own track record to defend, and unless you're very rich and/or very bigoted, he hasn't done much for you.

On the other hand, all Democratic candidates have tics and flaws that a savvy campaigner can exploit. We can debate endlessly on which "flaws" are most vulnerable and which are most easily defensible. My own theory is that "red baiting," which we've seen a huge burst of this past week (and not just at CPAC or on Fox, where the approach is so feverish it's likely to be extended against Bloomberg), is a spent force, but one Republicans won't be able to resist. On the other hand, Sanders is relatively secure against the charges of corruption and warmongering that were so effective against Hillary Clinton, and could easily be recycled against Biden.

On the other hand, I do have some sympathy for "down ballot" candidates for Congress who worry that having a ticket led by a candidate with such sharply defined views as Sanders has will hurt their chances in swing districts. At some point, Sanders needs to pivot to acknowledge and affirm the diversity of opinions within the Democratic Party. A model here might be Ronald Reagan's "11th commandment" (never speak ill of a fellow Republican). That didn't stop Reagan from orchestrating a conservative takeover of the party, but it make it possible for the few surviving liberals in the party to continue, and it made it possible for Republicans to win seats that hard-line conservatives couldn't.

A Sanders nomination would be the most radical shift in the Democratic Party since 1896, when populist William Jennings Bryan got the nod to succeed arch-conservative Grover Cleveland. Bryan lost that election badly, and lost two of the next three, partly as a result of Democratic Party sabotage, partly because Theodore Roosevelt outflanked him with a more modern progressivism. My generation is more likely to recall George McGovern's epic loss in 1972, also occasioned by deep splits within the Party bosses, but McGovern and 1968 nominee Hubert Humphrey had very similar backgrounds and programs -- their big divide was over the Vietnam War. Nixon did a very effective job of getting McGovern portrayed as a far-out radical, while covering up his own negatives (at least until after the election -- he wound up resigning in disgrace).

Trump will certainly try to do the same to Sanders (or for that matter to any other Democrat), and Republicans have been remarkably successful at manipulating media and motivating their voters, so one has to much to worry about. Indeed, I've been fretting a lot this past week, and will continue to do so until the election is over.

Some scattered links this week:

Ask a question, or send a comment.

Sunday, February 23, 2020

Weekend Roundup

Mike Bloomberg had his coming out party at the Nevada Democratic debate, and the response was harsh -- e.g. (including a few extra Bloomberg links):

The Nevada caucuses were held on Saturday. Results came in much faster than in Iowa, but 24 hours later we still only have 87.47% reporting (see Nevada Democratic caucuses: Live results. As with Iowa, there are three sets of results. The first-round votes are: Sanders 34.27%, Biden 17.86%, Buttigieg 15.18%, Warren 12.76%, Klobuchar 9.25%, Steyer 9.12%. Bloomberg wasn't on the ballot, and no write-in votes have been reported, so he's currently 123 votes behind Michael Bennet, and 12 behind John K Delaney. As in Iowa, there's also a "realigned vote", as most "unviable" candidates lose votes to "viable" ones (Bennet drops to 12 votes, but somehow Delaney got a boost to 16): The top six held place, but Sanders gained the most, to 40.73%, vs. Biden 19.69% and Buttigieg 17.14%. But the most commonly reported results were "County Convention Delegates: Sanders 47.08%, Biden 20.94%, Buttigieg 13.63%, Warren 9.71%, Steyer 4.65%, Klobuchar 3.89%. (This week's best humor article: Klobuchar congratulates herself for 'exceeding expectations' as early Nevada results show her in distant 5th.)

Unlike Iowa, it was clear early on who the winner was. Dylan Scott came up with 3 winners and 2 losers from the Nevada caucuses, but the only candidate on the list was Sanders (winner), and two of the other items were clearly Sanders wins (winner: Medicare-for-all; loser: Culinary Union Local 226). Sanders' win was so complete that Vox republished Matthew Yglesias: Mainstream Democrats shouldn't fear Bernie Sanders. Also on Nevada (and Sanders):

The last few days have produced an avalanche of Sanders articles -- hysterical attacks on him, defenses (including some meant to reassure mainstream Democrats, like Yglesias above, and Paul Krugman here -- although not without lamenting that Sanders may have no use for "center-left" wonks like Krugman), promotions, and good old fashioned horse race handicapping, but little I cared to get into.

Some scattered links this week:

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Sunday, February 16, 2020

Weekend Roundup

New Hampshire finally voted last week. Bernie Sanders won, although not by the margin I had hoped for -- 25.58% to 24.27% for Pete Buttigieg, 19.69% for Klobuchar, with significant drops for Elizabeth Warren (9.19%) and Joe Biden (8.34%). Sanders did, however, get more young voters than everyone else combined. As I note in the German Lopez note below, the Buttigieg/Klobuchar bubble seems to have less to do with anything attractive about their platforms than with the irrational fears of many Democrats (including some older ones who are philosophically aligned left, but grew up in a world where red-baiting was always effective) that Sanders would wind up losing to Trump. How they figure Buttigieg or Klobuchar might fare better is something I don't care to speculate on. Neither has the familiarity or national organization they'll need in coming weeks, and their repeated (misinformed and disingenuous) attacks on Medicare for All in recent months, while effective for raising donations and establishing themselves as niche candidates, makes them improbable (as well as damn unsatisfactory) party unifiers.

Biden is still better positioned to recover in later primaries, but did himself much harm in Iowa and New Hampshire. In particular, he lost favor with the "anybody but Trump (except Sanders)" party faction, and his support among Afro-Americans was never any deeper than a cautious wager. Biden has slipped behind Sanders in national polls, lost his big lead in Nevada, and may even lose his "firewall" state of South Carolina (see FiveThirtyEight, which also forecasts Sanders to lead in most "Super Tuesday" contests, including: California, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Colorado, and Tennessee -- in fact, the only state Biden is still favored in is Alabama). FiveThirtyEight still projects Biden to finish second, but they already have Michael Bloomberg in a close third, with Buttigieg a distant fourth, Warren with vanishingly slim chances in fifth, and Klobuchar even further behind. That assumes they all keep running, which almost certainly won't happen.

[PS: Closing this now to get it up and out of the way. I've been running into frustrating dead ends seems like everywhere.]

Some scattered links this week:

Ask a question, or send a comment.

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