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2020 General Election, Republicans

Vote by mail requirements present many enticing opportunities for voter suppression

Six key swing states — Arizona, Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — permit voters to cast mail-in ballots for any reason. Nonetheless, Ronald Brownstein notes (“The Most Important 2020 States Already Have Vote by Mail”), there is still much room for partisan disagreement in the coming months, as Democrats push to make voting simpler and easier, while Republicans oppose such efforts (even though in states that permit voting by mail — such as Arizona — Republicans may cast most of the mail-in ballots). Among the stickiest issues:

Partisan conflicts could erupt over how exactly citizens can request absentee ballots (many don’t allow them to do so online); whether the state will pay the postage to return the ballot (Michigan, Florida, and Pennsylvania are among those that don’t); and whether, amid the outbreak, states should still require voters to obtain witness signatures before submitting their ballot (as North Carolina and Wisconsin, among others, do). “Probably … tens of thousands of people will have difficulty getting those witnesses,” Morris said.

The most contentious subject will be the standards used to judge which ballots are rejected, particularly on the grounds that a voter’s signature doesn’t match records on file.

Daniel A. Smith, a University of Florida political scientist, has found that mail ballots in that state from young people and minorities are rejected at higher rates than those from older people and white voters—a dynamic that has obvious benefits for Republicans. In some states, Weiser noted, the election officials determining whether to accept a ballot can see on their screen the age and partisan affiliation of the voter they are assessing. Stewart told me he anticipates “a lot of litigation about the rejection of absentee ballots.” [My emphasis.]

This could be decisive in one or more battleground states. Imagine, hypothetically, a case going before the U.S. Supreme Court. A voter’s mail-in ballot has been disqualified because her signature doesn’t match — according to the county election officer, who happens to be a Republican — the signature on the envelope containing the ballot. The voter, who happens to be African American, has filed an affidavit attesting that the signature is hers, and the ballot that she cast is inside the sealed envelope. Suppose hundreds or thousands of additional voters from Democratic areas have had their ballots disqualified based on their signatures.

Recall that the Republican majority in the Supreme Court’s Bush v. Gore decision stopped local officials from counting ballots in Florida in 2000, giving the election to the Republican candidate for president. Suppose in our hypothetical that a ruling in favor of the voters who wish their votes to be counted, would likely tip the state to Joe Biden, while a ruling in favor of the local official would likely tip the state to Donald Trump: how likely is it that the Republican majority on the current Court would decide in favor of voters?

This past week in Wisconsin, mostly Democratic voters did not receive the mail-in ballots soon enough to vote by mail. The Court’s majority found that the right to vote was of lesser importance than a “narrow, technical question” of the law. Suppose such a scenario plays out in November. Suppose, even, that Republican election officials are suspected of either slow-walking the process or simply find themselves unprepared to meet the demand for mail-in ballots? How likely is it that the Republican majority on the Supreme Court would side with voters and against local officials?

Signature requirements – and the possibility of failures by state and local government, including deliberate failures – are huge red flags for anyone who supposes that Republicans are ready and willing to cheat, if necessary, to win an election.

(Image from New York Times‘ Retro Report on Florida in 2000 on YouTube.)

Democracy, Off the Rails, Republicans

Poisonous snakes, coronavirus, and suppressing Americans’ right to vote

In 2014 a snake-handling Pentecostal preacher died of a rattlesnake bite. ABC News reported on the death and interviewed another pastor, who had been present during the fatal bite. He had this to say:

“I am in the United States of America. And I have a constitutional right as a, you know, as my-right-mind adult, that if I believe so firmly that the Spirit of God moves on me to take up serpents, that I should have my constitutional right to do it.”— ABC News (2:11-227).

Constitutional scholars may disagree, not to mention other people of faith.  Snake-handling Pentecostal congregations, chiefly in the Southern states, date back more than a century, drawing inspiration from Mark 1: 17-18:

And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues; they will take up serpents; and if they drink anything deadly, it will by no means hurt them; they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.

Preachers, such as Tony Spell, in Louisiana, who continue to have Sunday services where many people sit in close proximity, are—with regard to public health—just as reckless as religious snake-handlers. They are putting themselves and others at risk. If they have a specific Biblical injunction for doing so in the face of the coronavirus, I am unaware of it.

If the church building were on fire, though the fire hadn’t yet reached the sanctuary or the nave, would these preachers expect their congregations to fill the pews? Would they expect their members to attend services, if a godless foreign power had penetrated the United States and had posted snipers in clear view of the church entrances? Would church leaders find a biblical passage revealing that God wanted their congregants to follow a highly risky path?

These decisions may reveal, at least in part, a stunning ignorance of infectious diseases. An “invisible enemy” (as Trump has put it), worldwide data collection, scientific modeling, and exponential functions add complications that we don’t find with poisonous snakes. Perhaps these leaders just don’t grasp the level of risk or the public health imperative of social distancing. But the opposition to public health measures to protect lives is confounding.

Why put people in harm’s way? What’s the point?

Republican leaders in Wisconsin have also chosen to place the public at risk, by refusing to budge on holding an in-person election on April 7 (and declining every avenue to make voting safer by expanding mail-in voting options). These Republicans, however, do have a point: this is a marker signaling their determination to achieve a central, overarching goal: suppressing the vote of their political opponents. This effort in April, while significant, may be regarded as a practice run for the November election. And as such, the state may serve as a role model for other Republican-controlled states. Wisconsin Republican operative Brandon Scholz oberserved, “If the political folks don’t use this as a lesson learned for the fall, they’re making a mistake.”

By blocking all efforts to change the date of the election (to a time when the pandemic may ebb), Republicans are counting on tens or hundreds of thousands of registered voters in Wisconsin making a rational decision to play it safe, and not go to the polls. Or, if they embrace the risk of acquiring COVID-19, they will have many obstacles to overcome (as described in the next paragraph) – and of course, they increase their chances of dying.

These legislators are counting on hundreds of polling places being closed on election day, because workers are afraid to staff them. (Milwaukee has the highest incidence of coronavirus in the state with nearly half the cases and deaths. As the week began, only five polling places were scheduled to open; at the other 175 polling locations, there would be no voting on Tuesday). The lines to vote, if people decide to vote, will be long. Maintaining social distance will not be feasible. And efforts to mitigate the risk, by limiting the number of people inside, will ensure that things will not go smoothly.

Each of these logistical issues could be expected to decrease the total number of votes cast—especially in urban areas where residential density magnifies the risks of contagion (and where Democratic voters predominate).  Lower turnout elections almost always advantage Republicans, whether a Republican member of the state supreme court is on the ballot (as in this primary), or a Republican president, whose popularity has never reached 50%, is on the ballot (as in November). Lower turnout increases the prospect of Republican victories. President’s Trump’s reelection may hinge on this highly contested battleground state.

Wisconsin Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos issued this statement:

Hundreds of thousands of workers are going to their jobs every day, serving in essential roles in our society. There’s no question that an election is just as important as getting take-out food.

Neither man addressed questions about how to protect voters, with the closure of hundreds of sites, who would have to crowd into a smaller number of polling places during a deadly pandemic. Nor did they explore their take-out food analogy in a helpful way. Making a run for take-out food is not limited to a single day, or to a certain retail outlet (in contrast to a legally assigned polling place). And with a wide array of restaurant delivery options, one doesn’t even have to get in the car to get take-out food. With a spontaneous phone call, the food will arrive at ones front door.

In addition to proposals to move the election date, Democrats offered a number of ideas for making mail-in voting simpler and more user-friendly. Wisconsin Republicans refused to budge. User-friendly voting, which will increase turnout, is the last thing Republicans want.

Former GOP state party chair, Brian Reisinger, said this: “There’s serious concern on the conservative side that the liberals are changing the rules in the middle of the election and tilting them toward their favor,” though the reference to “the middle of” is a feint: timing is not the reason for Republican opposition to making voting easier. He adds: “There’s a major feeling that absentee and early voting are tools of the left to make up for the fact that they can’t win on election day.”

Voter suppression is hardly confined to Wisconsin. Georgia Governor Brian Kemp was narrowly elected in 2018, while serving as Secretary of State. In the latter office, he was credited with the most extensive arsenal of voter suppression techniques in the country: In addition to Georgia’s enactment of voter-ID laws, proof of citizenship requirements, and restricting early voting, Secretary of State Kemp purged hundreds of thousands of voters from the rolls, blocked new registrations, and pressed local officials behind the scenes to close, move, and consolidate polling sites. Every action, as designed, disproportionately serves to limit the number of Democratic voters.

Three days before the election, Kemp announced that his office was investigating the Democratic Party for hacking into the state voter database. After the election this accusation was found to be baseless. When the press reported that Georgia’s voter purges may have violated federal law, Kemp offered congratulations to his campaign: “Good work, this story is so complex folks will not make it all the way through it.”

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, Georgia Democrats have advocated expanding voting by-mail. Georgia Speaker of the House David Ralston has spoken candidly about his opposition: because it increases voter turnout.

“This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia,” Ralston, a Republican from Blue Ridge, said during an interview with Fetch Your News, a North Georgia news site. “Every registered voter is going to get one of these. … This will certainly drive up turnout.”

These battles play out across the country, especially in states with Republican control of at least one branch of the legislature or the office of secretary of state. This past week, Donald Trump commented on “Fox and Friends” about the “crazy” things the Democrats proposed in the recently enacted economic recovery bill: “They had things – levels of voting – that if you ever agreed to it, you’d never have another Republican elected in this country again.”

Republicans are all-in with Trump, and all-in with voter suppression.

Voter-suppression is hardly new. It was championed by the late New Right activist, co-founder of both the Heritage Foundation and the Moral Majority, Paul Weyrich.

I don’t want everybody to vote. Elections are not won by a majority of the people. They never have been from the beginning of our country and they are not now. As a matter of fact, our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.

As I write this, the five men who make up the Republican majority on the U.S. Supreme Court have weighed in, blocking Wisconsin’s extension of the deadline for mailed-in ballots. The deadline had been extended because many voters received their ballots late. The stage is set. Tomorrow Wisconsin voters will be given a choice: go to the polls to cast a ballot, or protect yourself and stay at home, forgoing your right to vote.

We can thank Republican legislative leaders in Wisconsin for clarifying their level of commitment to voter suppression. In the face of a deadly pandemic, political advantage trumps public health. We can thank the conservative majority on the U.S. Supreme Court for amplifying the message that voter suppression is a national endeavor.

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

One constant in Trump’s erratic vacillation: A furious flight from accountability

Accountability is anathema to Donald Trump. Between now and November 3, he will frantically flee from even a modicum of responsibility for the tens of thousands of deaths from coronavirus that will continue to take place on his watch. Fox News Channel, with the rest of the conservative media universe, the White House, the Trump campaign, and every Republican official in Washington will pull out all the stops to prevent Trump from being called into account for the ongoing disaster he is presiding over.

The President’s dithering, fabrications, and missteps have aggravated the public health calamity:

The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.

And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered. the coronavirus

Trump’s baseless assertions in those weeks, including his claim that it would all just “miraculously” go away, sowed significant public confusion and contradicted the urgent messages of public health experts.

As the pandemic spread around the globe and deep into our country, Donald Trump denied and diminished the grave threat to Americans. Jeremy Peters reports on how conservative media amplified, and sometimes inspired, Trump’s tall tales. This is part of Job #1 – venerating Donald Trump and impugning his critics – for Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio, et al. (Accurate information isn’t a priority.)

Peters describes a four step process: blame China (while sometimes adding conspiracy theories to the tales told); play down the risks (just as Donald Trump did for weeks and weeks, until his turn on March 16—though he still shifts back to denial); share ‘survivor’ stories (coronavirus is really no worse than a “bad cold”); and then, when the infection rate and the body count make denial impossible to sustain, pivot and blame the left: the President is a victim of his political enemies.

The pervasiveness of the denial among many of Mr. Trump’s followers from early in the outbreak, and their sharp pivot to finding fault with an old foe once the crisis deepened, is a pattern that one expert in the spread of misinformation said resembled a textbook propaganda campaign.

As the rightwing echo chamber swerves from one fable to the next, yesterday’s account is forgotten. (We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.) Consistency and coherence, truth and facts, don’t matter. But the shifting narratives have this in common: they stoke a fundamental partisan divide. It’s us vs. them. Trump and his conservative base vs. Democrats/liberals/the left, that is to say, the enemies of America.

Peters references Rush Limbaugh’s denunciation of the Four Corners of Deceit (government, academia, science, and the media), which – as it happens – are sources of information independent of the right’s narrative of the day (whatever that happens to be). Limbaugh, with a bigger audience than FNC, deserves a gold star (to go along with his Presidential Medal of Freedom) for yeoman service to the misinformation campaign on behalf of Donald Trump.

Limbaugh, February 24: “Folks, this coronavirus thing, I want to try to put this in perspective for you. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. You think I’m wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by saying that’s — Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”

And March 27: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know. And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC and they’re at the NIH, and they’re up, well — yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there. But has there been any job assessment for them? They’re just assumed to be the best because they’re in government. But, these are all kinds of things that I’ve been questioning.”

The duplicity, the conspiracy theories, the eagerness to play the victim: the charade is over the top because the failure is catastrophic. Donald Trump, who doesn’t focus much beyond the next news cycle, has abdicated a leadership role in this crisis (though he relishes his time on center stage at the daily coronavirus briefings). I noted last month that the United States had no national strategy for combating the coronavirus. It still doesn’t, because President Trump insists that the nation’s governors are responsible for protecting the public, while the federal government will play only a “backup” role.

“Massive amounts of medical supplies, even hospitals and medical centers, are being delivered directly to states and hospitals by the Federal Government. Some have insatiable appetites & are never satisfied (politics?). Remember, we are a backup for them….”

The coronavirus is a national threat, which doesn’t recognize state boundaries. Containment – to be effective – can’t be a patchwork. It makes little sense to fob off responsibility to 50 state governors, who are placed in a position of outbidding each other, and FEMA, for test kits, personal protective equipment, ventilators, and other scarce equipment, as the infection spreads throughout the country. The President of the United States, who possesses authority and commands resources beyond the reach of any governor, could – if he chose – take charge. But he doesn’t.

“Remember, we are a backup for them.”

Doctors, scientists, public health experts, including senior officials in past administrations of both parties, agree that the Trump administration’s disavowal of responsibility will cost thousands of American lives. The failures are ongoing, increasing the death toll (“Trump administration’s lack of a unified coronavirus strategy will cost lives, say a dozen experts”):

The Trump administration has declined to nationalize the medical logistics system and hasn’t executed a national testing strategy. Although the president likely lacks the legal authority to impose a national stay-at-home order, he has declined to urge each governor to do so. Seven states haven’t imposed one, including Texas.

The results are clear: Governors and doctors report critical shortages of gear, it remains very difficult to get tested for the virus, and some Americans still aren’t heeding guidance to keep away from others.

That NBC report references an editorial this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Ten Weeks to Crush the Curve,” proposing a strategy for eradicating the coronavirus in a “forceful, focused campaign.” Donald Trump has declared himself a “wartime president” battling an “invisible enemy.” NEJM insists, “It’s a war we should fight to win.” The first step, the step that only a president can take: “Establish unified command.”

This country has never had a Commander in Chief in wartime who deferred to states and localities for leadership. Our erratic, irresolute president can’t settle on a strategy for more than a few hours. This makes little sense, though it is a means to distance Trump from the consequences of COVID-19. It facilitates a dodge of responsibility.

More troubling, Trump’s three years of misrule have undermined the administration’s capacity for effective action. He has hollowed out the executive branch, traded competence for sycophancy, and enfeebled the federal government.

Susan Glasser tells the story in the New Yorker:

“When you are done being angry about all the crazy, nasty, inconsistent, and untrue things that Donald Trump says each day about the coronavirus and other matters, remember that the flood of words is cover for an Administration that in some ways barely exists relative to its predecessors, especially when it comes to crucial areas of domestic, economic, and international security—or even straightforward crisis management. Turnover at the upper levels of Trump’s White House stands at eighty-three per cent, according to a Brookings Institution tracker. In his Cabinet, Trump has had far more turnover than Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and both George Bushes. The capacity of the federal government to respond to this catastrophe—even if Trump had been so inclined—has never been weaker. The virus was not of Trump’s making, but his government’s incoherent, disorganized response to it was utterly predictable.” [My emphasis.]

It is not just the White House that has lost capacity. Vacancies in the Treasury Department have already begun to impair administration economic policy. And, as Jonathan Bernstein suggests, Trump’s economic policies are already shaky:

Trump … likes the idea of big, unprecedented action, which is a perfect match for the current situation. But in three-plus years, he still doesn’t appear have any idea how the government works, what he’s supposed to do to make things happen, or anything about the economy outside of how it affects him personally.

Donald Trump’s shortcomings have been evident for all to see throughout the past three-plus years. National Republicans, making a cynical trade-off, have given him a pass. With the arrival of COVID-19, the country is paying dearly for Republicans’ political calculations.

Now, still all-in with Trump, the party will scramble furiously to avoid a reckoning.

(Image: On April 1, Trump brought out the generals.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

In the midst of a deadly pandemic, President Donald Trump is boasting about his TV ratings

…On Monday, nearly 12.2 million people watched Mr. Trump’s briefing on CNN, Fox News and MSNBC, according to Nielsen — ‘Monday Night Football’ numbers. Millions more are watching on ABC, CBS, NBC and online streaming sites, and the audience is expanding. On Monday, Fox News…

…alone attracted 6.2 million viewers for the president’s briefing — an astounding number for a 6 p.m. cable broadcast, more akin to the viewership for a popular prime-time sitcom…

…The CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus.” Michael M. Grynbaum @NYTimes  

Image, from animation by Worldwide Engineering, illustrating the daily increase in coronavirus cases by country from January 23 through March 28, 2020, as the United States became the globe’s leading nation for the infection:

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans, Tribalism

Republicans in Congress, FNC, and GOP voters stand pat as Trump’s ongoing failures increase the death toll

Yesterday, the United States of American became the world’s leader in known cases of coronavirus (even though testing continues to lag). As of Sunday morning, the number of deaths in the U.S. has doubled since Thursday.

The world’s greatest democracy still has no national strategy for combating the coronavirus outbreak. The reason for this failure is obvious for all to see: the President of the United States is incapable of competent leadership. The breakdown, which began in January (when “faced with the coronavirus, Mr. Trump chose not to have the White House lead the planning until nearly two months after it began“), is ongoing.

At his daily briefings he misinforms the public (putting Americans who believe him at risk), offers self-congratulations and points fingers at others; he vacillates and changes his mind from one day to the next (based on criticism he sees on cable TV).

Every status report and decision is from his perspective chiefly about him, not about the state of the nation, the well being of Americans, or pulling out all the stops to blunt the pandemic.

‘The federal government’s done a helluvua job. . . .

… I think we’ve done a great job for the state of Washington.  And I think the governor’s a failed presidential candidate, as you know — he — he leveled out at zero in the polls.  He’s constantly chirping and — I guess ‘complaining’ would be a nice way of saying it.  We’re building hospitals.  We’ve done a great job for the state of Washington.

Michigan, all she does is — she has no idea what’s going on.  And all she does is say, “Oh, it’s the federal government’s fault.”  And we’ve taken such great care of Michigan. . . .

We have done a job the likes of which nobody’s seen. . . .

I think they should be appreciative because you know what?  When they’re not appreciative to me, they’re not appreciative to the Army Corps.  They’re not appreciative to FEMA.  It’s not right.  These people are incredible.  They’re working 24 hours a day.  Mike Pence — I mean, Mike Pence, I don’t think he sleeps anymore.  These — these are people that should be appreciated.

He calls all the governors.  I tell him — I mean, I’m a different type of person — I say, “Mike, don’t call the governor of Washington.  You’re wasting your time with him.  Don’t call the woman in Michigan.”  All — it doesn’t make any difference what happens — . . .

You know what I say?  If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.  He’s a different type of person.  He’ll call quietly anyway.  Okay?’

The country is paying an extraordinarily high cost for the President’s misrule:

https://twitter.com/Politidope/status/1244252490738143233

George Conway has Trump exactly right (as I have agreed): Trump is psychologically incapable of fulfilling the framers’ vision of the presidency.

But half the country — and based on public evidence, half of George Conway’s household — refuses to engage in a frank national discussion.

I am confident that Senate Republicans — most of them, probably, but certainly enough of them when added to all Democrats could have reached a 2/3 vote for impeachment — are well aware of the President’s incapacity. They refuse as a matter of practical partisan politics to acknowledge this or they downplay, no matter what disasters ensue, the magnitude of the harm to our country. So, who are we going to engage in this conversation?

The party’s base, egged on by Fox News Channel, overwhelmingly approves of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

If Trump were politically more skillful and not psychologically debilitated, this could have become a defining success of his presidency. He could have brought the country together à la George W. Bush following 9-11. He would have had to recognize the significance of the problem, rely on the expertise available to a president, and put the federal government to work coordinating a national response. Instead of denying or diminishing the threat, he would have had to speak truthfully about it — and reassured the public with a strategic plan to meet the challenge. (We can imagine, without a stretch, both of his immediate predecessors in the White House, one Republican and one Democrat, acting in this way.)

Had Trump been willing and capable of doing the right thing, he could have nurtured a larger governing majority than the Republican base. Trump’s self-interest and the national interest would have overlapped completely.

This was not to be. Trump cannot overcome his incapacities.

The devastation wrought by COVID-19 will be much greater as a result of Trump’s failures. Unless nature takes a fortuitous turn, Red states and Red regions will not be spared. Will his base stick with him come what may, adding “yet another grievance to their indictment of the liberal establishment” rather than hold Trump responsible? So far, those voters have not wavered.

(Map from New York Times.)

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans, Tribalism

How did nearly half the country — Trump fans and FNC viewers — get things so wrong?

A reporter asked me today why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus. I tried to explain that one of the dangerous consequences of having a totally dishonest left wing news media was that most Americans discounted their hysteria as phony. – Newt Gingrich

This sample of duplicity and distraction, from a familiar Fox News Channel contributor, is classic Gingrich. The first sentence presents an issue raised by a reporter: “why conservatives were initially so skeptical of the threat of the coronavirus.” The second sentence goes completely off the rails. It’s a clinic on how Trump and Trump apologists obfuscate, distort, and deceive.

“I tried to explain,” begins Gingrich, the ever-tolerant professor offering instruction. Well, not exactly. Instead, in an act of misdirection, he hurls incendiary language, attacking media outfits seeking to inform the public, while completely ignoring the explanation in plain sight.

The issue is why conservatives have been ‘skeptical.’ Polling clearly demonstrates that there has been a persistent reluctance on the right to accept well-established facts. It is hardly true that “most Americans” discounted accurate reports of the threat from the sources where they get their news. A majority of Democrats and independents (who together outnumber Republicans) have taken the reports as credible. We believed what we heard and saw on cable and broadcast television and what we read in newspapers and online. It is a minority of Americans – base Republicans, Donald Trump’s most intense followers – who have been skeptical of the scientific and medical reporting on the coronavirus.

Why were conservatives – grassroots enthusiasts of Donald Trump – so thoroughly misinformed about coronavirus?

CNN and NBC, the New York Times and the Washington Post (to highlight a few of Trump’s bugbears), while fallible, share a journalistic mission: to find the facts and accurately report them. Since the news business is competitive, they seek to get it right, because – otherwise – their errors will be exposed by other mainstream news outlets. They will lose credibility among viewers and readers who wish to know what’s going on. We can say the same thing about scientists, medical researchers, and doctors: while they make mistakes, they try to get it right.

Conservative media do not embrace this journalistic mission (or the ethos of science) to inform accurately. Their job, in the conservative media ecosystem, is to bolster faith in their leader, to cast doubt on facts that might undermine that faith, and to attack and disparage anyone who contradicts the message of the day.

Gingrich, who changed the Republican Party, the Congress, and finally the country, by teaching other Republicans to insult, denigrate, and slander Democrats, introduced an era in American politics where one party (the GOP) has made the other party the enemy, where Democrats’ views are so far beyond the pale they deserve only contempt. Part of this project was to undermine independent (“totally dishonest left wing”) sources of information (from journalists, government agencies, scientists, and medical authorities, among others), whenever or wherever that information challenged conservative messaging.

In Adam Serwer’s words (“Donald Trump’s Cult of Personality Did This“):

Gingrich’s attempted indictment of the mainstream press is a backhanded acknowledgment that the conservative media do not conceive of their job as informing the public.

. . .

Fox News told its audience that the coronavirus was a minor problem their heroic leader was quickly resolving, while quietly having its staff follow the very precautions its hosts were ridiculing on air. The mainstream press didn’t force Fox News to do that.

Gingrich, offering pronouncements from Italy, separated himself from the skepticism of American conservatives, but he has had a staring role in bolstering the conservative media universe that has deliberately deceived its audience and in destroying confidence in independent reporting and inquiry that has created that audience. These conservative achievements, not mainstream media reporting, are responsible for the “dangerous consequences” he references.

Gingrich’s tweet presents a phony explanation for why conservative viewers and readers are sadly misinformed about a grave threat to public health.

Democrats, Republicans, Tribalism

Americans view Trump and COVID-19 through starkly different lenses: one Red, one Blue

The dire lack of test kits (in spite of repeated denials and broken promises by the Trump administration) continues to hamper public health efforts to contain the coronavirus. When asked (on March 13) whether he accepted responsibility for the shortage, Trump replied:

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all.”

Instead he blamed the Obama administration for an unspecificed “decision” that tied his hands (more than three years after he took office). Policy experts were baffled by the claim. (“To our knowledge, there were some discussions about laboratory developed test rules but nothing was ever put into place. So we are not aware of anything that changed how LDTs are regulated.”)

There is also a dire shortage of personal protective equipment, PPE — such as face shields, masks, head covers, and respirators — for doctors, nurses, and other medical staff. In light of this shortfall, medical personnel are even being instructed to reuse (generally single-use) N-95 masks.

When asked about the lack of safety equipment, Trump shrugged off responsibility and pointed to the nation’s governors:

“Governors are supposed to be doing a lot of this work. . . . The federal government is not supposed to be out there buying vast amounts of items, and then shipping. We’re not a shipping clerk.”

This is not leadership. But for nearly half the country, it’s close enough to satisfy.

Ronald Brownstein (“Red and Blue America Aren’t Experiencing the Same Pandemic”) notes that the spread of the coronavirus is playing out much differently in Red and Blue areas of the country: “That disconnect is already shaping, even distorting, the nation’s response to this unprecedented challenge—and it could determine the pandemic’s ultimate political consequences as well.”

National surveys reveal that Democrats express greater concern about the virus than Republicans, and attest to making more changes in their personal behavior in response. Democratic governors for the most part are acting aggressively to slow the spread of the virus; fewer Republicans (Ohio Governor Mike DeWine is an exception) are doing so.

Furthermore, the ideological disparity is matched by a geographical division. New York, Washington, and California — in virtue of the disease’s impact in their metro areas — have by far the most cases, though other states (especially those with large cities) are catching up. In Red states with large metro areas — Texas, Arizona, Georgia, and Tennessee, for instance — Democratic mayors and city councils are imposing social distancing restrictions.

Brownstein quotes Geoffrey Kabaservice, author of Rule and Ruin (a history of the modern Republican Party), regarding the urban-rural divide:

“There’s a long history of conservatives demonizing the cities as sources of disease to threaten the ‘pure heartland.’ That’s an old theme. . . . So that could be how it goes down.”

Kabaservice also alludes to the Republican suspicion of elites who comprise the scientific establishment and academia, professionals within government agencies, and of course the media (apart from Fox News Channel and other outfits within the conservative media universe).

We are seeing that on each side of the divide, folks are falling in line with the preconceptions of their tribe. Democrats look to scientific and medical authorities, acknowledge the reality of the pandemic, and accept journalists’ reports on Trump’s dissembling and his administration’s evident failures. Republicans are more likely to accept Trump’s messaging that diminishes the threat, to trust his efforts to protect public health, to endorse his rejection of expert opinion inside and outside of government, and to share his finger pointing at China, other countries, Democrats, and journalists whose reporting casts doubt on the President’s rosy view.

This exchange is all too typical, and will be viewed from starkly different lenses by Democrats and Republicans:

Peter Alexander (asking what he regarded as a softball question): “What do you say to Americans who are watching you right now who are scared?”

Trump responds: “I say that you’re a terrible reporter. That’s what I say.”

I think it’s a very nasty question. And I think it’s a very bad signal that you’re putting out to the American people.

The American people are looking for answers and they are looking for hope. And you’re doing sensationalism — and the same with NBC and Concast. I don’t call it Comcast, I call it Concast … for whom you work.

Let me just say something: That’s really bad reporting. And you ought to get back to reporting, instead of sensationalism.

Let’s see if it works. It might. And it might not. I happen to feel good about it. But, who knows? I’ve been right a lot! Let’s see what happens.

Donald Trump has never sought to appeal to all Americans. He consistently appeals to his base, while disparaging the other half of the country. (My first post in this blog referenced this dichotomy.)

And I believe Trump is in sync with his base. The grassroots Republicans who embrace the President come what may, don’t want to hear any message that detracts from the party line. They want to hear Trump’s rosy scenario.

And Trump could be right. Within a few months, we may look back at COVID-19 as something that didn’t have the dire, long-term consequences media reports have led us to expect. It may, like a miracle, just disappear one day, perhaps mere weeks from now.

Trump’s supporters are sticking with him, hoping for — even expecting — the best. He can weave, and dodge, and change his story as often as he likes. He can point his fingers at everyone but himself. He can make fanciful claims, deny observable facts, and contradict scientists and medical authorities. But his base embraces his authority and outlook. (“He doesn’t lie. I know y’all say he does. He doesn’t. He doesn’t.“)

And what if things don’t turn out for the best? Will their support waver? Will they stray from the party when it comes time to vote in November?

Don’t count on it (even though some may jump off the Trump train). More likely: the hardcore base, the true believers in Trump’s camp — the overwhelming majority of Republicans who voted for Trump in 2016 — will readily blame the Chinese, the Europeans, the Mexicans. They will point the finger at Democrats, liberals, elites — the folks who, in their judgment, look down on them. They will fault urban dwellers, minorities, and non-white immigrants who, in their view, don’t qualify as real Americans.

If things turn out badly, if COVID-19 hits their communities as hard as it is beginning to hit the Blue regions of the country, they are likely to add yet another grievance to their indictment of the liberal establishment, not to hold Trump responsible.

Whether Trump is right or wrong, whether his bet — playing exclusively to the Republican base — will pay off in November, this is the wager that Trump is staking his Presidency on.

It’s a wager he has placed before. He won the prize in 2016.

We have Blue America on one side, Red America on the other. The outcome in November will hinge on turnout. And perhaps, if things are close enough, on that mushy middle, that sliver of folks who mostly don’t pay enough attention to have a side.

An ABC/Ipsos poll reveals that a healthy majority of Americans approve of the way Trump is handling the response to the Coronavirus (COVID-19). Right now the mushy middle seems to be leaning toward Trump.

November 3 is a long way off. We don’t know how bad things will get or how long recovery will take. At this stage, though, the 2020 election appears to represent a daunting challenge for Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

Donald Trump, Off the Rails, Republicans, Tribalism

Donald Trump & his Republican Party have failed to protect the country

The Executive Branch of the government of the United States is uniquely empowered to plan, implement, and coordinate measures to ensure the nation’s public health. The Trump administration has failed miserably to do so.

I agree with Senator Tom Cotton (circa February 28), “The single most consequential and valuable thing done to stop this virus from already spreading throughout the United States was when President Trump decided to shut down travel to China last month.”

Unfortunately, that action— taken January 31 — was hardly sufficient to keep the virus from spreading throughout the country. It would be bad enough if all Trump did in the intervening weeks (until his abrupt shift on March 16) was sit on his hands. Instead, for weeks in his every public utterance, he lied about the state of affairs in the country and diminished the increasing threat.

“We have it totally under control. One person from China and it’s going to be just fine.” (January 22) “We pretty much shut it down — coming in from China.” (February 2)

“You know, in April supposedly it dies with the hotter weather.” (February 10) “When it gets warm, historically, it’s been able to kill the virus.” (February 14)

“People are getting better. They’re all getting better.” (February 25)

“And the 15 — within a couple of days, it’s going to be down close to zero.” (February 26) “It’s going to disappear one day. It’s like a miracle: it will disappear.” (February 27) “And you’ll be fine.” (February 28)

“They’re going to have vaccines, I think, relatively soon.” (March 2) “Not only the vaccines, but also the therapies. Therapies are sort of another word for cure.” (March 3)

“We’re talking about very small numbers in the United States.” (March 4) “Our numbers are lower than just about anybody’s.” (March 6)

“It’s really working out. And lotta good things are gonna happen.” (March 10)

“And we are responding with great speed and professionalism.” (March 11)

“It’s gonna go away.” (March 12)

“No, I don’t take responsibility at all.” (March 13)

“They’ll all be great. We’re going to be so good.” (March 15)

“This came up — it came up so suddenly.” (March 16)

And Fox News Channel, the loudest, most influential voice of the Republican Party (next to Trump himself), reinforced the President’s message every step of the way:

News reports of the coronavirus, in the view of Fox News’ personalities week after week, was a hoax manufactured by Democrats to attack the President, an illness no more worrisome than the flu, an overblown brouhaha of scant significance. Dismiss, distract, diminish, disparage. Unfortunately, there is much evidence that the President of the United States often takes his cues from his favorite TV network.

This charade has been incredibly effective at convincing the Republican base. The rest of us, not so much. A recent Axios/Survey Monkey poll, which asked whom Americans trusted to protect them from the coronavirus, found high confidence in prominent health agencies:

Centers for Disease Control — 75%; National Institutes for Health — 68%; their state’s health department — 68%; their local office of emergency management — 67%; and the World Health Organization — 60%.

Trust in President Trump registered at 84% among Republicans, but only 20% among independents, 9% among Democrats, and 42% overall.

The President changed his tune (and his tone) on March 16, as he acknowledged for the first time the severity of the health crisis and issued strict new guidelines for Americans to avoid infection, though when asked, “Was there a change in tone?”, he dissembled:

“I didn’t feel different. I’ve always known that this is a real — this is a pandemic. I felt it was a pandemic long before it was called a pandemic. All you had to do is look at other countries. I think it’s not in 120 countries all over the world. No, I’ve always viewed it as very serious. It was no different yesterday than days before.”

Much too late, facing an imminent disaster, the White House has advanced beyond denials and wishful thinking.

This awakening might have happened more quickly if Congressional Republicans had pushed back against the nonsense coming from their leader. Instead, they spread nonsense of their own (Devin Nunes); or whispered their concerns to VIPs, while reassuring the public and selling stocks ahead of the market disaster (Richard Burr); and then, when the consequences started raining down, tried to slink away to let others clean up the mess (Mitch McConnell). They unleashed the President when they (with the lone exception of Mitt Romney) acquitted him in the Senate — still focused on the next election cycle.

No one in the Republican Party wants to buck the President. They’ve allowed partisanship, tax cuts for their richest donors, and federal court appointments to trump the security of the nation. For more than three years, that reckless bet has paid off handsomely.

As we head toward November 2020, it may pay off once again. But the steep cost to the nation — to our health and economic well-being — of Trump’s misrule is harder to hide now, no matter what diversions the President, Congressional Republicans, and Fox News Channel cook up.

(Image from Los Angeles Times website on March 18, 2020.)

2020 Democratic Primary, Democracy

Elizabeth Warren bows out, Joe Biden soars to the lead – How did we get here?

Regarding Warren:

There are many reasons why she failed to win the Democratic presidential nomination. But don’t kid yourself: Being a woman is one of them. – Francis Wilkinson

People always say …

Well, It’s not the right woman. Well, who’s going to be the right woman? Look at us, we’re as diverse as you can get, we’re all different shapes, sizes, colors. So which one of us is the right woman? – Pennsylvania Congresswoman Susan Wild

She was doing so well for a time.

For a while, it seemed like she had a good shot, but then as voting approached, she didn’t. Spooked voters blamed “the country,” as if they themselves didn’t populate the country. I’m ready for a female president, but the country isn’t. And then they voted for a man they could tolerate instead of the woman they loved.– Monica Hesse 

Although Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016, her defeat diminished the prospects of a woman winning the Democratic nomination in 2020. The safer choice turned out to be an old white guy whose “policies, such as they are, are milquetoast appeals to moderation in the face of impending catastrophe — vows to compromise on legislation with Republicans, despite their demonstrated commitment to steamrolling democracy in the interest of partisan advantage; refusals to fight for free health care for all in the name of preserving private insurance, despite the rampant horror stories of insulin rationing and deferred emergency-room visits that prevail among the tens of millions of uninsured or underinsured Americans,” in the words of Zak Cheney-Rice, who continues:

But where his policies underwhelm — and, indeed, most voters would be hard-pressed to name a single one — his campaign has found incredible success drawing on voters’ emotional attachment to what they think he represents: a return to the sociopolitical norms that were so rudely disrupted by Trump’s election.

Black voters in South Carolina are credited with giving Joe Biden the boost he needed to overtake Bernie Sanders in the race for the nomination.

Mara Gay laments Elizabeth Warren’s withdrawal from the race: “Looking at this as an American woman, and thinking to yourself, Elizabeth Warren was the most qualified, in many ways, … most experienced candidate in the race. She had the best ideas … and she really did her homework. And I think there is a sense among a lot of women that you have to be twice as good – and even then it’s not enough. And I think that’s what happened tonight.”

“But,” Gay adds, “there is a larger context here.”

I just got back from a trip across the South … And the reality is that Senator Warren was running in the shadow of Hillary Clinton’s loss. And voters – Democratic voters, especially black Democrats in the South who really spoke up forcefully in favor of Joe Biden – they are so desperate and so intent on beating Donald Trump that they are looking for the least risk imaginable.

I had voter after voter tell me, ‘You know, we really like Elizabeth Warren, but we don’t know if our neighbors were going to vote for a woman.’ . . .

‘We look at what happened to Hillary and we think maybe it’s too risky.’ . . .

They know Joe Biden. So he may not be Barack Obama and as inspiring, but he’s somebody who they believe is the best bet to get Donald Trump out of the White House.

In a column earlier this week, Gay offered additional context, illustrating the depth of southern black voters’ concerns:

Not long ago, these Americans lived under violent, anti-democratic governments. Now, many there say they see in President Trump and his supporters the same hostility and zeal for authoritarianism that marked life under Jim Crow.

For those who lived through the trauma of racial terrorism and segregation, or grew up in its long shadow, this history haunts the campaign trail. And Mr. Trump has summoned old ghosts.

“People are prideful of being racist again,” said Bobby Caradine, 47, who is black and has lived in Memphis all his life. “It’s right back out in the open.”

Cheney-Rice represents a younger generation, which has no memories of Jim Crow, and a different worldview than Congressman Jim Clyburn, born in Sumter, South Carolina before the U.S. entry into World War II. Moreover, many of us view the governing norms that, in Cheney-Rice’s dismissive words, Trump “so rudely disrupted,” as fundamental to a healthy democracy.

If searing memories of a brutal, vicious past moved South Carolina voters, many Democrats — white, black, Northern, Southern, from East to West — have embraced the principle that this isn’t the year to take big risks.

Why Biden? Why late February 2020? Kevin Drum has a chart (actually two): Biden started to surge on February 22 (two days after the Las Vegas debate and four days before the Clyburn endorsement).

So what happened on or around February 21? The only thing that stands out is the Las Vegas debate, which took place on the evening of February 19. The consensus for this debate was that Elizabeth Warren left Mike Bloomberg bleeding on the floor, but that no one else especially distinguished themselves. I just reread the New York Times summary of the debate, and it barely even mentions Biden except to note that he joined Warren in attacking Bloomberg.

So there’s something peculiar here. The conventional wisdom says that Clyburn’s endorsement powered Biden to a big win in South Carolina, and the big win in South Carolina powered Biden to victory on Super Tuesday. But Clyburn endorsed after Biden had started surging. Something else must have started the Biden surge, but the Las Vegas debate sure doesn’t seem like it was a turning point either.

Though Drum expresses puzzlement, I think he has pinpointed the key event: the debate – and the news coverage that followed over the next few days. The big story, as he notes, was Warren’s takedown of Bloomberg. And that’s – as I suggested in the last sentence of a previous post – a key to Biden’s rise. This isn’t at all peculiar.

Bernie Sanders was ascendant. Many Democrats (even on the left) were convinced that a Sanders nomination posed significant risks for the party in November. The former VP — hogging the moderate lane — appeared shaky throughout the nomination process. Other less risky choices had fallen by the wayside.

The results of the Nevada caucuses on February 22 — the beginning of Biden’s rise in Drum’s chart — would prove that neither Buttigieg, nor Klobuchar could go the distance (a result that the press had anticipated). And Warren (et al.) had already faltered.

But Bloomberg — following a half billion dollar+ campaign, including scads of slickly produced TV ads — had secured many Democratic endorsements and had steadily risen in the polls. He was waiting in the wings, ready to step up on Super Tuesday to rescue the party and the country. His fortunes changed, however, when Warren eviscerated him on stage.

No one else was left standing at that point — except Joe Biden. What exquisite timing.

(Image: WaPo on YouTube.)

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats

Thoughts on the Democratic primary in the aftermath of Super Tuesday

After Super Tuesday, Joe Biden has pushed Bernie Sanders from his position as frontrunner. With everyone else out of the way, Bloomberg especially, it’s a two-man race for the Democratic nomination.

In 2016, I initially gave Sanders a pass when he continued campaigning even after it was obvious he had no chance of beating Hillary Clinton. After all, one of his goals was to amass enough delegates that he could influence the party platform and push it to the left. To do that, he had to keep competing.

But he’s done that. – Kevin Drum

Agreed. I was indulgent of Sanders’ protracted 2016 primary campaign because of my confidence that Hillary Clinton would win in November. If Sanders falters this time, let’s hope the senator promptly concedes and gets behind the Democratic nominee.

Perhaps the starkest symbol of Sanders’s limitations last night was the resurgence of a problem that severely damaged him in 2016: widespread resistance from primary voters who self-identify as Democrats (as opposed to independents). . . .

The Super Tuesday exit polls showed Biden beating Sanders among self-identified Democrats by about 30 percentage points in both Virginia and North Carolina, about 25 points in Oklahoma, 20 points in Tennessee, and nearly 50 in Alabama. Sanders was more competitive among Democratic partisans in the New England states of Massachusetts and Maine. But the overall pattern was unmistakable.

His collapse among Democratic partisans came after recent full-throated attacks on “the Democratic establishment” in his rallies and media appearances. Sanders has often sounded more as if he believes he’s leading his movement in a hostile takeover of the party than a merger with it. – Ronald Brownstein

Yeah. Democrats can’t resist complaining about the Democratic Party – but the millions of Democratic voters are a diverse bunch. Our communities are as diverse as we are. We don’t always agree. That’s the nature of a broad coalition under a big tent. Most Democrats, in the election of our lives, are seeking someone to unify us, not scold us – or our leaders. Attacking the Democratic establishment is a discordant rallying cry, especially from someone who regards himself as standing outside the tent.

When the campaign began, I had a fervent wish not to have to vote for an old white guy. It wasn’t always clear to me, if I didn’t get my wish, whether a Biden or a Sanders nomination would be the most disappointing.

From my vantage point today, Biden looks like the best bet to help Democrats boot out Trump and take back the Senate. Joe Biden has significant vulnerabilities, including looking and acting like a not especially vibrant 77-year-old; a continuing career of gaffes, verbal tangents, and visibly losing his train of thought; and an inability, thus far, to explain simply and coherently why the Hunter, Burisma, and Ukraine tales hammered by Republicans aren’t on a par with Trump’s corruption. But he is one of us, the last one standing (since Sanders chooses to stand apart from us), and it’s us against them.

That said, yesterday I cast a ballot – with no expectations that she would hit 15% in California – for Elizabeth Warren. Here’s hoping this terrific senator returns to Washington next year to a chamber with a Democratic majority. And, give her credit, Warren had the starring role in taking down Mike Bloomberg and his obscene $600,000,000+ campaign (which, not incidentally, provided a critical assist in the resurrection of the Biden campaign).

L.A. County’s new “ballot marking device” worked like a charm (though the process of checking in voters was very, very slow).
Casting a ballot for Elizabeth Warren in March 2020 primary election.

(Image of Joe Biden from his twitter page.)