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Sanders Calls It Quits
Somewhat surprisingly, after Wisconsin voted on Tuesday, but before the votes had been tallied, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) announced that he was suspending his campaign (but not his movement). During his speech, he conceded that winning the nomination was virtually impossible at this point.
Sanders didn't describe his withdrawal as a defeat, but as a victory. He said that ideas he pioneered, such as a $15/hr minimum wage, have become a standard part of every Democrat's platform now. While that is true, other (more important) things he fought for, like Medicare for All, have been rejected by nearly every other Democrat. The only other candidate who embraced that was Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and her support for it probably cost her the nomination. Sanders really didn't move the Overton window much on that issue.
Although Sanders is giving up on the race, he intends to stay on the ballot to collect as many delegates as possible in order to influence the platform adopted at the convention. No doubt Biden will throw him a few bones on the platform, but make no mistake, it will be Biden's show, not Sanders'.
Sanders' withdrawal marks a sudden end to a dramatic race. After Sanders won victories in New Hampshire and Nevada, the pundit class had already crowned him and was breathlessly waiting for his acceptance speech at the convention. Joe Biden was yesterday's roadkill, lying bleeding to death in the ditch. But then South Carolina voters got their chance and said: "Nope, Bernie. No way. Ain't gonna happen." And 3 days later, on Super Tuesday, ten more states seconded that. When Sanders lost Arizona, Florida, and Illinois 2 weeks after that, it was all over but the shoutin'. Biden was resurrected long before the Easter bunny hopped out. So what Sanders did yesterday was accept the inevitable.
Sanders' plan to win was to turn millions of non-voters into voters. They would come out of the woodwork in droves and support him, was the idea. It didn't happen. Youth turnout was not especially high this year and masses of new voters never materialized. Another problem Sanders never licked is that black voters really, really don't think breaking up the big banks is all that important. They are much more concerned about racial justice and Sanders never convinced them that he cared much about that, probably because he didn't and they knew it. That is not to say he does not care about inequality, but he sees it as fundamentally an economic issue and they see it as a racial issue.
Democratic leaders everywhere are now feeling relieved. They knew that had Sanders been the nominee, Donald Trump would have ripped the bark off him. He would have run ads claiming Sanders was Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, and Fidel Castro all rolled into one. He would have said Sanders was going to nationalize private industry and send his opponents off to reeducation pig farms in Siberia. It would have been brutal. Of course, not a single bit of it would have been remotely true, but for someone who has already told 15,000 out-and-out lies, what's a few more? Sanders' problem would have been that with Fox News repeating the lies morning, noon, and night, 40% of the country would believe every word of them.
Sanders' exit makes life easier for Biden now. He already said he is starting to search for a running mate and think about cabinet officers. Now he can exploit that to make news. Imagine what happens when he and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) give a press conference saying that they met and had a lovely chat, but without actually providing any news. The pundits will go wild with: "Will she be veep or AG or something else?" Biden and Harris will just politely smile and say their conversation went well. Rinse and repeat with Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN), Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ), and others. Maybe they will get jobs in his administration, maybe not, but the PR from just talking to them will get Biden in the news. News outlets will be happy to play along since having 100% of the stories be about COVID-19 and how much people are sick and dying doesn't make for happy news. And once chatting with the obvious choices gets old hat, Biden can move on to meetings with some out-of-the-box options. How many inches and pixels of speculation and commentary will be cranked out if Biden has coffee with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)? Or Rep. Justin Amash (I-MI)? Or Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT)? Or Hillary Clinton? Supreme Court Justice Obama, anyone? It's happened before. William Howard Taft served as chief justice after his term as president was over. The possibilities here for PR are endless.
Barack Obama's campaign 2012 manager, Jim Messina, said that Sanders' dropping out is Trump's worst nightmare. The President had originally expected Biden would be his opponent, hence his efforts to extort Ukraine to dig up dirt on Biden, and now that has happened. Even worse, though, is that the two living two-term Democratic presidents, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, have been very carefully staying on the sidelines to avoid having Sanders' supporters yell "foul." Now that the race is over, the two Democratic heavyweights can get involved and start taking potshots at Trump. Both of them can say they faced crises as president and did what was needed for the country, as opposed to whining that it was someone else's fault. Both remain very popular with Democrats and having them out there fighting for the blue team will surely be a morale booster.
So, the general election campaign begins today. Keep in mind, it is all about electoral votes and who can win which state. Barring a big shift for some reason (like a depression, which is certainly possible), only seven states' electoral votes seem to be in play at the moment: Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Florida. And three of these (Arizona, North Carolina, and Georgia) are especially important since there are competitive Senate races there (two in Georgia). Gentlepeople, start your engines. (V)
Biden May Have an Easier Job of Unifying the Party than Did Clinton in 2016
After Hillary Clinton beat Bernie Sanders in 2016, many of Sanders' young supporters said: "I'm not voting for the lesser of two evils" and either voted for Jill Stein, or Gary Johnson, or didn't vote at all. Clinton was not very successful in unifying the party after defeating the Senator from Vermont.
However, Joe Biden's advisers believe Biden will have an easier job than did Clinton. First, Biden has already incorporated some of Sanders' ideas into his program, such as raising the minimum wage and free college for families making under $125,000. When talking to Sanders' supporters, he can point out that Sanders had many good ideas and he is adopting some of them. Clinton never really did that, beyond coming quite late to the $15/hour-minimum-wage party.
Second, the primaries this year were far less contentious than in 2016. Biden has gone to enormous lengths to praise Sanders, complimenting his passion and tenacity. Nor did Biden even suggest that Sanders should leave the race, so the Senator's supporters may ultimately be persuaded Sanders left because the situation was hopeless, not because Biden and the DNC forced him out.
Third, Democrats really, really hate Donald Trump. Many of Sanders' supporters believe that a second Trump term would devastate the country, so they may be willing to hold their noses and vote for Biden. In 2016, most of them thought Clinton would win and they wanted to send her a message. It didn't quite work out. This time many fewer Democrats are going to vote for Trump to send the Democrats a message thinking that Biden will win anyway.
One thing Biden can do is focus on issues that excite Sanders' base. One issue the former veep is looking at carefully is the Green New Deal. Most Democrats agree that climate change is real, man-made, and very serious. Biden is never going to accept Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez' plan in toto, but he can accept the general principles and put in his own numbers about how much fossil fuels will be reduced and by when. Biden has also endorsed the bankruptcy plan put forward by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). He will also tout his record on gun control. In short, Biden can probably put together a platform that has enough progressive planks in it to keep the kids from jumping ship en masse, without scaring moderates. (V)
Biden Is Leading Trump by 8 Points Nationally
A new Quinnipiac University national poll has Joe Biden at 49% and Donald Trump at 41%. The poll was taken before Bernie Sanders dropped out, so we don't yet know what the effect of that will be.
The poll also had Trump's approval rating at 45%. That's up from 41% last month, but still well below 50%. The poll also asked which of the two men would be better at managing a crisis. Among the 2,077 registered voters polled, 51% said it would be Biden and 42% said it would be Trump.
Another poll released yesterday is from CNN/SSRS. It shows that 59% of respondents think the economy is in poor shape, vs. 39% that think it is in good shape, for a net of 20 points under water. A month ago it was 39 points above water. That's a shift downward of 59 points in a month. For an incumbent who was planning to run on the economy, this is not welcome news. Also, just about all economists expect the April unemployment numbers to be horrible, so things could get worse. (V)
The Election Wars Have Begun
Culture wars, move over. It is time for the election wars. Wisconsin was the starting gun, but it is going to get much more brutal from here. Last week, Donald Trump admitted that if all eligible voters actually got to cast ballots, Republicans could never be elected again. Consequently, the GOP is going to do everything it can to keep people from voting.
Most likely, the attack will have two major parts. First, they will argue that people should avoid voting in person because they could contract COVID-19 and get sick or die from standing in line. Second, and behind the scenes, the GOP will do everything it can to discourage voting by mail, claiming it is un-American, subject to fraud, and more. And behind the scenes, wherever they have the power, they will try to make it hard to do. Expect Republican-controlled states to erect whatever barriers that they think they can get away with. How about requiring people wanting an absentee ballot to show up at the county election office with a birth certificate and three pieces of government issued photo ID (except student ID cards from state universities don't count), between 2 P.M. and 4 P.M., and on a Thursday whose date is a prime number, in order to file their request? If you don't think Republicans will play dirty to win, read law professor Richard Hasen's book, Election Meltdown.
One thing we can expect to see is a small number of polling places, both due to a desire to make it hard to vote, but also due to a shortage of poll workers (which can be used as a convenient excuse). This happened in Milwaukee on Tuesday and is going to happen in Georgia on May 19.
Another bit of monkey business is listing Republican candidates first on the ballots. Studies show that whichever party is first picks up a couple of points. Democrats have already sued three states, Arizona, Georgia, and Texas, all of which have a state law requiring the Republican to be listed first in every race.
There will be a big PR campaign attacking absentee ballots as a trick concocted by Democrats to get an unfair advantage. Fox News has already run an op-ed by RNC Chairwoman Ronna Romney McDaniel entitled: "Democrats' coronavirus voting plan—this is the way to undermine democracy." This won't be the last such op-ed.
In states where the Republicans control the governor's mansion and the state legislature, notably Florida and Arizona, expect them to do whatever they can to reduce turnout. The blue states will try to make voting easy. In states with a Republican governor and a Democratic legislature (Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont), expect a big battle. Ditto in states with a Democratic governor and a Republican legislature (Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Montana, Michigan, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin). It's going to get ugly, with court battles in many states.
Whether the Supreme Court will be a neutral arbiter of all the cases coming its way remains to be seen, but don't hold your breath. In a Wisconsin case just decided, it overruled the lower courts that had decided that in light of the pandemic, absentee ballots postmarked within a week of Election Day should be counted. Many voters did not know about the decision, which was announced late Monday night, and undoubtedly some of them did not get their ballots in the mail in time.
And that was by no means the Court's first foray into the election wars. In 2013, the Roberts court issued its Shelby County v. Holder decision, which gutted the Voting Rights Act of 1965, thus opening the door to voter suppression in states with a long history of that behavior. In 2018, SCOTUS issued Abbott v. Perez, a 5-4 decision that stated that states should be given a presumption of good faith when someone challenges a state's discriminatory voting laws. In yet another 5-4 ruling in 2018, in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute, the Court upheld the power of states to aggressively purge voters who had missed voting in a few elections. In other words, if you don't exercise your franchise, you lose it. Imagine what the reaction would have been if the Court had ruled that anyone who hadn't exercised his Second Amendment right to buy a gun in the past 5 years could not buy one now. Finally, in Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court ruled in 2019 that if the states want to gerrymander their districts for partisan advantage, the courts have no business reviewing those decisions. You'll be shocked to hear that the vote, in that one, was...5-4. In short, the Roberts Court has not shown much interest in stopping whatever dirty tricks the states dream up to manipulate elections. (V)
Federal Judge Expands Voting Rights of Ex-Felons in Florida
District Judge Robert Hinkle, a Bill Clinton appointee, apparently didn't get the memo saying he has no business telling states what they can and cannot do concerning elections. On Tuesday, the Florida-based judge ordered the state to allow all ex-felons to register and vote, even if they owe fines and court costs.
The backstory here is that in 2018, Florida voters overwhelmingly approved an amendment to the state constitution allowing most felons who had served their time to regain the franchise. The Republican-controlled state legislature very quickly passed a law saying "yeah, but only if you first pay all the fines and court costs you are supposed to pay," knowing full well that most ex-felons have no savings and have trouble finding a job. The intention, of course, was to prevent ex-felons, many of whom are minorities, from voting. The judge's ruling said that the state law requiring payment of fees to vote was an illegal poll tax, something that is expressly forbidden by the 24th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Needless to say, this case is going to land on John Roberts' plate before the election. (V)
Nikki Haley: If People Die, Blame Your Governor
Maybe it's a Hail Mary, or the starting gun for the 2024 race, but former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley wrote an op-ed in The New York Times yesterday basically saying that when trouble strikes, the governors and the president should work together to fix the problem. Sounds nice, but here's the key sentence: "Governors who complain about the Trump administration are, in some cases, attempting to distract from their own failures to plan and execute." Is she saying that when Donald Trump abolished the pandemic section of the National Security Council, each of the 50 states and D.C. should have created its own pandemic section and started buying up ventilators to stash away? Most people would say that planning for huge events that affect the entire country is really on the president's plate, not the governors'.
So why did Haley write this piece? First because, so far, the most deaths have occurred in blue states, so it is nice to blame their governors for the deaths, not Trump. Of course, if the pandemic catches fire in the South, most of the governors there are Republicans, but she'll cross that bridge when she comes to it.
Second, Trump has the well-established habit of using people and then throwing them away like used toilet paper (if you can get any now). The Republican convention is 4 months away, and between now and then Trump could decide Vice President Mike Pence has served his purpose (getting evangelicals on board the S.S. Trump), so he can be discarded now. Since Joe Biden has said he will pick a woman as his running mate, Trump may feel he has to fight fire with fire, or in this case, fight woman with woman. Enter the former South Carolina governor from stage right. By making it clear that she will fight for Trump (when it is useful to her), Haley is positioning herself as a possible running mate. She's even willing to have dinner with a woman she's not married to.
Third, even if Trump doesn't dump Pence for Haley, she's already running for the 2024 Republican nomination. By telling Trump supporters that she can be counted on to defend him, she hopes to create some good will she can cash in on in 4 years. (V)
Democrats Are Going after Ernst in Earnest
Up until now, Democrats were focusing their Senate efforts on Arizona, Colorado, and Maine, but not so much on Iowa. But now they are pouring major resources into the Hawkeye State in an attempt to put it in play as well. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) was fairly popular (57% approval) until recently, but that is now at 47% and Democrats smell blood in the water.
The Democrats are putting their money where their mouths are. They have already booked $26 million in ads for the Iowa Senate race this fall, the second largest amount after North Carolina. The money may be needed, because no top Democrat is running in the primary, which will be held June 2. In fact, none of the five Democrats running to take on Ernst is known by more than 30% of Iowans, so whoever wins will need to introduce himself or herself to the voters. The DSCC would like Theresa Greenfield to win. She grew up on a farm, dusting crops rather than castrating hogs, and has never held political office, but she has a good biography. She put herself through college, got married, and was expecting her second child when her husband, a union electrician, was killed in an accident on the job. With the help of Social Security survivor benefits, she managed, eventually got married again, and raised four children. Naturally, protecting Social Security is a big part of her pitch. (V)
Locking the Barn Door after the Prize Racehorse Has Escaped
As we have pointed out several times now, Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. After getting a briefing in January about how a pandemic was coming, she sold many of her stocks but bought stock in companies that make medical supplies and teleworking software. She said, no, this wasn't illegal insider trading, it was just a coincidence.
In a stupid attempt to fix the PR disaster, she has now announced that she will sell all of her stocks and buy broad exchange-traded funds (ETFs) instead. The message here seems to be: "I don't trust myself not to take advantage of insider information in the future, so I will try to reduce the temptation." Of course, if she gets insider information later that there is going to be a deep depression, she could immediately sell her ETFs.
Loeffler is already taking a pounding. Her Republican opponent in the jungle primary, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), put out a statement reading: "This is essentially a guilty plea, and Georgians who just saw their retirement plans crater while she profited are not going to agree to the plea deal. She's less credible than the Chinese government." Oops. Didn't Ronald Reagan have an Eleventh Commandment about not comparing a fellow Republican unfavorably to the Chinese government? We'll check and get back to you. A spokesperson for the DSCC, Helen Kalla, said: "No matter what PR stunt she comes up with, Sen. Loeffler can't sweep her spiraling stock scandal, and the questions it's raised, under the rug." Both Collins and the DSCC are going to hound the Senator on this until the November election, and if she makes the runoff in January, the DSCC will keep saying she is as corrupt as the day is long. There is a lot of stuff that goes on in the Senate that few voters understand, but using inside information to profit when everybody else is hurting badly is something that most understand quite well. We'll keep an eye out for polls on her race. The most recent poll, taken before Loeffler's financial funny business became known, had Collins at 21%, Loeffler at 19%, Matt Lieberman (D) at 10%, and Raphael Warnock (D) at 6%. (V)
McGrath Has Outraised McConnell
Kentucky is a poor state, but its television stations are going to make out like bandits this year. Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is up for reelection and the knives are out for him. Democrat Amy McGrath has already raised $29.8 million in her attempt to unseat McConnell—and she isn't even the Democratic nominee yet, although she is clearly the favorite in the primary, which has been pushed back to June 23. In contrast, McConnell has raised only $25.6 million.
This kind of money is unprecedented in Kentucky, but it shows how much both parties care about this race. To many Democrats, McConnell is as evil as Trump, but to many Republicans, he is a hero, second only to Trump in importance. They also see him as the brains behind the COVID-19 relief bills. Much of the campaign money, perhaps 80%, is coming from out-of-state donors.
McGrath ran for the House in 2018 and lost, so she has some experience and a donor network, but running statewide is always more difficult, especially against a tough old bird like McConnell. On the other hand, his approval ratings are just terrible (37% approve, 50% disapprove), and Kentucky did elect a Democratic governor last year. (V)
New Jersey Moves Its Primary to July
Now that the Democrats have moved their convention to August, states can hold their primaries in July. Of course, it doesn't really matter any more, since Joe Biden is the only Democrat left standing. Still, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) yesterday said: "I don't want a Wisconsin," as he announced that the state's primary would be held on July 7.
If nothing else, one thing this cycle has produced is the use of state names as common nouns (and not always in a good way) as Murphy just demonstrated. We also have been treated to several variants of "Our app works and we are not going to have an Iowa." (V)
Some Unexpected Effects from the Pandemic
Many of the effects of the pandemic—social distancing, closed schools, etc.—are well known, but there are also quite a few that one might not have expected at first. Here are a few of them. In pending divorce cases involving child custody, when one parent is a health-care worker taking care of COVID-19 patients, the other parent is sometimes arguing that it would be safer for the children to live with the non-health-care worker. Needless to say, parents who are putting their lives on the line to save patients are not happy with losing their children as a result of it. But lawyers for the other parent see an opening and are grabbing it.
Now another one involving lawyers. In New York State, among others, when a person (the testator) signs a will, two witnesses need to be there for the signing. But with social-distancing rules in place discouraging testators, lawyers, and witnesses from hanging out together, people were having trouble signing wills. For elderly people who are starting to show symptoms of COVID-19, saying "will, schmill, I'll sign mine in a couple of weeks" might not be a good idea. So Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) came to the rescue and issued an executive order authorizing witnessing done by videoconference.
Moving on, many people are now working from home and most of those do not appreciate noisy neighbors, something they may not even have noticed when they were away at work all day. People used to relatively quiet office buildings may have trouble working in apartment buildings with crying babies, kids playing soccer in the apartment above them, and more. One suggestion is to leave a plate of cookies in front of the door of the offending apartment with a note blaming the poor construction for the noise and asking if it could be reduced somewhat. Of course, during a pandemic, the recipients of the cookies may think they are being poisoned, so they may throw them out and make even more noise in revenge for the attempted murder-by-cookie.
COBOL programmers are in demand. If you are under 70, you are probably wondering: "What's COBOL?" Well, it was a (dreadful) programming language used on room-sized IBM mainframe computers in the 50s, 60s and 70s. Note that we mean the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, of course, but we took a shortcut and left out the "19"s to save a bit of space. COBOL programmers did the same thing, which caused the Y2K problem in 2000, when computers couldn't tell if John Smith, born in 00, was a newborn or eligible for Social Security. But for a massive effort to patch millions of lines of COBOL code, that would have been a massive disaster on the scale of COVID-19, with electricity plants shutting down automatically because the software thought that the mandatory maintenance had been delayed for 100 years and much more. Anyway, COBOL is back in the news because the software that handles unemployment claims in many states is written in COBOL and desperately needs to be updated. But nearly all COBOL programmers are either long retired or dead and universities haven't taught COBOL in 40 years so there are no young ones. States in New England plus Oklahoma and Mississippi are working together to update their software, but they expect it to take at least a year. Meanwhile, their existing software can't handle the massive flood of applications.
Food banks are overwhelmed. In Omaha, a food pantry that normally serves 100 people a day is getting close to 1,000. In some states, the National Guard has been called out to keep order at food pantries and prevent riots as desperate and hungry people try to get food for their families. The drone video below shows cars lined up for miles trying to get to a food bank outside of Pittsburgh.
Hundreds of cars wait to receive food from the Greater Community Food Bank in Duquesne. Collection begins at noon. @PghFoodBank @PittsburghPG pic.twitter.com/94YFaO7dqX
— Andrew Rush (@andrewrush) March 30, 2020
Public transit everywhere is in a death spiral. Reduced ridership on buses, subways, trams, and trains means the agency gets less income from fares at a time when governments are squeezing their budgets to buy more ventilators at inflated prices due to competition for the scarce units. Yet in many cities, public transit is essential for doctors and nurses to get to work to care for the sick, so curtailing service can have a negative effect on public health.
Some people have recently moved to a new city and have no friends there. As long as they had colleagues to talk to around the water cooler at work, that was OK for some of them. The trouble is that most teleworking software doesn't have a "virtual water cooler" button and some people are becoming lonely sitting at home by themselves all day. It is especially bad for men, for whom work is often their main social interaction.
And of course, these are only a few of the many examples of where the virus and stay-home orders have unexpected implications. (V)
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