Preventing Economic Collapse

I'm not a good enough economist to assess Yglesias's argument. It strikes me as obvious that we will need much more government action to prevent a depression. That action must come from the federal government, because states are usually not allowed to carry debt. The federal government is currently controlled by a wannabe mob boss with the attention span of a 3 year old on a sugar binge and a host of anti-government ideologues.

Thinking of this moment in the economy as a crisis in demand is all well and good, but what we are really looking at is more like a natural disaster - except it's hitting the whole country and not just one part of it. What happens when the disaster ends? Yglesias makes the point that we shouldn't wait for that to happen, but mobilize people to do Covid-19 related work.  That seems sound. 

What happens, though, if we get a good handle on this with a new treatment and we can get back to "normal" at some point in the fall? How do we bail out people behind on mortgage and rent? How do we prop up small businesses as well as large corporations?

What's more, how do we insure that we don't get a repeat of 2009, where the Republican Party absolutely refused to lift a finger to help Americans, because to do so would help a Democratic president?

Paradigm Shift

As we move into the bold new world of distance learning, it will be interesting to see what sort of vestigial effects the Great Distancing of 2020 leave behind. When we emerge into the other side of this, I think we will rush back into our social spaces. I miss the lunch table with colleagues.

The counterweight will be the push from employers who will be facing critical economic pressures to do more remote work.  Telecommuting will simultaneously get a boost and pushback. 

School is tough.  Ultimately, school is about personal interactions. It's face to face. Doing this online is going to feel artificial.  My eldest son is already really struggling with that (he's not a big fan of school anyway).

It seems unlikely that we "return to normal" because we are shifting what normal is.  The pressure will be to recreate human spaces in the face of "market pressure" to maintain cost efficient distance work.  I think I'm safe as a teacher, but I don't know what will happen in other forms of employment.

Don't Freak Out About Polls

Most polls show Trump getting a noticeable bounce since early March.  For objective, rational observers, this is crazy.  Trump's handling of Covid-19 has been terrible and counterproductive.  The most effective leadership has been at the state level.

Needless to say, this has led to panic among the Manic Progressives. 

There is ample reason to believe that Trump's Bump is both underwhelming and ephemeral. Every leader - as Chait notes in the piece above - is seeing a bump, and most of them are greater than Trump's, even in places like Italy that are being hammered. Carter's approval bumped up 30% after the hostage crisis, and we know what happened with Dubya after 9/11.

More importantly, things are going to get worse.  Economically, epidemiologically we are in the front edge of this crisis. Go to this site, and see what the range of outcomes is for your state.  Most of the population is currently living under shelter in place, but there are large swaths of mostly "Red" states only practicing social distancing. 

Let's look at Florida. Governor Dipshit down there is refusing to take the steps necessary to save lives, despite the fact that Florida is famously known for being full of old people. If he stays on this course, cases won't start to explode until April 13th, two weeks from now.  Two week after that, the hospital are overloaded. Meanwhile, look at the current epicenter, New York.  We are starting to hear the horror stories coming out of NYC, but we are still a few weeks away from overload.  New York has begun to institute lockdown procedures that could conceivably work to stop this from happening.  If so, NY will start to get better around the same time Florida explodes.

Going back to Florida, the current social distancing policy means this will stretch into June.  That means no "V shaped" economic recovery.  That means tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of deaths. If anyone thinks Trump will still be coasting along at 49% approval rating at that point, they are crazy.  (Please be assured, I'm not rooting for this.  I'm simply looking at the data from both a historical and epidemiological perspective.)

More sadly, Trump will never fall much below 37%, no matter how much he deserves to. Trump will - successfully among his base - blame the deaths on China and NYC.  They will blame it on impeachment. None of this will be factually true.  We knew this would be bad in the first week of February, and he did nothing for six weeks.  Nothing. It won't matter to Cult 45.  But it will matter to those who are currently giving him the benefit of the doubt in this crisis. 

Rural America

Right now, Covid-19 is raging through urban areas like NYC and New Orleans.  Soon, it will start to spread through rural America.  At the beginning of the month, my son and I were in rural Georgia, while my wife and other son were travelling.  It has been 13 days since they flew across country, so we feel pretty good about where we are.  We are in suburban Connecticut, on the periphery of the NYC outbreak. We have 30 cases in the nearby city of Waterbury, but only 1 recorded case in Watertown.  The further away from NYC and the Gold Coast you get, the better.

But if we do get sick, we are close to two hospitals in Waterbury.

When we were trying to figure out where to ride out this pandemic, we were trying to decide between the family farm in rural Georgia or home in Connecticut.  In the end, we settled on Connecticut because it's likely to be a better place to get sick in, whereas Georgia would be a better place to be healthy in.

I'm honestly not terribly worried about getting Covid-19. We are being careful. What worries me now is some sort of injury that would normally require the Emergency Room.  Right now, I think we'd be OK, but what about a week or two from now?

Rural America is going to get slammed by this in the next 6 weeks. Right now, this tool makes it look like things will get nastiest here around May 14th.  That's in line with more rural states, but we have better health infrastructure in Connecticut.

It's going to cut through rural America - older, sicker and poorer in general than urban America - at some point. 

Too Late; Too Soon

Trump has a plan, y'all:

President Trump said Saturday he may announce later in the day a federally mandated quarantine on the New York metro region, placing “enforceable” travel restrictions on people planning to leave the New York tri-state area because of the coronavirus outbreak.

Of course, there are two main problems with this.  First, it's too late.  The virus is out. It's not in NYC anymore than it was in Wuhan. These travel bans and restrictions are very weak tea against a virus that behaves like Covid-19. It's everywhere.  Maybe these restrictions help keep people from fleeing the city to places that have less health facilities, but that - again - is too late.

It's also a really shitty way to announce something like this.  To announce that you "may" announce it later in the day...Guess who's packing up and fleeing the city right now?

Honestly, the man could screw up a one car parade.

The Debate

Trump and the conservative agitprop outlets have already started framing the question of the Covid-19 response in terms of ending the response, rather than getting clear of the crisis.  In other words, Trump wants to end social distancing and get back to normal. His argument is based on sketchy economic thinking. He assumes that by Easter we can all go back to normal.  My guess is that he's been told by someone that if he doesn't re-open the economy by Easter, the economy won't bounce back by November.

As the Vox piece notes, we are headed for the worst outbreak of Covid-19 in the world. If we pull back on restrictions, we could see a horrific toll.  And it's not just Covid-19. There is evidence from Italy that ALL deaths increase during a mass outbreak, because healthcare providers are overwhelmed from all angles. If you have a heart attack, you can't go to the ER, or if you do, you'll get care that isn't what it otherwise might have been.

Mass death has a negative economic consequence.

April was always going to be the breaking point.  All the epidemiological models have pointed to this. Trump's rash call to end social distancing restrictions on Easter will look as stupid and foolish as his other utterances, as we will be seeing a spike in deaths starting now and continuing for several weeks.  While NYC is the epicenter now, look for Florida and Louisiana to start grabbing attention.

Trump doesn't care about you. He cares about winning re-election. That means - in his estimation - a strong economy.  We are not going to have a strong economy by November. Not if we practice social distancing.  Not if we abandon it. As this fact sinks into that thick orange melon, he will become even more erratic.  That will lead to more deaths, as his cultists follow his lead.

This Is Worrisome

Jon Chait raises a good question: Will Trump withhold aid from states that "don't like him?"

It should come as no surprise that Covid-19 is spreading faster in urban settings and that NYC (and apparently New Orleans) are the main hotspots early in the pandemic. (I have to say I'm curious/impressed at how low the numbers are in California.) There is no greater divide in America right now than rural/urban.  It accounts for how profound our partisan divide is. Again, we are looking at a cultural/identity issue more than any true ideological issue.  Don't believe me?  Look at the Senate bill.

Because Covid-19 is more likely to damage cities, Trump is less likely to pay attention to it.  His desire to "get back to normal" is rooted in his personal narcissism about how city people hate him and his cultural loyalty to his rural/exurban/evangelical voters.

Sadly for those who believe in karma, Covid-19 is frankly unlikely to impact Mississippi the way it will Memphis or New Orleans, no matter what dumbass shit the Governor does.

Unless the aggressive contrarianism of rural conservatives leads them to so flagrantly flout health recommendations that Covid-19 suddenly blossoms along the Bible Belt, the relative death toll in cities and the countryside is going to justify some horrible prejudices from white rural voters.

Coronavirus Animated

Here is a compelling animation of the expansion of Covid-19.

Inevitable

At some point, this was inevitable. Conservatives were always going to move towards "let the old people die for my 401K." There are three reasons why. 

One if that conservatives tend to prioritize the individual over the group. They are probably right that they themselves are not going to die. Even if we took no countermeasures against Covid-19, it would like "only" kill, let's say, 3% of the population in the next year.

That's around 10 million people.  But - statistically speaking - that's unlikely to be you. There is also the mindset, revealed here, that most conservatives naturally think that - left to themselves - they will be fine. It's only when outside forces come to bear that they are screwed.  Their belief in their own rugged individualism is so strong, that they think that they are largely immune from a virus, but African Americans are the reason they can't get ahead at work.

The other strain of thought is that of Republican elites, who largely measure everything through the lens of the 1%. This is more in line with Trump and his advisers. The stock market is tanking and there's an excellent chance that we tilt into a depression.  That's bad for everyone, but for the first time, the millionaire class can feel real panic and pain.  They aren't used to that; they don't like it; they will be heard.

Finally, you have evangelicals.  They tend to have a point of view that is largely hostile to science, and they tend to be in rural areas that are unlikely to be hammered by the virus in the early stages. Liberty University's decision fits neatly into this.  And of course, evangelicals also fit into the other two strains of "getting coronavirus to own the libs."

It would be one thing if their poor decisions only effected them, but it will effect all of us.

Scary, But Accurate

Ezra Klein notes we might be headed for a depression.

This does feel a little like the "Fed Recession" of 1980-82, where the Federal Reserve hiked rates up to a huge level to kill inflation (that was largely a product of high fuel prices anyway). Once the Fed lowered rates, the economy launched a boom during the '80s that created the Reagan Coalition.

If we are lucky, we can get the virus under control by mid-summer and life can return mostly to normal.  But the economic effects of this will be longer lasting. Even with a "V" shaped recovery, it will be next winter or spring before things get back to normal economically.

The Coming Storm

We are starting to see the exponential explosion that we knew was coming.  NYC is seeing it first, but it will start popping up everywhere.  Given the density of the NJ-NY-CT I-95 corridor, it's not surprising that it should be a major epicenter. But all those idiots at Disney World are returning home with it and don't even know it. Clusters will explode all over the country, and because we lack testing we won't even see them coming.

Trump has said that they will reassess in 15 days.  Most likely this is bullshit, but Trump's whole life has been skating away from unpleasant consequence, because he was born rich. I'm sure he thinks that he can skate through this, too. Meanwhile, he's getting dire reports from his health advisors, but he's also looking at the worst economy since 1933.

Trump does not care about you.  And so, if he has to choose between keeping Americans safe by maintaining restrictive distancing and helping his re-election efforts, he will try and lift the distancing requirements. Of course, the federal government has done very little to help enforce this, as it has been state governments that have taken the lead.

If he does start to say that "things are under control," obviously don't listen to him.  The Foxheads will, and that will have disastrous repercussions for all of us and simply prolong this.

April will, indeed, be the cruelest month.

Back In Connecticut

Thing One and I drove from Georgia to Connecticut in record time, because there was so little traffic in the I-95 corridor. (Usually we drive out to Pennsylvania and go down I-81.) We got home about 9:30, whereas usually - on a one day drive - we'd get home after midnight.  Yet the town felt the same at 9:30 as it usually does at midnight. 

Now I have to figure out how to ramp up distance learning in 36 hours.

Trump's Approval Rating

Some people are aghast that Trump's approval rating isn't taking a pummelling.  These are the people who are both A) anti-Trump to begin with and B) not really voracious consumers of news.  Trump is standing at a podium!  He's making word sounds with his mouth!  The fact that those word sounds are wrong or inflammatory is besides the point.

Trump "looks" presidential now, if all you are doing is watching TV with the sound off. Back in the '80s, Michael Deaver apparently called NBC to thank them for a segment on Reagan cutting Medicare.  NBC was flummoxed.  Why would he thank them for a negative segment?  Deaver explained that all people heard were "Reagan" and "Medicare" and assumed that it was a positive story.

The fact of the matter are the facts of the matter. This is going to get worse. We are going to start to see horror stories from NYC hospitals on the news.  And it will not be over in 2-4 weeks.  Absent a vaccine, we will continue to get hot spots and outbreaks as we relax the social distancing. 

The economy is headed for a depression. Frankly, 2008 was likely a depression, but if we define a depression as a loss of 10% of GDP over two quarters, then I think we are likely headed to a depression.

Trump had one thing going for him: the economy.  It will be a hot mess by November. He will also likely have more outbursts on camera, including a likely complete meltdown.  Looking at his approval ratings now is silly.  He's getting some hopeful rally-round-the-flag bump, but it won't last.

Bernie Needs To Quit

With Tulsi Gabbard dropping out and - unexpectedly - endorsing Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders is the only obstacle to unifying the party and defeating Donald Trump in November. While he made some efforts on Hillary Clinton's behalf in 2016, they were fairly weak and undermined by his toxic surrogates.

Sanders needs to end this.  There are weeks before the next primary - if it even happens. He can use Covid-19 as an excuse, but this needs to happen.

He's toast.  Biden will be the nominee. Right now, voting is a shade perilous.

Why "China Virus" Matters

Trump's newest rhetorical tic is to call the coronavirus the China Virus (or Ginuh virus). 

The immediate response in some corners is to call this racist.  OK, it sort of is, but like with a great deal of Trump's racism, it's usually a feint as much as a threat.  He wants you to freak out at him calling it the China Virus, because his cultists have already decided that this is all China's fault. This is more an expression of Trump's xenophobia and isolationism than any direct racism directed at China (though we have anecdotal evidence that Chinese and Chinese Americans are being harassed or at the very least their businesses are being boycotted).

Trump is most likely screwed come November.  We are about to enter a recession that could actually be a depression. The one thing people tended to give Trump credit for was the economy.  The fact that it's kind of ridiculous to credit him for an expansion that started before he became president is besides the point. What's more worrisome is that Trump kept Wall Street humming with massive tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy. That money is now gone, and we are talking about bailing out many of those industries who used their tax cuts for share buyback programs rather than saving for a rainy day.  Wall Street knows this.  Look at the Dow.

The immediate influx of cash (emergency UBI) will help, but this is uncharted waters for a modern economy.  He was never popular. He's looking at -10 approval ratings and -21 right track/wrong track metric before the shit has really hit the fan.  His cultists will never abandon him, so he's unlikely to get much below 40% of the popular vote, but that's not enough.

Which brings me back to China. Trump's a master of deflection. There is a plausible argument that a pandemic is largely beyond the control of any president. However, Trump spent the previous six weeks downplaying Covid19 and it's all on tape. He's only recently come around to realizing how bad this will be.  For him.  He doesn't give a shit about you.  But he knows that a cratered economy is terrible news for him.  Thus, the Republicans are embracing massive Keynesian cash distributions to spur demand.

But that won't be enough.  Hence, the "China Virus." 

First, he will blame this entire thing on China.  Again, China deserves some blame for the early handling of this virus, but that was back in December. Blaming China for this three months afterwards is a stretch, but that won't matter to the cultists. Deflect, deflect, deflect. "I take no responsibility for this" drove normal people crazy, because it's such an appalling abandonment of leadership, but that's OK.  He's not talking to you.  He's talking to his base, and they are ready to blame this on everyone but him.

Second, he needs both internal and external scapegoats.  China is the external one, and now anyone who criticizes him will be selling out America to China.  The Media and Democrats will be in league against him and Real Muricans. Grievance and siege mentality are the natural stance of modern "conservatism."

Trump is incapable of learning, but he knows what he knows.  And he knows how to skate responsibility because he's been doing it his whole life.  Declare bankruptcy, divorce another wife, spin a farrago of bullshit. I doubt very much this will work given the brutal arithmetic of Covid19, but again, Trump knows what he knows and I expect this will be the focus of the next month (not trying to stop the virus).

This Fucking Guy

I wandered into my mom's room to help her with some tech stuff and Hair Furor was on the TV.  He was asked about the reports that we turned down Covid19 tests from the WHO.  He pivoted immediately to a butthurt rant about the media and the boring Democratic debate.

The more I think about the likely outcome of the pandemic, the less I think we will see the worst case scenarios. The key is to look at China and especially South Korea and Taiwan, as they begin to loosen restrictions. The problem is that as long as the virus exists among any human population, it remains a threat to the entire population that hasn't had it yet.

The somewhat draconian measures being taken in my home state should work to "flatten the curve" but what happens when it hits Texas, which is taking no statewide measures?  Or Connecticut and New York start to relax in mid-May only to have a cluster explode in Kansas? 

That's why having a bloviating sack of orange bile as president is so damaging. He is incapable of thinking about anything beyond himself.  I'm no saint, but I'm not especially concerned that I might die of the virus, despite being on the cusp of being at-risk because of my age (and apparently size). I'm terrified for my mother.  And your grand/mother. And so on.  Because I'm not a fucking sociopath.

Meanwhile, we still haven't be able to get an aid package through the GOP Senate.

Population Density

As I write this, we are seeing aggressive actions by governors in the northeast which are exactly what we need nationwide. I am doubtful we will see these sort of nationwide actions soon, but hopefully I'm wrong.

Obviously, we are trying to avoid "the Italian Scenario." I have some hope we might for a few reasons.  In certain areas, we are seeing the sort of aggressive actions NOW that Italy took TOO LATE.  The other is simply population density.  Look at this map:

Europe is very urban, and northern Italy, as you can see, is heavily urban, if we include towns. Those charming videos of Italians singing to each other on balconies is an example of the residential concentration most Europeans live in.  City centers are walkable and people live close to where they work.

The US has much less density, as you can see here:

And where have we seen the most cases? The red spots in Seattle, California, the Northeast and Florida.  Colorado and Louisiana also have more than 100 cases, and Georgia, New Jersey and Illinois will join them today.

This is why the governors of New York, Connecticut and New Jersey have gotten together to put in place a modified Italian lockdown. Patton Oswalt made a joke about trying to do what Italians did, by standing out on his lawn and doing stand-up in his suburban neighborhood. It was funny. But it also shows how different the experience could be in America.

Don't get me wrong.  This is bad and going to get worse.  But we might be saved by an accident of our geographic dispersal.

Has Anyone In History

been more entitled to say "I told you so!" than Hillary Clinton?

What Bernie Got Wrong

Jon Chait is pretty persuasive here.

It's Going To Get Worse, But It's Not The Apocaplypse

The last pandemic was actually in 2009, with the Swine Flu pandemic.  This has seemed to be worse, for reasons I'm not entirely sure of.  It's unclear exactly what the mortality rate is, for one thing. There is also the fact that the spread is remarkably quick.  We can expect a massive increase in diagnoses with or without testing. That's been the pattern so far around the world and it will replicate here.

On the one hand, anywhere from 300 to 650 thousand people die every year of the flu.  If some of the epidemiological predictions are accurate, we could see numbers like that in the US alone. About 400,000 American died of all causes during World War II.   Compress those numbers into six months.

It doesn't help that the leadership of this country is completely unequal to the task before it.

Why Biden?

Ezra Klein tries to figure out why Joe Biden looks like he's headed for the nomination. There are some interesting insights - like how voters don't care if a candidate is especially articulate.  He concludes that a lot of Democrats are A) not extremely online and plugged in and therefore B) mostly interested in just getting rid of Trump and therefore C) think Biden can bring back some sense of normalcy.

That makes more or less sense. The Big Transformational Candidates - Sanders and to a lesser degree Warren - have a hold on roughly a third of the Democratic electorate. Most other Democrats see one critically important quality for the 2020 nominee: Can this person beat Donald Trump? Trump has been seen - rightly - as a threat to America's very governing institutions. He's a wannabe authoritarian and a moron who is floundering his way through office in the midst of potentially the worst pandemic since 1919.

And that's where Klein loses the thread.  He ends by saying that Trump has never gotten about 50% approval rating, but that people are generally happy about the economy.  Here's his conclusion:

Still, Democrats have to face the fact that there are a lot of voters who are happy with the economy and just don’t like Trump. Biden’s pitch to them, basically, is that he’ll remove Trump from office but not do anything drastic to alter economic trends. That may be a better strategy than much of the left believes.

The obvious hole in the center of that argument is that the economy is collapsing.

Therefore, what Biden is selling isn't Trump's Economy Without The Tweets.  What Biden is selling is a return to something normal.  This infuriates Sanders' supporters who see the whole system as fundamentally broken: Capitalism Red in Tooth and Claw. 

If - as most suspect - Covid-19 gets worse, Biden's message should resonate even more. Providing he doesn't get sick, which - no kidding - scares the crap out of me.

Get Bloomberg's Ad Team Ready

What's so incredible about the modern GOP, the party of Trump, is how adept they are doing the worst thing at the worst moment.  Let's start with Trumpist congressman Matt Gaetz. He mocked the seriousness of Covid-19 by wearing a gas mask to the floor vote for emergency spending (even as he voted for the funding). A constituent of his has died.  More will. Nice look from one of the biggest assholes in the House.

And then, of course, Trump himself. His press appearances have been so bizarre and off-putting that public health officials are no doubt driven to drink by his utterances.  Every time Trump - or Larry Kudlow - makes a statement that the virus is contained, they are writing the inevitable attack ads that will be aired against them. You have them actively undermining health officials in order to keep the economy perky. Meanwhile, there was a Tweet from the American Hospital Association that suggested this could be the impact over the next two months in the US:

96,000,000 infections 4,800,000 hospitalizations 1,900,000 ICU admissions 480,000 deaths vs flu in 2019: 35,500,000 infections 490,600 hospitalizations 49,000 ICU admissions 34,200 deaths

Those are startling numbers. The absolute deaths is roughly similar to the 1919 flu pandemic (although from a larger population with better overall health care). If that's true, the odds of you losing a loved one or a friend from this illness are high.  To have Trump blithely making his usual idiotic statements in front of cameras...(At this point, if Biden doesn't get Covid-19 himself, he will win in a walk. Same goes for Bernie.  It's odd that the race for president will come down to three men in their 70s in the middle of a pandemic that is especially hard on men in their 70s.)

Italy basically quarantined a population the size of greater NYC. That's simply impossible here.

Here's some basic political science.  A government's ability to act is largely controlled by two factors: capacity and autonomy.  Capacity is simply the technical and economic ability to act.  The US has typically been a pretty "high capacity" country. The US government can exert force across the globe, keep law and order, promote economic growth...it is able to act.  Trump, however, has bled a great deal of this capacity away from stripping the government of experts.  We are seeing this daily. Autonomy is the freedom to act. Democratic governments have pretty low autonomy, because the government is usually bound by law and the will of the populace.  Trump has shown no respect for the rule of law or popular opinion, but he does represent the Fox News POV that all government action is bad, except that which makes him personally rich.  The US government can't quarantine Washington State or any other Covid-19 hot spot, because our system of government won't allow it and our government is currently being run by anti-science morons.

By the time we get our act together, it will be too late, and those numbers above will be the reality.

In A Just World...

If life was fair, Covid-19 would be treatable by a vaccine invented by a Mexican and all of Trump Deplorables would refuse to take it.

Instead, we get the Keystone Kops running things.

Sobering

Read this take from China. Basically, China was able to shut down...everything...in the course of a few days.  We can't and won't do that.  The correspondent said we would likely have a response between Italy and Iran, between bad and awful. 

Warren

I have given Elizabeth Warren more money than any other candidate running this cycle.  I'm sad she won't be part of the primary process going forward. (Frankly, Harris should jump back in, just because.)

However, I think since she couldn't be Jack Kennedy, she should focus on becoming Ted Kennedy.  She understands the Senate and its flaws more than most anyone.  Be the Lioness of the Senate.

Someone Else's Stupid Can Kill You

We know that stupid decisions by others can harm you. Drunk driving. Shooting guns in the air. Voting Republican.  But what is worrisome is how the immeasurable stupidity of Donald Trump could lead to thousands of death.

Fox sycophants like Sean Hannity are already parroting moronic claims.  Trump, for instance, suggested that people who were sick still go to work.  Someone undoubtedly explained to him - slowly, using small words and pictures - that declining economic activity would lead to a recession.  So, like George Bush urging us to respond to 9/11 by going shopping, Trump wants the register person at McDonald's to come to work with coronavirus. 

Most of us will not die from Covid-19. But the elderly, the immunocompromised and those with pulmonary conditions are at real risk. Ironically, Trump ran strongest with people over the age of 50. He now seems to be trying to actively kill them. 

If this was confined to Fox News junkies, then...OK, live by the stupid, die by the stupid.  But Trump won the over 65 crowd with 52% of the vote. That left 45% of the vote for Clinton and the remaining scattered among Jill Stein and Gary Johnson. Those people will get sick and die, too. Like in a case of anti-vax idiocy, it's not just the imbecile who refuses to get vaccinated that gets sick.

Ugh.

Exactly This

Ezra Klein explains why Bernie got trounced last night. My favorite source was a tweet that read:

If Biden wins the nomination, it will be a real lesson in how power works. Bernie was on track to win, Biden had no campaign, and they all knew it. So a few phone calls were made behind the scenes to Amy, Pete, Beto. Several million was put into a pro-Warren Super PAC. Voila!

Uh, yeah, except for that Bernie was on track to win bit, politics is about power.  Some of it is velvet, some of it is steel, but Bernie has NEVER been able to convince people in positions of power within the party that he's a good bet.

Revolutions really don't work, especially when your shock troops can't be bothered to wait in line to vote.

About That Youth Vote....

I had a Twitter conversation with a former student, whose intelligence I greatly respect, about the primary.  She is a Sanders supporter and made the argument that many of his supporters have been making online that Bernie will bring all sorts of new voters to the polls and overwhelm whatever negatives his "Socialist" label creates among suburban and rural voters.

Yeah, about that...

As I argued with her, campaigns have been relying on the youth vote for decades.  Certainly since the voting age was lowered to 18. McGovern was the first person to fall into this trap, but hardly the last. They simply don't show up. 

Last night reinforced that. 

Take Texas.  I thought Biden might scrape out a win there, but he wound up winning by 3.5% points (at the moment). It turns out Houston is bigger than Austin.  Or look at Virginia.  There was a massive increase in voter turnout, but most of that support went to Biden. In 2016, about 785,000 people voted in the Virginia primary.  This year it was over 1,300,000. Sanders won 35% of the vote in 2016, but only 23% this time around, despite actually winning 30,000 more votes.

For better or worse, the 2020 Democratic coalition begins with African Americans but then goes through the suburbs. While Sanders' supporters will lament the shift to the center to cement those votes, the unpleasant reality for them is those people vote. The self-reinforcing echo chamber of social media led them to believe they represented a revolutionary majority, but that was never the case.  Even Sanders' strong 2016 showing can increasingly be seen as "anti-Hillary" rather than the truly broad-based foundation to win the 2020 election.  If anything, it demonstrates that his support is capped at around 25-30% of the Democratic electorate.

Perhaps he would've been the best nominee.  As I've written, I highly doubt it.  As 2020 will be a referendum on Trump, Biden seems like a decent foil for him. 

Biden does have manifold flaws.  As his campaign comes back under the spotlight, he needs to pivot to rallies with canned speeches and - as his money picks up - paid media.  Mike Bloomberg needs to drop out and send his media team to work for Joe.

As others have written, South Carolina and Super Tuesday simply returned us to the pre-Iowa landscape.  It's back to being Bernie v Biden, just like it was for most of the fall.

Could They Flip?

This is a fascinating story about a white, college educated woman from Augusta, GA.  With all the usual caveats about the plural of anecdote not being data, it sheds an interesting light on a prevailing issue.  When Clinton lost in 2016, much was made of the fact that she lost white women.  However, she did barely prevail with white women outside the South (52%).  She fared much better overall with white women who had college degrees. 

The question is whether those white women with college degrees in suburban Atlanta and Charlotte and Charleston and Tampa and Nashville could flip their allegiances (the way many did in the suburbs of Philly in 2018).  That's the appeal, frankly, of someone like Joe Biden. His basic normalcy is reassuring to those women (and men) voters who are thinking of moving away from Trump's GOP. It's unsure that they will, but if they do....

Equally fascinating in the piece is the husband of the woman profiled.  He's the sort of person who tried college, hated it and returned home.  He made a conscious choice to reject that outside world and return to the ways he grew up in.  He will never live anywhere but the county he was born in. When he speaks about Trump, he describes a man that bares no resemblance to the grotesque in the White House.  Read the following:

Besides her, his world had been a world of men. He kept the deer heads on the garage wall because they reminded him of some of the best times of his life hunting with his father, his brothers, his friends and the bonds they formed then. He went to the Sunday men’s group at the Baptist church and prayed the prayers of men who wished to be “godly,” by which Phillip meant “honest” and “responsible,” the sort of man a neighbor could call if a limb fell on his driveway and he needed help removing it. He kept guns not just because he liked to hunt but because he felt that being a responsible man meant protecting his family, and protecting his America from a rogue government if things came to that.

“All it takes is for the wrong guy to get in there,” he said. “I want to be in control. I don’t want to be defenseless.”

He preferred an America that left him alone: one where government was small, gun rights protected and borders secure, all of which he had felt was threatened during the presidency of Barack Obama, and all of which he felt was restored by the election of Donald Trump.

“I feel like I got somebody on my team,” Phillip said. “Someone to look out for me in the world. I feel I have someone on my side, helping me look out for the safety of my family.”

He knew that Miranda had some issues with Trump’s behavior.

“She finds Trump sometimes a little off-putting with his personality,” he said. “She does get kind of like, ‘I wish he wouldn’t say that.’ But I’m more of a results guy. I’m not as concerned about his brash statements as Miranda. I think he’s probably grown a lot as a man in a good way. I see him as being a gracious man.”

He thought about why he and Miranda might see things differently.

“She tends to run on emotion,” he said. “Not to make a sexist statement, but a lot of women do. I run more on logic. I think that balances us well.”

Here he is: the man who can see in Trump...graciousness.  Who can see "results."  If Covid-19 turns into a worst case scenario, with a million dead Americans and a global recession, he will explain it all away as being China's fault or God's will.  He's lost to reason.

But if white Southern women link arms with the Democratic party, it puts into play Georgia, North Carolina, Texas and perhaps eventually Tennessee and Florida.

Biden Has Had A Pretty Good Week

Super Tuesday will tell us a lot about Bernie's ability to solidify voters beyond his base.  If most of Buttigieg, Steyer and Klobuchar's support goes to Biden (or even Warren) that could be a real problem for Sanders.  Unfortunately for Biden and Democrats who care about the Democratic Party, Bloomberg remains frustratingly relevant.  I would've thought Warren would have put an end to all that.

Anyway, tomorrow is going to be completely unpredictable.

Yes, It's Everywhere

As I argued Friday, Covid-19 is everywhere. There are likely hundreds, potentially thousands of people walking around with the virus.  Maybe they're sick, maybe they aren't. The inability to test for the virus means that as more tests are available, more people will be found to have the virus. Those tests will not mean the spread, necessarily, of the virus.  It simply means we know more people who have it.

This is where poor public health policy and the lack of expert control from Washington begins to have an impact. We should have been mass producing test kits since January.  The shortage of those test kits is a massive problem and doesn't bode well for future response times. 

What's more, this will mean that March will see a massive explosion in numbers.  We've seen this in Italy and Iran.  If you look at any country with cases, you will see a mass explosion in cases.  This is as much a testing issue as a transmission issue. Covid 19 has an R-naught of 2.28, which means someone with the virus will usually infect 2.28 people.  That's a geometric, as opposed to algebraic, expansion, and similar to the flu. Because there is no vaccine, there is no stopping or reducing that R-naught. 

The highly contagious nature of the disease combined with its long incubation period means that it's currently spreading beyond the ability of medical professionals to track it.

This explosion in cases will likely accelerate the market crash, since markets are as jittery as a long tailed cat in a rocking chair showroom. The broader question is what effect this will have on actual supply chains. Chinese trade is already collapsing under dual pressures from the virus and the trade war. It seems highly unlikely that stores will run out of food or we will see large scale economic disruptions.  Robert Samuelson lays out the scenario where uncertainty in markets creates a downward spiral. As he notes, interest rates are already very low (a problem that should have been apparent to anyone concerned about a future economic or fiscal crisis) so the policy tools available to the government is pretty low.  If consumer spending collapses in combination with supply chain disruptions, then we will be looking at a significant recession.  Unlike 2008, though, this does not feel like a problem that will drag out for years.

Relying on Trump to make good decisions is a terrible bet however.

Super Tuesday

Most Democratic campaign cycles without an incumbent follows a similar pattern: there's Frontrunner and Not Frontrunner.

In 2000, Gore and Bradley.

In 2008, Clinton and Obama.

In 2016, Clinton and Sanders.

2004 was something of a mess, and panicky Dems shortcircuited the process and landed on Kerry before things had really sussed themselves out.

To this point, the Frontrunner role switched from Biden to Sanders, and now it looks like Biden has a chance to solidify his position of being Not Frontrunner.  It's tough to really read the electorate, but while Sanders has a solid 25% of the Democratic party, he has struggled a bit in primaries to break past his 25% plateau, with Nevada being the obvious exception.  Last night kept him below 20%.

Super Tuesday will test whether Biden has turned his campaign around or whether opposition to Sanders will continue to leave him in a position where consistently winning 25-30% of the vote puts him in line to get the nomination.

Biden might have the edge in Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, possibly Texas and Virginia.  Sanders obviously has Vermont and Maine, but most importantly, California.

Biden WAY overperformed his polling, and that could be a product of not enough polling of actual primary voters, like older African Americans or a shift to Biden as a bulwark against Sanders.  Pre-election polling had Biden getting between 28 and 44 percent of the vote with the mid to low 30s being common.  He got 48.4% of the vote.  Meanwhile, Buttigieg was between 6-13% in the polls, with most common being around 11%.  He wound up around 8%.  Steyer was between 11 and 16% and finished with 11%. Klobuchar was between 4-6% and finished with 3%.

If the other moderates lose a third of their support to Biden in a place like California, then he could catch Bernie there.

We will know a LOT more come Wednesday.