Month: March 2020

When considering what went wrong with Bernie Sanders’ campaign, I don’t think it pays to overthink it. I pegged him four years ago as someone who had a compelling message and a decent amount of charisma, but no real clue about how to run a serious presidential campaign that might have a chance in hell of winning. To understand his shortcomings is really only to understand what it takes to build a winning coalition, and then to note all the ways in which he never even tried.

I did vote for him for four years ago, but after it was clear that he was defeated and only to bolster the number of progressive delegates who would be at the convention. If I had to choose a president, I would have reluctantly opted for Hillary Clinton simply because I felt she could do the job.

A President Sanders is thinkable in the same way a President Trump is thinkable, but remember how Trump operated once he was sworn in. He delegated most of the work to Congress, which was still run by the exact group of Republicans that he had supposedly vanquished in the primaries. And he didn’t ask them to figure out a way to enact his priorities. Mostly, he deferred to them and let them pursue their own priorities. In a way, the country might as well have elected Marco Rubio as far Mitch McConnell was concerned. For the most part, when Congress attempted to pass Trump’s bills, they failed. More often, they simply ignored his suggestions. In this way, they came to a truce where they’d give rhetorical support to the president and help cover his ass, but they didn’t stick their necks out to do anything they were disinclined to do.

Sanders wouldn’t have the same kind of relationship with Congress. He knows how they operate, for one thing. He’d understand who he needed to talk to to get a bill marked up and passed. But he’d have the same lack of allies and support. He’d face the same kind of reluctance to push his agenda. The main difference is that he wouldn’t get the same level of deference that Trump enjoys.

He wouldn’t simply accept this, but there wouldn’t be much he could do about it either. He could support primary challengers against Democrats who criticized him or refused to go along with him on procedural votes, but that would just anger Congress and make them less cooperative.

Essentially, he’d arrive in the White House with a divided party and the divisions would just get worse with each passing day. That’s why a post-mortem on his campaign need not be overly complicated. His second campaign was an improvement on his first in nearly every way, but not in the way that really mattered. He did need to have a more professional staff and better organization. He did need to do more outreach to minority populations. But he mainly had to win over a decent chunk of the party establishment. He could do this in two ways. One was the strategy Trump used, which was to ignore the establishment entirely and focus on winning over the base. The base would then serve as a disciplinary cudgel he could use against the establishment. But the base of the Democratic Party isn’t as reflexively anti-government as the base of the Republican Party, and Bernie was calling for more faith in government, not less. This limited the power of his anti-establishment message and made it insufficient for capturing the loyalty of the base.  The Democratic base is still largely loyal to Barack Obama, and that simply wasn’t the situation Trump faced with George W. Bush and John McCain.

So, Bernie had no choice but to pursue support from within the establishment. There was no way to do that without adjusting his message. Beyond that, he had to listen to politicians who could tell him what their constituents would tolerate and what they would not. He didn’t have to be buddy-buddy with every Democrat in Congress, but he did need to build up some good will and trust.

He never seriously attempted to do this. And this is the exact reason that his presidency would never have been any more successful than his campaign. His agenda would have been dead on arrival, and he appears completely incapable of making adjustments even when the need for adjustments could not be more compelling.

Before Sanders demonstrated presidential ambitions, I was a big fan of his, but I never once thought he was a serious candidate or was remotely capable of leading the Democratic Party. Four years ago, this didn’t concern me too much as he was clearly just a message/protest candidate. What bothered me then was how so many of supporters couldn’t understand math and wouldn’t accept that he was beaten.

This time around, however, he actually had a shot at winning. He needed the field to remain large and divided, but he was assured of winning delegates almost everywhere, and only Joe Biden could say the same. His job, then, was to focus on winning over the support of other candidates so that he could get their endorsements when they dropped out. He never seriously tried to do this either. He completely blew any chance he had at a Warren endorsement, for example, and he made no headway with any of the others.

His efforts to expand his base failed as young voters failed to surge to the polls and minorities only warmed to him in modest numbers. He did nothing to allay the fears of potential Democratic allies. He failed to build good relationships with any of his competitors.

All of this was so predictable that I predicted it for four straight years.

He doesn’t know how to change who he is, and that might be a selling point for some but it’s the reason he’ll never be president. Progressives have always needed a different messenger, and maybe now they’ll be forced to find one.

Image credit: Clarksville Now

I guess it was about a week or two ago when I first began to entertain the notion that I’d need to be leaving Nashville, Tennessee—my home for the past four years—and decamp for someplace safer during the coming COVID-19 pandemic. Unlike our Glorious Leader, I DID see the shit storm that was blowing up, because I do things like “reading newspapers” and “listening to the news” and “generally keeping up on what’s going on in the world.”

By the time I dropped off my son with his mother in early March—who knows when I’ll see him again, now that the Canadian border is closed for nonessential travel, thanks Donald, thanks Republicans—I was already worried about some of the choices I might need to make. That was hammered home over the past week, as the New York Times (or was it the Washington Post? Pardon my Internet brain, I simply can’t recall) ProPublica published an interactive map in which you could select your metro area and see how coronavirus was expected to hit. Readers were prompted to select varying levels of infection, ranging from 20% on up to 100% 60%, and the map would illustrate how overwhelmed the hospital system would be.

First I clicked on Philly, a city of 1.5 million people, the poorest large city in the United States, a massive heroin and homelessness problem, and—as much as I love it—kind of a clusterfuck. I stuck with 20% infection, which resulted in something like 127% of beds occupied.

Yikes, right?

Well, Nashville is half the size of Philadelphia, just 650,000 people. And although it’s currently cash-poor, it’s the state capitol and pretty well-off. At 20% infection rate, however, 225% of hospital beds were occupied.

That’s on top of the fact that the state is nearly dead last for rural hospital closures. They closed another just last week. This is mainly because Tennessee is run by far right wingnuts who, to this day, hate Obama so much, they have refused to expand Medicaid.

I’m nearly 50 years old, which makes me higher risk for COVID-19 complications. I also have asthma—thankfully, it’s mild but that also jacks up my risk. I lost my job about a week ago, also due to COVID-19. I was already considering these things when the shit began hitting the fan. Lockdowns. Shelter-in-place. Reports from Lombardy. But it was Canada’s first border restriction that really hit me. What if they close down the highways? What if I can’t leave the state? What if I get stuck? The last thing I wanted was to put myself in a position where I needed treatment I couldn’t get. The last thing I wanted was to get news from Philly that my dad or his wife were in hospital, and I couldn’t get there.

Over the past week, I watched the Tennessee legislature—already defying people pleading with them to shut down meetings to prevent the spread of the virus—focus on such important matters as making the Bible the state book and doing away with carry permits. We made the Rachel Maddow Show as one of seven states doing nothing to stop the spread of coronavirus.

So on Wednesday, I decided I wasn’t sticking around to live through a humanitarian disaster in a failed state, which is what Tennessee is, or will be once all of this is done. I packed up the necessities, and prepared for the 13-hour drive for my father’s house in Philadelphia.

But I woke up Thursday morning feeling a little under the weather—which could have been due to sitting up late and drinking beer with my housemate, but could also be… well, you know. So I decided to drop by Vanderbilt Medical’s walk-in clinic, which is one of the few sites where you can get tested in Nashville.

I arrived around 9:45 AM, and added my name to the list. After waiting about 20 minutes to get called, the fellow sitting next to me said he had signed in at 8:30, got his first interview (it’s a two-tiered process, apparently) at 9:30, and was still waiting to be seen. He was upset and irritated. Everyone was wearing masks. A morbidly obese derelict whose personal aroma was like being punched in the face pushed his wheelchair around the room with his foot, coughing and hacking loudly and incessantly, and making everyone more nervous than they already were. He spit in the water fountain. President Trump was on the TV doing a press conference: he was lying as usual. It’s easy to tell when he’s lying, by the way—the tell is when his lips move. It was also making people nervous. The man next to me kept complaining to anyone who would listen.

A few minutes later, a staffer walked to the entrance and posted a new sign. Apparently, they were turning away people who wanted tests, although no one was saying anything. It was nearly 10:30 in the morning, and they were… out of tests? Who’s to say? Neither the governor, nor the legislature, nor the Tennessee Department of Health has been straight with the people they serve: the latter won’t even say how many ventilators they have. [The article also points out Nashville’s big shelter, Room at the Inn, will no longer let people stay overnight. So the city’s homeless population, which is a lot larger than you might imagine, are now stuck out on the streets (or hanging out at McDonald’s until it closes) presumably getting infected and spreading COVID-19. This isn’t meant as a slam on homeless people, just an acknowledgement of the unsafe conditions they are exposed to on a daily basis, and how those unsafe conditions now have much wider public health ramifications.] But yes, continue to address the pressing matter of the Bible, which you obviously have never read, or there wouldn’t be a homelessness crisis to begin with, you damned hypocrites.

Seeing that sign go up at the clinic made me realize I was doing the right thing. I didn’t even stick around for the test: a quick Google search showed me that Philadelphia already had drive-through clinics, and more than one (Nashville has none). I asked the woman behind the desk to take my name off the list, exited the building, started the van and got the Hell out of Dodge.

Some of you may know that Nashville had its ass kicked by a horrible tornado, which cut right across the state. I wasn’t in town for that disaster, and have spent most of my time back in isolation at my house. So I-40 East was an eye-opener. As I traveled through Williamson Wilson County, it was sheer fucking devastation, the likes of which I have never seen in person before. Hundreds of trees torn up from the ground, scattered around like toothpicks. Homes torn in two. Whole stands of pines still bowed over, three weeks after the storm. All I could think of was those closed hospitals, the refusal to expand Medicaid, and the obvious disaster that was going to make that tornado look like a carousel ride.

I’m safely at my father’s house now. Self-isolation and quarantine are a real issue here—as I said, he and his wife are in their 70s—and the extent we’ve gone to is a whole other level of crazy. It’s a very rational, reasonable, and necessary kind of crazy, but nuts all the same. I’ll write a post about that later.

Hello again painting fans.

This week I will be continuing with the painting of the Grand Canyon. The photo that I’m using (My own from a recent visit.) is seen directly below.

I’ll be using my usual acrylic paints on a 5×7 inch canvas panel.

When last seen the painting appears as it does in the photo seen directly below.

Since that time have continued to work on the painting.

I have now completed the central butte, shadows and lit areas. All other elements are complete as well. The painting is now done.

The current and final state of the painting is seen in the photo directly below.

I’ll have a new painting to show you next week. See you then.

One thing I can say with confidence is that what comes after this pandemic will have only a passing resemblance to what preceded it, which means that none of our political assumptions are safe. That definitely goes for the red/blue divide in this country, and for what seats should be considered safe.

The Cook Political Report (subscription only) now believes that the Democrats have a 50 percent chance of winning control of the Senate:

“Biden leading the ticket, instead of Sanders, was the first blow for Republicans, making the ties they’d hoped to make between socialism and the Democratic Party much harder. But then came the COVID-19 outbreak. The Trump administration’s slow reaction to manage this health crisis has many Republicans worrying a souring environment will only further endanger already vulnerable GOP senators.”

“One top Republican strategist described it as the ‘perfect storm’ against them. All these things taken together mean that the chances of Democrats taking back the Senate are rising, and is now close to 50-50 odds.”

I’m a little bit more optimistic than that. I thought the Democrats’ odds were at least that good before the coronavirus crisis overtook the world. They only need a net gain of three seats to win control if Biden wins the election, and a net four seats if he doesn’t (because the vice-president breaks 50-50 ties in the Senate).

The most likely path was for the Democrats to win seats in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and North Carolina. Assuming that Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama won’t be able to hold his seat, that would still be enough to get the Democrats to 50-50.  I figured this was not only doable, but likely.

Now I’m wondering what it would take for the Democrats to win a filibuster-proof 60 seats.

Consider that Goldman Sachs is now predicting a 24 percent economic contraction in the second quarter. Or, ponder the possible fallout from senators selling off stocks after receiving a private briefing on the severity of the pandemic threat while keeping their constituents in the dark. All but one of the senators so far implicated are Republicans, including both of the senators representing Georgia.

Until recently, the contest in Montana didn’t look competitive, but now Democratic Governor Steve Bullock has changed course and agreed to run for Steve Daines’s senate seat. The first poll of the race shows it dead-even.

Another race that looks newly competitive is in Alaska, where the Democrats have agreed not to field a candidate. Incumbent Republican Dan Sullivan isn’t even from Alaska and his opponent is an orthopedic surgeon who intended all along to run on health care, which is exorbitantly expensive for Alaskans. Al Gross will run as an independent, but he’ll caucus with the Democrats if he wins. Think of him as a cross between Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont.

The race in Texas was already looking like it might give the Republicans trouble, with Air Force veteran MJ Heger going up against John Cornyn. But Cornyn will be especially vulnerable as the number two behind Mitch McConnell in the Senate leadership. If this race looked lean-Republican before the crisis, it seems like at least a toss-up now.

And for the same reasons, Mitch McConnell could actually be defeated this time around, as he’s also facing a woman and a military veteran in Amy McGrath. He’s never been very popular at home, often rating as the least liked senator among his own constituents. Kentucky rates as one of Trump’s strongest states, but if they begin to waver a bit on that McConnell could find himself underwater just as Governor Matt Bevin recently did in his reelection bid.

Lindsey Graham seems safe in South Carolina, but his strategy has been to tie himself as closely as possible to Trump. This could backfire on him if the public perceives Trump as having failed as president. Even prior to the pandemic, Graham was looking a little weak in head-to-head polls with Democratic challenger Jaime Harrison.

The political terrain after this becomes more difficult. On paper, the easiest picking is in Iowa where Joni Ernst is seeking reelection, presumably against Theresa Greenfield. Polling has shown the Republicans with stubborn strength in the Hawkeye State, but it’s also a state with a history of swinging either way.

The Democrats are feeling pretty good about their recruit in Kansas. Barbara Bollier is a former Republican who bolted when Sam Brownback’s administration was too much for her. She has the right profile to win this seat that is being vacated by Sen. Pat Roberts, but Kansas hasn’t sent a Democratic senator to Washington since the 1930s.

At this point, I’ve identified 13 Republican-held seats that conceivably fall: Arizona, Colorado, Montana, Maine, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia (2), Kentucky, Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, and Texas. That would get the Democrats to 60 seats if Doug Jones wins reelection in Alabama, and 59 if he does not.

For insurance, the Democrats would have to pull off some kind of miracle. There’s an open seat in Tennessee where Lamar Alexander is retiring. Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe is one of the senators who sold stocks after being briefed on the coronavirus. Cindy Hyde-Smith, like all Mississippi Republicans, relies on the overwhelming support of white voters and any significant erosion of that support could put her in jeopardy. She has a fairly strong opponent in Mike Espy.

Outside of these races, it’s hard for me to foresee circumstances that could lead to Republican defeats in Wyoming (although it is an open seat), Idaho, South Dakota, West Virginia, or Arkansas. And there are a couple of Democratic seats that aren’t complete locks (e.g. Minnesota, Michigan, and an open seat in New Mexico).

Still, I can picture a political atmosphere in November that is so toxic to incumbent Republican senators that it could produce a net loss of 13 seats. It’s in no way likely to happen, but neither is it impossible.

As I said at the top, the only thing I’m sure about is that the future will only have a passing resemblance to the past. I remember when Ronald Reagan carried 49 states, including Hawaii, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. No matter how safe a state may seem for one party, there are extraordinary circumstances that can defy expectations. This pandemic has the potential to create a very wide range of responses from the electorate. If the response is hostile to Trump and his congressional enablers, there could be a very strong wipeout in the Senate, and a new Democratic president empowered to pass their platform.

Hi photo lovers.

Spring has sprung, so it seemed like a good time for a spring equinox-themed foto flog. The featured image is on of the surviving plants from one of the back yard flower beds that got dug up by the dogs. Was hoping to replace them all and refill the missing soil, but time just got away from me. To my pleasant surprise some of these began to grow in January. Not all of them bloomed, unfortunately. But this one did. That’s one tough little plant.

I am still using my same equipment, and am no professional. If you are an avid photographer, regardless of your skills and professional experience, you are in good company here. Booman Tribune was blessed with very talented photographers in the past. At Progress Pond, we seem to have a few talented photographers now, a few of whom seem to be lurking I suppose.

I have been using an LG v40 ThinQ for the last year. It seems to serve me well, now going on its second year. Occasionally I get to use my old 35 mm, but one of my daughters seems to have commandeered it. In the next year or two I will probably have to go through the whole smart phone purchasing process again. I never look forward to that. I am curious about the cameras on other smartphone models. I now have a daughter using an iPhone 8 (what we could afford). She seems happy with the photo quality. Always curious to get input on smartphone camera quality, as that is one of the variables that I weigh when I do purchase one of those contraptions.

This series of posts is in honor of a number of our ancestors. At one point, there were some seriously great photographers who graced Booman Tribune with their work. They are all now long gone. I am the one who carries the torch. I keep this going because I know that one day I too will be gone, and I really want the work that was started long ago to continue, rather than fade away with me. If I see that I am able to incite a few others to fill posts like these with photos, then I will be truly grateful. In the meantime, enjoy the photos, and I am sure between Booman and myself we can pass along quite a bit of knowledge about the photo flog series from its inception back during the Booman Tribune days.

Since this post usually runs only a day, I will likely keep it up for a while. Please share your work. I am convinced that us amateurs are extremely talented. You will get nothing but love and support here. I mean that. Also, when I say that you don’t have to be a photography pro, I mean that as well. I am an amateur. This is my hobby. This is my passion. I keep these posts going only because they are a passion. If they were not, I would have given up a long time ago. My preference is to never give up.

Peace.

Calling themselves “The Steady State,” more than 80 former national security officials have signed a letter endorsing Joe Biden for president. There are some familiar names on the list like former Deputy Homeland Security Advisor Rand Beers and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, but you probably have never heard of most of the signatories. They have held important positions like Assistant Secretary of State, chief of staff at FEMA, Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, and senior director of the White House Situation Room. The list includes more than a dozen formerly covert intelligence officers and ambassadors to countries like Yemen, Qatar, and Pakistan.

With a few exceptions, these folks have never been openly partisan before, and most of them have served under both Democratic and Republican presidents. They’ve gone public with their support for Biden because they feel that President Trump “has created an existential danger to the United States.”

We write to endorse Vice President Joe Biden for President of the United States.

Our nation’s foreign affairs are in disarray; our alliances frayed, and our national prestige declining.  Our approach to both friends and enemies abroad has been chaotic and unprincipled. Our credibility as a nation has been lessened.  And, perhaps most importantly, our place in the world as a source of moral leadership has nearly been lost. As a country, we are increasingly less secure and less safe.

To be clear, those of us signing this letter do not agree on everything, or even most things, concerning foreign policy, defense or homeland security.  Our policy views cover most of the spectrum, and many of us have often been in opposition, sometimes bitterly, with each other. But we have always been bound by profound patriotism, and a deep belief in our American democracy. 

But the course of events since the 2016 Presidential election has been deeply troubling.  It is not just policy differences. President Trump, and his approach to leadership at home and abroad, has created an existential danger to the United States, its place in the world, and the values we share.  His reelection would continue this downward spiral, and will likely have catastrophic results. Democracy itself is at stake.

They obviously call themselves “The Steady State” as a rebuttal to the term “Deep State.” They recognize that they will be dismissed by those who feel that there has been a conspiracy within the top echelons of the national security apparatus to undermine President Trump, but they’re speaking to the folks who are open-minded.

It’s true that this is technically an endorsement of Biden over Sanders, but it has more significance for the general election. It shows one part of what will be a broader trend. Biden will win endorsements not just from our intelligence and diplomatic corps, but from almost every newspaper editorial board in the country. He’ll be vouched for by countless former Republicans, including many well-known operatives and media personalities. There will be a host of traditionally Republican or independent business leaders who back Biden over Trump. Some very well known former generals and senior officers in the military will break their lifelong neutrality to weigh in on Biden’s behalf.

The Establishment won’t speak with one voice, but they’ll speak overwhelmingly for one side, and often for the first time.

People can view this as a negative if they’re so inclined. Some will figure that if Biden is acceptable to these people, there must be something wrong with him. Maybe he isn’t offering enough change.

But it will be helpful to the effort to beat Trump. It will be truly beneficial to Biden if he actually wins the election and needs support for putting this country back on its feet.

It’s also going to further isolate the modern Republican Party. They’ll have less legitimacy in Washington DC than any major political party has ever suffered.

If Biden becomes the next president in 2021, he’ll be inheriting a bigger mess than Obama faced in 2009, but he’ll also have one of the biggest honeymoons we’ve ever seen. If he loses, Trump will try to govern a city and a bureaucracy that views him with nothing but horror.

Which do you think has more potential for success?

One small advantage America has in tackling the coronavirus outbreak is that it didn’t start here. We have the opportunity to see what worked and what didn’t work in China, Italy and other places, and we have the chance to anticipate some of the things that they didn’t anticipate.  Italy, in particular, can be very instructive for our medical hospitals and responsible government officials.

There are simple things that only seem obvious in retrospect, like dedicating only a couple of ambulances for coronavirus cases and training the staff so that they whole fleet doesn’t become infected. There are things that require a good bit of time, like transforming medical facilities to maximize bed space or building temporary hospitals. There are best practices for triage, including establishing separate locations for non-coronavirus cases. Italy has learned these hard lessons too late, but we can benefit from their experience.

As things stand there, in the area of worst impact in Lombardy, no one is getting needed intubation if they’re over 60 years old. Virtually no one over 70 is being accepted in Intensive Care Units and, in many cases, people over 80 are not being accepted in hospitals at all. Facilities are not set up to prevent the spread of the virus and their emergency phone lines are overwhelmed.

In normal times, the ambulance service at the Papa Giovanni hospital runs like a Swiss clock. Calls to 112, Europe’s equivalent of 911, are answered within 15 to 20 seconds. Ambulances from the hospital’s fleet of more than 200 are dispatched within 60 to 90 seconds. Two helicopters stand by at all times. Patients usually reach an operating room within 30 minutes, said Angelo Giupponi, who runs the emergency response operation: “We are fast, in peacetime.”

Now, people wait an hour on the phone to report heart attacks, Dr. Giupponi said, because all the lines are busy. Each day, his team fields 2,500 calls and brings 1,500 people to the hospital. “That’s not counting those the first responders visit but tell to stay home and call again if their condition worsens,” he said.

This is what our near-future will look like, and we’re running out of time to mitigate the situation.

“Until three weeks ago, we did everything for every patient. Now we have to choose which patients to put in intensive care. This is catastrophic,” said anesthesiologist and intensive-care specialist Mirco Nacoti.

Dr. Nacoti worked for Doctors Without Borders in Haiti, Chad, Kurdistan and Ivory Coast, and he is one of the few medics in Bergamo who has seen epidemics. Yet, those were diseases with vaccines, such as measles and rubella.

He estimated that around 60% or more of the population of Bergamo has the coronavirus. “There is an enormous number of asymptomatic people, as well as unknown dead who die in their home and are not tested, not counted,” he said. “The ICU is the tip of an iceberg.”

Three weeks is an eternity right now. But it will be three weeks before there is another Democratic Party presidential primary. The country will be in a very different place by then, which is something that Bernie Sanders needs to consider:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) will spend the next few weeks talking to supporters to “assess his campaign,” his campaign manager said Wednesday following decisive victories Tuesday by former vice president Joe Biden in Florida, Illinois and Arizonathat gave him firm control of the Democratic nominating contest.

“The next primary contest is at least three weeks away,” Faiz Shakir, Sanders’s manager said in a statement. “Sen. Sanders is going to be having conversations with supporters to assess his campaign. In the immediate term, however, he is focused on the government response to the coronavirus outbreak and ensuring that we take care of working people and the most vulnerable.”

He can no longer hope to win the nomination through the primary process, but of course he can still maximize how many delegates he will send to the party’s convention. This would help him have influence over the platform and any rules changes affecting future elections, but the convention probably will take place in strictly virtual space online rather than in a Milwaukee arena as planned. It just seems hard to justify continuing the campaign in these circumstances.

Barring illness, Joe Biden will be the nominee and he should be focused on the campaign against Trump and on assembling a team that can take over in January and get right to work trying to manage one of the worst catastrophes any of us has seen in our lifetimes. If Sanders can be helpful in that effort, that will be great, but he certainly shouldn’t impede Biden by distracting him.

I suspect this will be clear to Sanders soon, and probably long before three weeks have elapsed. But it’d be nice if he made his decision before events force his hand.

It’s the end of the world as we know it…

This is sort of a continuation from the last Midweek Cafe & Lounge as well as the Froggy Bottom Lounge I put together over the weekend, and finally, last week’s Midweek Cafe and Lounge:

My usual vibe is to keep these light, and have some music and whatnot. Back when Neon Vincent was still a regular, we had some really cool beverage recipes. Probably wouldn’t hurt about now, given that the past week.

As with the previous cafe/lounge, I want to give you all something a bit more informative in hopes that it at least adds to some straight talk and keeps things in perspective as we come to grips with what is potentially a serious pandemic: Coronavirus COVID-19. First, I want you all to bookmark this map hosted by Johns Hopkins. It appears to be about the most up-to-date map of the number of cases per country, and also keeps record of deaths and recoveries. I also recommended last time this link from the Axios website – Coronavirus: The Big Picture. Axios is useful for its brief capsule summaries for those of us who may be on the go. The Axios global map is okay, but seems to be a little behind the other map. Finally, if you go to the Guardian, you will find daily live blogs of the progress of COVID-19 that provide a global perspective (including what is happening in the US). There is also a COVID-19 Tracker specific to the US that is quite accurate and will give you data about how close you are to the nearest confirmed case or cases.

At the end of the day, I think it is crucial that we have straight talk about what’s going on, rather than the sort of faux happy talk that 45 wants to spin or the bizarre conspiracy theories spread by folks on social media or even by otherwise supposedly responsible politicians (looking at you, Tom Cotton). Straight talk may not be necessarily pleasant, but it will keep you informed and hopefully alive and healthy.

I’ll try to post a video or two if I can actually get myself into the mood to do so. Obviously that’s been a bit difficult. If anyone wants to talk, here’s a space. It’s yours.

In the meantime, cheers.

Republicans probably don’t want to hear this but as I ponder the immense hassle that will be required to tackle the coronavirus pandemic, I am reminded of nothing more that the torrent of emotions I had when I realized that I’d have to put up with at least four years of a Trump presidency. I just find it crushingly depressing that we’re going to be stuck in some fucked up world for months and months, if not a year or more, as we try to prevent this virus from killing millions of people. I know I will eventually adjust to this and find a way to keep living in a way that doesn’t make me intensely unhappy, but I only have confidence in this because I achieved it after Trump was elected.

Having Trump as our president was every bit as unthinkable to me as it was to be living in a country on near-total lockdown. I couldn’t seriously entertain the idea that Americans might deliberately self-inflict such disaster on themselves and the polling data gave me no real reason for concern. In the two years prior to the 2016 election, not once did Trump poll ahead in my home state of Pennsylvania. When he won nonetheless, I had to go through a long period of adjustment. The worst part was how it made me feel about my fellow citizens. The second worst part was the realization of what I’d have to endure and that it would take so long to get to the point where we could rectify the situation.

But I slowly came to terms with the fact I was going to be going through a thoroughly unpleasant daily grind. And, as I sat down, day after dreadful day to plow my way through, I discovered that what I thought would be intolerable was actually something that I could endure.

Right now, I feel claustrophobic and stir-crazy and incredibly unhappy, but I know that after a few weeks these feelings will begin to subside. In fact, it won’t be as bad as it was with Trump because, with him, I had to fight off the feeling that I was allowing his administration to feel normal. I know that our social distancing isn’t normal. I know that we’ll happily abandon it as soon as we are able. Maybe we’ll even learn to organize our society in a way that is more sensible and robust so that something good can come out of this. This is better than the situation with Trump, because I constantly worry that he is breaking things that will not be fixed.

So, as bad as this is, it’s still not as bad as Trump getting elected.

I think Greg Sargent does a good job of characterizing what we’ve witnessed from President Trump and his media sycophants so far with respect to the coronavirus outbreak:

The Post reports that Trump propagandists like Sean Hannity have stampeded in herd-like fashion from initially attacking the media for supposedly hyping coronavirus to claiming its dire nature actually displays Trump’s heroism.

Such attacks on the media have been central to the broader project of protecting Trump’s reelection chances at all costs. First Trump and his propagandists accused the media of exaggerating the threat to protect his initial instinct to downplay it himself, all to avoid rattling the markets, to buoy his reelection hopes.

Then, when it became obvious the crisis was very serious indeed, Trump attacked the media to discredit its aggressive reporting on his failure to respond to it competently and with urgency. And now, Trump’s propagandists are supplanting that reporting with their own narrative — one in which the very same crisis they previously downplayed now showcases Trump’s decisive and “bold” leadership.

We’re facing a pandemic but it’s still a presidential election year. We shouldn’t expect the Republicans and Democrats to put politics completely aside. This is only a problem if it begins to affect public heath. That’s been the case from the beginning with the White House, and that’s why their allies need to go into overdrive now to compensate for Trump’s catastrophic errors in judgment. Maybe they’ll convince some people that Trump deserves a 10 out of 10 grade, as he claimed in a recent press conference.

The bigger concern is that people won’t listen and follow instructions when they’re provided solid and necessary advice. Trump destroyed his own credibility, but he and his allies have also done great and mostly unwarranted damage to the credibility of scientific experts and credible media outlets. At this point, a new NPR, PBS News Hour and Marist poll shows that 47 percent of the public doesn’t trust what they hear about the viral outbreak from the media. That’s still considerably better than the 37 percent who express confidence in what Trump says, but it’s not good enough to assure wide cooperation with authorities.

Part of the problem is that many conservatives tune out when they hear criticism of the president. They think the media has it out for him and they’re using this crisis to damage his reelection prospects. Some of this would happen with any president in any presidential election year, but it’s magnified in this case because Trump has been deflecting legitimate criticism by talking about a biased media and “Fake News” for the entirety of his term in office. Likewise, the administration’s efforts to protect the fossil fuel industry have led them to discount scientific opinion, and that carries over now to conservatives who have been primed to doubt expert advice.

The crash in the stock market is hard to ignore, however, and soon hospitals will fill to overflowing and unemployment will rise, and these events will challenge any effort to cast Trump as some hero who had handled this crisis in a competent fashion.

There will never come a point in 2020 in which these points are conceded on the right. They have too much at stake in the presidential election to join the critics of Trump prior to him leaving office. At the same time, the Democrats will never give Trump a pass in the interest of national unity in a time of crisis. They, too, have too much at stake.

As a result, we’re stuck with a situation where critically important information has trouble getting through because it is being filtered through a political lens. Even basic facts about what has already occurred are distorted though efforts to defend or even celebrate Trump’s performance. In some cases the criticism will even go too far because there’s an advantage to the left in being uncharitable.

The truth is that we need a new president, and unfortunately we also need the president we have to do a better job while we’re in the process of replacing him. This is not ideal, and it creates an additional challenge for responsible leaders who need to find a way to get good information to people and have it be heeded by folks who just don’t trust anyone to give them advice that isn’t tinged with a political motive.