Month: April 2020

I wish I were as confident about the November election as Daniel Drezner. Most of the time, I am, but the 2016 hangover is real. When you’re lying in bed and your head is pounding, that’s not a sign that you’re delusional, but that something really bad happened the night before. It’s a lesson that if you drink that much again, you’re going to pay a heavy price. So, do we dare get drunk on optimism in 2020?

As an analyst, I try to give you things straight, regardless of what I might hope will happen. I did this in my coverage of the Democratic primary, where it was not my preference that the finals come down to a choice between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders. I told you that would happen because that is what I believed. Part of me is happy to be correct, although another part would have been happier to be wrong.

The truth is, Trump has no business even coming close to getting reelected. Drezner is right about that. But he also has no business leading in the polls in a couple of dozen states. He’s maintained a level of support in the low-forties that seems impervious to any event or any calamity. The Covid-19 outbreak will put that basement floor to the test, but the fact remains that he hasn’t cratered so far in any kind of proportional way to his performance in office.

Still, despite being the incumbent and armed with a huge money advantage and organizing head start, he’s not currently the favorite. It’s just that he still has a puncher’s chance, and he shouldn’t.

Photo credit

A couple of years ago, I was involved with a lovely young woman from Ukraine, who was here pursuing her green card and ultimately US citizenship. We had a fantastic time together and we were on the same page about most things, despite our cultural differences. But when I would complain about life in the USA, she was quick to shush me and remind me how good we had it here.

She was born in the late 1980s, and was a child when Ukraine had its first open elections. I’m not exactly an expert on Ukraine’s post-Soviet history, but she sure was. By 33, she’d lived through revolutions, economic collapses, political corruption, social unrest, constant tension with Russia even before they seized Crimea, and periodic shortages of food and other necessities. Just six short years ago, NPR described the country as a “basket case”. She’d remind me how grateful I should be to live here—despite the poor quality of our food compared to Europe’s and the difficulty of finding good mineral water in Nashville (a complaint I shared).

To a good extent, she was right about our good fortune in to live in the US—but I’ve lived the life I’ve lived, and a good portion of that life has been on the margins. I’ve seen up close and personal how brittle and inadequate the social safety net is here in the United States. To be honest, if I wasn’t living with my dad right now, I’d be up лайна крик—I’m still waiting for my unemployment to get approved (it took three or four days and constant harassment on Twitter and Facebook to get any attention) and I simply don’t believe I’m going to see a dime of that skinflint $1,200 that Tiny Hands and his Scrooge Sycophants are doling out in go away money. But compared to some people I know, I’ve got it good.

You know how a line from a song or a tv show will suddenly call up an old memory? For me, this image of breadlines in Massachusetts made me suddenly think of that old gal of mine.

(AP Photo/Steven Senne, Hawaii Tribune)

I gotta wonder what she must be thinking right now, what ANY immigrant who came here in search of a better life must be thinking. The whole point of going through all the bullshit to become an US citizen or permanent resident was to get away from breadlines and pestilence and tin pot dictators and cults of personality. I find myself reworking an old joke my kid told me about living under Soviet communism for our present circumstances. Why do Americans like mashed potatoes? Because they are crushed, like our dreams.

I guess that’s what happens when the President and one house of Congress serve the Kremlin instead of the American people: the country turns into a rehashed Soviet Socialist Republic. USSA baby, all the way down.

President Herbert Hoover may have been in some respects unlucky and he may not have received the best advice, but nothing he did in response to the onset of the Great Depression was effective in turning the tide. A lot of this had to do with a failure of imagination and an inability to let go of prior assumptions. He had campaigned successfully in 1928 on the strong economic performance under Republican presidential leadership during the decade. When the stock market plunged in 1929, it was after several years of robust growth. He wanted to believe that he and his party’s reputation for good economic stewardship was well-earned and could be sustained. His assumption was that there would be a brief recession and then a recovery, hopefully in time for his run for reelection in 1932. He began his response by asking business leaders to voluntarily maintain people’s level of pay and to refrain from layoffs, hoping that he could thereby maintain consumer demand. He did his best to buck the nation up and focused on giving people confidence that any hard times would be temporary. But businesses laid off workers and consumers cinched their belts, and pretty soon the banks were beginning to fail.

We’ve seen something similar with Trump. He’s been planning on using a strong economy for his reelection campaign, and his first response to the outbreak of Covid-19 was primarily about trying to keep the stock market from freaking out. He minimized the threat and grew angry with government officials who offered contradictory messaging. Next he resisted the advice that people stop gathering in public spaces or that businesses shut down because he knew it would send the economy into a tailspin. If he hadn’t been so wedded to his reputation for presiding over a growing economy with low unemployment, he might have had an easier time recognizing that the viral pandemic was going to do what it was going to do and that no amount of denial or cheerleading could prevent it from undermining his numbers. He might have understood that the best political protection available would come from getting ahead of the pandemic before it arrived in force on our shores.

His preoccupation with now outdated economic measures continues to distort his response, as he’s now actively encouraging people to protest the very policies that appear to be working to prevent a worse outbreak of the novel coronavirus. But sometimes major events occur that require us to almost instantaneously bury our prior assumptions.

In thinking about a good example of this, for some reason my mind went back to the 2004 campaign when John Kerry caused no end of problems for himself by talking about how he had voted for $87 billion is supplemental war funding for Iraq before he had voted against it. His point had been that he couldn’t support final passage of the bill but that he wasn’t opposed in principle to the supplemental funding. At the time, the price tag of the bill was almost as controversial as the purpose. People felt like tacking $87 billion of spending onto the deficit was a big deal. Iraq would wind up costing so much money that few people remember the 2003 supplemental bill as more than a drop in the bucket. That’s especially true if you compare it to what the government spent to recover from the Great Recession.

But even that number is dwarfed by what Congress has spent and will need to spend to contend with this pandemic:

The Trump administration and congressional leaders closed in Sunday on an approximately $470 billion deal to renew funding for a small-business loan program that ran out of money under crushing demand during the coronavirus pandemic, aiming to pass the agreement into law within days…

…The deal would add about $310 billion to the Paycheck Protection Program for small businesses, which was swamped by demand in the three weeks since Congress created it as part of a $2 trillion coronavirus rescue bill…

…If the changes are signed into law this week, Congress would have approved more than $700 billion in emergency assistance for small businesses alone in just one month. That would be more than the entire $700 billion in bailout money approved during the 2008 financial crisis.

Like it or not, Trump is presiding over all of this massive government intervention, and so are conservative Republicans in the Senate. It’s not what they promised when they ran for election and it’s not consistent with conservative rhetoric going all the way back to Herbert Hoover. They’re doing it because they see no other choice, but they’re not embracing it because it runs contrary to their assumptions.

Hoover left office an embittered man and he continued to rail against Roosevelt and his New Deal policies all the way through the Eisenhower administration. He could never concede that strong government action is sometimes required.

The same thing is going to happen here. The policies will be enacted but conservatives won’t accept them. This means they can’t be trusted to run these programs effectively or to do productive oversight. This probably spells the end of the Reagan Revolution, although it’s unclear if the Republican Party will wither into the same kind of permanent minority party is was in the post-New Deal decades or it will remake itself with new non-conservative members.

There is one small part of me that is at least somewhat sympathetic to the idea that the Trump administration would like win a second term in office. My general feeling is that they should recognize that they’re inept and that someone else should step in and stand as the candidate for the Republican Party, but I know that is a lot to ask. In any case, I know political considerations are unseemly (from either side) in the midst of a global pandemic, but I don’t expect people to abandon politics.

In reading through this Politico article, however, it’s hard not to be angry and it’s also hard not to question the administration’s political judgment. Another way of putting this is that Trump and his advisers are putting politics over public health, and that the politics of it isn’t even good. I suppose I could comfort myself that they’ll be punished at the polls for this, but somehow that it only makes it more infuriating.

Begin with the most basic thing. Will racing to reopen the economy result in good outcomes on any level?

We know with certainty that it will increase the infection rate, so without an effective treatment or a vaccine, it will increase the death toll. The virus attaches to cells in the lungs, which is the primary way it kills, but it also attacks cells in the heart and in men’s testes, so simple being infected can cause long term health problems even if it can be treated. This argues for keeping the infection rate low until a vaccine is available. If, however, treatments are found that vastly reduce the lethality of Covid-19,  we might be able to get back to work without too many excess deaths. That would be a better bet if the treatments are found first, rather than operating on the hope that they will be found. On the whole, this is a gamble, and it’s a gamble with people’s lives and health.

The more likely scenario is that we’ll see an upsurge in infections all across the country, including in places like California and New York where strong social distancing policies seem to be working. This will overwhelm hospitals and cause measures that have been relaxed to be re-implemented. It will wipe away gains even in places that have maintained strong preventative policies. Politically, the problem with this is self-explanatory, but it will also destroy any hoped-for economic benefit. People aren’t going to give Trump a pass on mismanagement a second time, and they’re not going to go back to work or to concerts, restaurants and sporting events if it’s obviously unsafe.

It seems to me that Trump is setting himself up to get the worst of all possible outcomes. The public health crisis will worsen while his available excuses will vanish, and the economy won’t restart in the way that he hoped.

Normally, a crisis that confronts the entire country would be an opportunity to reduce partisan differences and tensions. We saw Trump’s poll numbers go up at the beginning of the outbreak precisely because people are looking for leadership and less willing to criticize the leaders they are depending on to keep them safe. But Trump thrives politically on conflict, and his base needs constant feedings of red-meat partisanship to maintain their engagement and enthusiasm. For this reason, and also because Trump simply isn’t capable of anything better, the Republican political advisers think the best bet is to politicize the outbreak.

President Donald Trump and his aides aren’t just weighing coronavirus infection rates as they push for a quick economic restart. They think it’s good politics, too…

…The issue also has become partisan. Those identifying as conservative largely side with Trump’s economic advisers worried about the ongoing harm to the country’s finances and favor a quicker economic restart, while those identifying as liberal largely side with public health officials and urge longer timelines.

“Trump, himself, feels pretty good about the polling in his direction,” said a Republican familiar with the White House’s deliberations. “It’s a winner for Trump if it becomes a partisan issue.”

Predictably, these folks are looking at polls to come to these conclusions, but these polls measure a particular snapshot in time. There seems to be no ability to anticipate how public opinion will change based on actual outcomes.

Hanging over the health data, however, is the politics of the situation. And many of Trump’s political allies and outside advisers believe they have the public increasingly on their side.

Conservative groups have noticed a change in polling in recent weeks when they ask respondents if they want to go back to work, even if they know the outbreak could continue to cause infections or deaths, and if they would be willing to wear protective gear, such as masks and gloves, in order to reopen the country. Some polls saw upticks as large as 20 percentage points of people willing to return to work, even with the caveats, according to said Brandon and others familiar with the polls. The FreedomWorks polling was conducted in suburban House districts in battleground states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.

For one thing, Trump is shaping the shift in public opinion through his messaging. His supporters follow his lead, and he’s actively encouraging his base to protest the social distancing policies. He can move people to support his policies in real time, but if those policies backfire he’ll see more erosion in his support. He could have moved these folks to higher levels of patience, and the polling would reflect that sentiment instead. That would also inoculate him against a lot of criticism if things don’t dramatically improve, but he’s focused on shifting blame for what has already happened rather than shaping the political battlefield for what is likely to come.

Today’s polls mean very little, and there is no substitute for implementing the best available policies. The fatal political flaw here isn’t the idea that the only way to win reelection is to get the economy going, but rather that they can get the economy going simply through will-power rather than through patiently working through the solution. Agitating for poor public health policies isn’t going to add to public or market confidence.

The only thing that can bail out the economy in time for it to benefit Trump’s reelection is a vast reduction in the lethality of the virus. It’s unlikely that a vaccine can be discovered, approved, and distributed widely in time for November, but there’s more hope on the treatment front. The experimental Remdesivir drug has shown some tentative promise, for example, and there are a lot of other potential drugs that are being researched or are in trials. If people stop dying when they get infected, the public will be willing to risk infection. Until that time, the economy is going to be stuck.

I think people generally recognize that Trump did not cause the Covid-19 pandemic and many will forgive mistakes he made at the outset. They know that the economy was humming before the outbreak, and they’ll still give Trump some credit for that. But they’re going to be a lot more judgmental about everything he does from here on out. He’s taking the risk that things won’t go as the experts predict if we don’t keep things locked down. He believes that he can shift blame to governors if the economy is still in the crapper in November. He’s gambling that treatment will arrive to save the day, and that a recovery will be evident when people go to the polls. Mostly, I think he’s decided that keeping on the recommended path will lead to certain defeat because unemployment will be too high, too many commercial enterprises will go out of business, and he won’t get credit for keeping people alive.

So, he’s not going to attempt good governance. He’s going to keep to this incoherent strategy where he pretends to listen to the experts but at the same time encourages his base to reject their advice. He’s going to get a lot of people killed, and it’s not even going to benefit him politically because his path isn’t good for the economy.

Trump is an unnaturally lucky man, but he’s going to need a lot more of it now if he wants to get reelected.

Self portrait by author

The Bulwark is a magazine run by the same people who helped pave the way for Trump—or in the case of Kellyanne Conway’s wife husband actually voted for him—and now regret it (edit: Conway is a fellow traveler with the Bulwark gang. I’m leaving the crack on his masculinity anyway because he deserves it). They’ve been trying to get right with God and America by publishing damaging articles and funding political ads targeting Cheetolini, and to the extent that they help bring down the Orange Menace… well, I won’t say I’m grateful, but it makes up for some of the damage they caused.

Anyway, this week the publication’s editor and art director Hannah Yoest gives a big shout-out to all the crafty Americans making masks:

[I]t’s not just established clothing retailers who are answering the growing demand. Seamstresses across the country have taken up the cause. And as masks sell out at Walmart and on Amazon, there is still one place online you can find them: Etsy. There were over 2 million searches for face masks on Etsy the weekend of April 4-6 alone. “Our sellers are able to produce hundreds of thousands of masks per day,” Etsy CEO Josh Silverman told CNBC, noting that there are now roughly 20,000 storefronts on the site making and selling masks. The e-commerce site has proactively posted guidelines for sellers as well as a warning banner for customers stating that items sold on Etsy are not medical-grade and linking to a full page of guidance on COVID-19 safety.

I have a couple of masks of my own. There’s a plain one my dad made from old pillowcases, but the one in the photo was made by an old friend of mine who you can support at Wicked Stitch of Newport. Yes, it has boobs on it. Boobs are great, and everyone should be grateful for the little brown nozzle. In fact, my friend made this to order for me, suggesting the boobs as well as other patterns. My next mask will be locally made in Philly with a Gritty pattern similar to this handsome fellow‘s.

But I’m going off on a tangent. The point is these handcrafted, one-of-a-kind masks are kind of an individualistic, artistic statement, as Yoest highlights in her article.

Etsy’s reputation is associated with DIY for housewives and hobbyists, as though it is somehow artistically and commercially inferior—driven in part by the sexist notion that women’s fiber arts are merely crafts while the fine arts are the domain of men. In reality, Etsy is a dynamic platform for a multitude of artisans. According to Etsy’s 2016 diversity report, almost 9 out of 10 sellers on the site are women. Today, those predominantly female creators are turning their skills and creativity toward making an astonishing array of masks for the greater good…

[M]aking masks is about both protecting people and giving people a personal touch of style—with custom patterns ranging from pink kente to black and gold fleur de lis.

There is a long history of artists using masks to evolve: Picasso’s appropriation of African masks was a catalyst for Cubism, which helped break Western art away from realism and paved the way for futurism and abstract expressionism. It cannot be overstated how monumental this shift was in art history. So, too, may be the shift in Western and American culture as we face the imperative to don masks. And that shift will be facilitated by the labor of women.

In many ways, there’s a lot to love about this article. It really showcases the goodness, the compassion, the creativity, and the pragmatism of ordinary Americans. It even highlights how capitalism is, in many ways, simply part of the American bloodstream. My friend at Wicked Stitch uses upcycled and reused materials, scraps that would otherwise go into a landfill, and manages to earn a few much-needed dollars in so doing.

But the article cannot help but highlight the sheer malicious incompetence of the Trump regime and the Republican Party, who not only left us in the dark about the threat (while they dumped stock and made millions) but left us completely unprepared and defenseless against a deadly disease that they knew about in January, and possibly as far back as November 2019, which has led to a disgraceful and heartbreaking state of affairs.

15 pages of obituaries in The Boston Globe today. pic.twitter.com/DdcWiy2hvx

— Nancy Palmer (@npalmerrothman) April 19, 2020

So yeah. It’s great that the gang at the Bulwark are celebrating American ingenuity in the face of a pandemic. And I’m happy to call these Never Trump conservatives my allies of convenience, as we battle both the novel coronavirus and the Trumpist Republican Party.

But the facts remain: our government let us down, and it let us down in part because the people who publish the Bulwark—Charlie Sykes, Bill Kristol, Jonathan Last, Jim Swift, and the rest of that rogues gallery—spent the vast majority of their professional lives tearing down our public institutions, attacking the very notion of government itself, lying about Democrats and progressives, trying to take away people’s little bit of heath care, destroying the notion of civility, polarizing Americans, doubting science, and convincing a great majority us to hate the federal government.

That’s something no mask can ever hide.

Imagine that when you woke up in the morning, you knew that at 5:30 pm you would be in the White House giving a joint press conference with the president of the United States. If it makes it easier to visualize, you don’t have to imagine that the president is Donald Trump. It could be anyone. Now, ask yourself, how much other work do you think you’d get done that day?

Wouldn’t you want to make sure you were prepared for such a high profile and high pressure appearance? Wouldn’t you want to visualize all the questions you might be asked and try to anticipate what the president might want you to say? That kind of stuff takes time and preparation. There are facts and statistics to ascertain. Presumably, there will be a meeting at some point in the afternoon to prep for the press conference, and you need to be ready for that meeting, too.

It’s important that the public gets daily briefings on the Covid-19 outbreak from the White House, but the people doing those briefings shouldn’t be the same folks who are expected to manage the federal response. Trump could do it himself, like several of the governors do, but he isn’t conversant with the facts and needs to rely on others to communicate the actual information. In any case, he’s got his own agenda, which is rarely in tune with what the public health experts want the public to know or believe.

Trump has decided that he can compensate for his inability to hold campaign rallies during a pandemic by appearing at these conferences everyday for two or more hours. Precisely because the subject matter is vitally important, the media are compelled to televise these appearances, and so Trump takes advantage of that and hijacks the proceedings to communicate with his base.

There have been many complaints about this, but few of them have focused on the way it monopolizes the time of Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx. These two doctors should be focused on the crisis rather than spending all their time worried about making appearances with Donald Trump. A competent spokesperson should be found, and that person could be brought up to speed during the afternoon prep meeting.

But that is not going to happen, and even if it did, it wouldn’t solve the problem of Trump utilizing these meetings for purposes that have nothing to do with the public’s health, and that often run the complete opposite direction.

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 9×9 inch canvas.

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

Since that time I have continued to work on the painting.

I have now filled in all the shadows with a deep blue color. Note the the distant buttes along the horizon have received the same treatment. I hav also overpainted the sky. You can now see where I am going with this. There is already a sense of being deep in the landscape.

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

I’ll have more progress to show you next week. See you then.

Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton of Texas says that “fear of contracting COVID-19” is not a valid legal reason to ask for an absentee ballot. In fact, he issued guidance to the Texas legislature that voting rights advocacy groups that suggest otherwise could be subject to criminal sanctions. However, a state district judge just indicated he will hand down a ruling that comes to the opposite conclusion.

A state district judge said Wednesday that he will move forward with an order easing restrictions for voting by mail in Texas in light of the new coronavirus pandemic.

After conducting a video conference hearing in a lawsuit filed by state Democrats and civic organizations, Judge Tim Sulak told the attorneys he will issue a temporary injunction allowing all voters who risk exposure to the coronavirus if they vote in person to ask for a mail-in ballot under a portion of the Texas election code allowing absentee ballots for voters who cite a disability. His ruling, which is almost certain to be appealed by the state, could greatly expand the number of voters casting ballots by mail in the upcoming July primary runoff elections.

Until now, voting by mail has been limited in the state. Texans seeking an absentee ballot that they can fill out at home and mail in had to be 65 years or older, have a disability or illness, be out of the county during the election period, or be confined in jail.

The Texas election code defines disability as a “sickness or physical condition” that prevents a voter from appearing in person without the risk of “injuring the voter’s health.” Citing ambiguity in state law regarding what qualifies as a disability, Sulak agreed that qualification can currently apply to any voter in Texas.

I suspect the Republicans will eventually prevail in their desire to limit absentee ballots, but that’s not really the point. Win or lose, their desire is to keep turnout low, and vote-by-mail in any form is a threat to them. I’m never going to stop pointing out that we live in a representative democracy in which one of the two viable parties does not want people to vote. They’d rather you die than give up on the advantage they get by making it difficult to cast a ballot.

What does that tell you?

In 2016, Donald Trump won 68.5 percent of the vote in West Virginia to Hillary Clinton’s 26.4 percent. It was Trump’s biggest margin of victory in the country. Yet, on the very same day, Jim Justice was elected as governor with a 49 percent plurality. He ran as a Democrat but switched his party affiliation to Republican on August 3, 2017. Democrats can still win statewide races in West Virginia, but it’s a lot more comfortable to be allied with the president.

Senator Joe Manchin was twice elected governor before winning Robert Byrd’s vacant seat in 2010. He’s clearly popular with his constituents, but he has to walk a fine line. In 2012, he declined to endorse Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. In 2016, he came close to un-endorsing Hillary Clinton over comments she made about the future of the coal industry. After Trump won his state with nearly 70 percent of the vote, there was some talk in 2017 of Manchin joining his administration, and many have doubted that he would endorse the Democratic presidential nominee in 2020.

If the progressive left is unenthusiastic about Joe Biden, that hasn’t prevented Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren from giving him their full-throated stamp of approval. And he can now expect to get the same from Joe Manchin:

Sen. Joe Manchin will endorse Joe Biden for president, putting to bed any thought that he might not support the Democratic presidential nominee this time around.

The conservative West Virginia Democrat said in an interview on Thursday that he’s working with Biden, the presumptive nominee, on an endorsement that will come in tandem with a plan to help shield his state from job loss…

…Manchin has been talking to the Biden campaign since the former vice president won South Carolina’s primary, and said he feels comfortable with Biden and his outreach to Appalachia, where energy jobs are a key part of the economy and politics. Asked on Thursday whether he’d endorse Biden, Manchin replied: “I will, absolutely.”

“I’m just trying to make sure that we’re working through a plan,” he said. “I’ve been working and talking to different people. We’re definitely getting there. You just can’t leave people behind that did the heavy lifting and that’s worked hard, whether it’s producing coal or producing energy for this country. They just need an opportunity to live their lives and have that opportunity. And I think Joe Biden understands that.”

Biden won the Democratic primaries based largely on the perception that he was the most “electable” candidate. I’m not sure people always had a clear picture of what they meant by that term or why they felt that Biden had an advantage over his competitors. But one thing he’s already putting on display is an ability to almost effortlessly bring together the Democratic Party after a rough primary season.

You can see that Manchin is looking to get something in return for his endorsement. In this, he is no different from Bernie Sanders or any of the other candidates. But the important thing is that Manchin feels he can vocally support Biden without it costing him his career. He didn’t feel that way when he shared a ballot with Obama in 2012 as he sought a full six-year term in the U.S. Senate, and he was probably right. If he had been on the ticket in 2016, he almost surely would have un-endorsed Clinton. It’s highly doubtful that he would have endorsed Bernie Sanders if he become the party’s nominee.

One of the keys to Biden’s appeal as a candidate is precisely that there are no areas of the country where he’s toxic. In this, he is partially advantaged simply by not being a woman or a racial minority. His Catholicism is less of a political liability than Mitt Romney’s Mormanism or Sander’s secular Judaism. But it’s not so much his identity, nor is it his ideology, that makes Biden so widely acceptable. It’s really just his personality and his way of going about things. He doesn’t make enemies and he doesn’t alienate a lot of people with his rhetoric. Most of the people who will vote against Joe Biden would vote against any Democrat, and that includes most of the people carping about him on the left.

This is Biden’s great electoral strength, but it has its downsides. He has trouble arousing enthusiasm, donations, and volunteers because he doesn’t fire people up with red meat. His policies may not be offensive, but they’re also lacking ambition, and this has left the struggling younger generations feeling cold. In truth, he’s running to the left of both Obama and Clinton, but this can get lost because he undersells his progressivism with a mind to winning crossover votes in the general election.

His comparative electability has probably been oversold, as most polls have shown him performing about the same or only modestly better against Trump as Sanders. But there’s little doubt that he’s more of a uniter. He’s uniting the party, and he’ll have better prospects of uniting the country than any other politician I can think of right now.

Sydney Ember of the New York Times seems somewhere between miffed and mystified that everyone is racing to endorse Joe Biden and that they’re getting praised for it. In particular, she seems almost incensed that folks are lining up to say nice things about Bernie Sanders, when they spent a year or more trashing him: “Never mind that Mr. Biden had spent part of the Democratic primary race accusing Mr. Sanders of disloyalty for considering a primary challenge against Mr. Obama in 2012.”

She’s also undecided about what it all means. On the one hand, she says “Mr. Sanders is in the uniquely awkward position of being venerated by a party he has never joined…” And, then on the other hand, she argues both the prior criticism and the current praise of Sanders are nothing but a show that calls “into question whether political messages are simply a form of competitive posturing.” Maybe no one actually believed all those nasty things they said about Bernie, or perhaps they’ve instantly concluded it was all hyperbole: “Mr. Sanders is joining a long line of losing candidates who seemed more palatable to onetime critics in hindsight…Democrats also looked fondly back at Senators John McCain, of Arizona, and Mitt Romney, of Utah, as pre-Trump Republicans who were actually never that bad.”

They say that one of the symptoms you have Covid-19 is that you lose your senses of taste and smell. Fortunately, the only sense I seem to have lost is for what’s truly important enough to write about during our current global crisis. Sometimes it seems like virtually nothing meets that test. But I know that pandemic itself meets it, which is why I am astonished that Ms. Ember managed to write this entire piece about rivals coalescing behind Biden without once mentioning the viral outbreak that has already cost tens of thousands of Americans their lives.

She’s correct that the Democratic Establishment exhaled in relief when Sanders ended his campaign and quickly endorsed Biden. But it’s not only “a projection of how desperate Democrats are to beat Mr. Trump.” It’s more than just the post-traumatic hangover from 2016, when Sanders hung on too long and did too much damage to Hillary Clinton. It’s a recognition that these are no ordinary times and that we need to get focused on fixing the country’s many problems rather than bickering among ourselves.

The pandemic is the central explanation for why Bernie Sanders ended his campaign when he did. Knowing he was defeated didn’t force him out in 2016, and he was initially inclined to again gather as many convention delegates as he could in a bid to affect the party platform. He changed his mind because there was many levels more resistance to him continuing this time around. He changed his mind because social distancing rules made it impossible for him to hold rallies or get his message out. He changed his mind because Joe Biden offered him something that Clinton didn’t, which is a bunch of working groups to work on the platform prior to the convention. This was gracious, but also a recognition that the convention may not be held in physical space but rather, much like the upcoming NFL Draft, only in the online world.

You can’t understand or intelligently discuss Sanders’ behavior without putting Covid-19 front and center. To a lesser degree, the same can be said for the decision-making of Elizabeth Warren. This can be seen even in the area of health care. That’s the issue, more than any other, where principles and ideals argued for a continuation of the debate straight through the convention. But now that we’re seeing our medical system stagger under the magnitude of the crisis, it’s less about knowing that Sanders and Warren had a point than realizing that Biden will have the space and incentive and even the obligation to go bigger than he initially intended.

The crisis is not only the reason why Sanders dropped out, it’s the reason the Establishment is so willing to let bygones be bygones. There’s nothing phony about it. It’s just people treating the times with the urgency they demand.