The Abbreviated Pundit Round-up is a regular feature of Daily Kos.
Bill McKibben at The New Yorker writes—With the Coronavirus, Hell Is No Other People:
The strangest thing about the coronavirus is that we can’t help one another through it. We can’t lay on hands, we can only wash them: in fact, the way we’ve been explicitly told to help is to stay away from one another. That makes epidemiological sense, but it also makes us a little crazy: social distancing, quarantine, and isolation go hard against the gregarious instinct that makes us who we are.
Every other time that we face a natural disaster, we come together: that’s the natural, almost inevitable human response to a crisis. Rebecca Solnit, in her soaringly optimistic book from 2009, “A Paradise Built in Hell,” proved that point with example after example: from the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906 to Hurricane Katrina, people rallied in the most extraordinary ways. In Louisiana, people with boats just kept arriving and shoving off into the murky and dangerous waters to rescue people stranded on the roofs of their flooded homes. The Cajun Navy, as the group of volunteer boaters was known, saved lives by the score, and they were not an exception.
“In the wake of an earthquake, a bombing or a major storm, most people are altruistic, urgently engaged in caring for themselves and those around them, strangers and neighbors as well as friends and loved ones,” Solnit writes. Looters are rare—and sometimes what’s called looting is just people trying to get medicine or food for others. She adds, “The image of the selfish, panicky or regressively savage human being in times of disaster has little truth to it. Decades of meticulous sociological research on behavior in disasters, from the bombings of World War II to floods, tornadoes, earthquakes and storms across the continent and around the world, have demonstrated this.” [...]
Forget the physical risks, though; it’s the social cost that we should be absorbing, so that we’ll remember it when these days are past. We should use the quiet of these suddenly uncrowded days to think a little about how much we’ve allowed social isolation to grow in our society, even without illness as an excuse. The number of adolescents hanging out with friends dropped precipitously in 2012, when for the first time more than half of Americans owned smartphones (a situation that has been linked to rising rates of depression).
Mark Landler at The New York Times writes—A Fumbled Global Response to the Virus in a Leadership Void:
As the toll of those afflicted by the virus continued to soar and financial markets from Tokyo to New York continued to swoon, world leaders are finally starting to find their voices about the gravity of what is now officially a pandemic.
Yet it remains less a choir than a cacophony — a dissonant babble of politicians all struggling, in their own way, to cope with the manifold challenges posed by the virus, from its crushing burden on hospitals and health care workers to its economic devastation and rising death toll.
The choir also lacks a conductor, a role played through most of the post-World War II era by the United States.
President Trump has failed to work with other leaders to fashion a common response, preferring to promote his border wall over the scientific advice of his own medical experts. [...]
Mr. Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, has taken to calling the contagion the “Wuhan virus,” vilifying the country where it originated and complicating efforts to coordinate a global response.
Jamelle Bouie at The New York Times writes—This Is Not the Moment for Progressives to Despair:
[...] If Biden goes on to win the White House, there’s real space for the pro-Sanders left to work its will on policy. It can use its influence to steer Biden toward its preferred outcomes. It can fulfill some of its goals under the cover of Biden’s moderation, from raising the minimum wage nationally to pushing the American health care system closer to single-payer.
This may sound a lot like wishful thinking. And if Biden were a different politician — if, like Sanders, he was strongly ideological — I might also doubt his malleability. But Biden, like Northam, is a creature of the party. He doesn’t buck the mainstream, he accommodates it. He doesn’t reject the center, he tries to claim it. You saw this during the Obama administration, when Biden reversed himself on a career of moderation to embrace and champion the former president’s most liberal policies.
If the two Sanders campaigns have, over five years, pulled the center of the Democratic Party as far left as it’s been since before Ronald Reagan, then Biden is likely to hew to that center, not challenge it. [...]
Gail Collins at The New York Times writes—Biden’s Best Bleeping Week:
Our former vice president is on a roll. A man who’d never won a primary before in three presidential campaigns pretty much swept the board on Super Tuesdays I & II. This was probably the best week of his entire political career. [...]
Even Sanders seems to hope his opponent doesn’t screw this one up. Bernie’s I’m-still-in-it announcement on Wednesday did not contain a single negative word about Biden. (On the other hand, within the first 50 seconds, he managed to call Donald Trump a “pathological liar” as well as “racist, a sexist, a homophobe, a xenophobe and a religious bigot.” Kudos.)
Sanders began by acknowledging he’d had a bad night Tuesday, vote-wise. Indeed, any address in which a candidate’s most positive remark is “on the other hand, we won in North Dakota” could probably be described as bleak. Particularly when combined with an acknowledgment that tons of his admirers are saying that they’re going to vote for Biden because they think “Joe is the best candidate to defeat Donald Trump.”
Karen Tumulty at The Washington Post writes—Biden should credit his victory in Michigan to women:
As primary results were coming in from Michigan on Tuesday night, much of the commentary noted how the political landscape there had changed from 2016, when Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) was able to pull off a surprise victory over Hillary Clinton.
What was largely missed in charting the state’s political transformation was the powerful impact of the 2018 midterm elections — and the degree to which the face of politics in that critically important state is now female.
On Tuesday, former vice president Joe Biden won the state, and most likely the Democratic nomination, largely because Michigan women rallied behind him. Preliminary exit polls indicate that he drew 58 percent of the female vote, compared with only 35 percent for Sanders.
Among men, the margin was far narrower. Biden won 47 percent of the male vote, just four percentage points more than the 43 percent Sanders received.
Moira Donegan at The Guardian writes—Elizabeth Warren endured sexism at every step of her campaign:
As a woman, the Massachusetts senator always faced an uphill battle of double standards and misogynist resentment. She had to be competent but not condescending, cheery but not pandering, maternal but not frumpy, smart but not haughty. As she rose in the polls last summer and fall, she came under the kind of scrutiny that male frontrunners are not subjected to, and faced skepticism about her claims and character that male candidates do not face.
This is the fate of a lot of women who come close to attaining power, and empirical data backs up the phenomenon: writing in the Washington Post, the Cornell philosopher Kate Manne cited a 2010 Harvard study that found that women are viewed more negatively simply by seeking office. “Voters view male and female politicians as equally power-seeking, but respond to them quite differently,” Manne writes. “Men who seek power were viewed as stronger and tougher, while power-seeking women provoked feelings of disgust and contempt.”
As a result, all of Warren’s virtues were recast as vices in the public eye. Her impressive credentials and superlative intellect became out-of-touch elitism. Her joyousness and enthusiasm were cast as somehow both insincerely pandering and cringingly over-earnest. This kind of transformation of neutral or positive character traits into negative ones is not something that happens to men in similar positions. Sanders can aestheticize his practiced cantankerousness for laughs and sympathy without anyone asking if its a put-on. Biden can use slang from the 1930s without anyone ever questioning whether the ostentatious folksiness of his “no malarkey” messaging might be just a tad affected. But for Warren, every smile was interpreted as a sign of concealed hatred, of secret, nefarious motives.
Robb Willer, Marianne Cooper and Christianne Corbett at the Los Angeles Times write—Elizabeth Warren, caught in the electability trap:
Are Americans ready for a woman president? The Democratic primaries suggest the answer is “no.” Despite an initial field including four distinguished women, all senators with strong favorability ratings among Democratic voters, the field has already coalesced around two white men in their late 70’s.
There is good reason to assume this outcome results from gender bias. Indeed, research consistently finds that Americans’ views of who should lead are deeply influenced by gender, with people generally viewing men as a better match for leadership than women. This sort of stereotyping shapes perceptions of leadership in companies, schools and families and is likely to extend to views on who should lead the most powerful country in the world.
But the whole truth is more complicated. While there is abundant evidence that women face barriers in American politics, another significant obstacle is convincing voters that their fellow Americans would vote for a woman.
Throughout the primary season, the belief that Americans would not elect a woman president weighed on many Democratic voters. Many were torn between their own preferences and their strong desires to support a candidate who can beat President Trump. Despite their own support for a female candidate, many reported that they were hesitant to vote for a woman because of an underlying anxiety that too many other Americans would be unwilling to also support a woman.
E.J. Dionne Jr. at The Washington Post writes—What should alarm Trump about Biden’s success:
2020 is not 2016. That is very good news for Joe Biden, sad news for Bernie Sanders and deeply disturbing news for President Trump. [...]
What should alarm supporters of Trump is Biden’s success in rural and small-town counties in Michigan that Clinton lost to Sanders in 2016. Trump, whose 2016 victory margin over Clinton in Michigan was just over 10,000 votes, cannot afford any deterioration of his support in these areas that formed his base.
Just as disturbing for Republican strategists is a shift away from Sanders and toward Biden among Michigan’s white voters, upscale and blue collar alike. In 2016, Sanders carried white college graduates by a decent margin and whites without college degrees by even more. On Tuesday, both groups swung to Biden.
And if Trump’s backing among his core groups is in jeopardy, Democrats are energized in their opposition to him not simply from discontent but from outright anger. For example, among the voters in Michigan, better than 6 in 10 told the Edison Media Research exit poll that the Trump administration made them angry. Almost all of the rest said they were dissatisfied.
Jen Chaney at New York magazine writes—23 Years Is Exactly What Harvey Weinstein Deserves:
To put 23 years in perspective, think about where Harvey Weinstein was 23 years ago. On March 11, 1997, Weinstein’s studio had, a month to the day earlier, received 20 Academy Award nominations, more than any other studio in Hollywood. In less than two weeks, on March 24, Weinstein and his colleagues would collect 11 Oscars, buoyed by The English Patient, which won Miramax its first Best Picture statuette. Miramax’s (and Weinstein’s) aggressive lobbying tactics and its ability to spend money on ads and marketing, aided by the fact that it was then owned by Disney, were already becoming legend. “When it comes to pushing films for the Academy Awards,” the New York Times wrote at the time, “nobody in the film industry is more zealous than Miramax.”
Yet at this sentencing today, roughly 23 years later, Weinstein said, “I had no great powers in this industry. Miramax at the height of its fame was a small company … I couldn’t blackball anybody.” A small company, owned by the biggest one imaginable. He was outright lying. This man, who regularly bragged about how much influence he and his “empire” had over the entertainment industry — and about how he advanced the careers of women onscreen and off more than any other filmmaker — knew he was lying.
But that makes total sense, since Harvey Weinstein’s life 23 years ago was a lie, too.
Nancy LeTourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—The 2020 Election Is Not a Repeat of 2016:
Resting primarily on Biden’s wins in Michigan and Missouri, pundits are now recognizing the coalition that Joe built, which includes not only African Americans and suburbanites, but also white working-class and rural voters. With that awareness, questions have begun to arise about what happened to Sanders’ support—especially among the latter—from 2016 to 2020. The most common answer is that in 2016, he benefited from an anti-Clinton sentiment. [...]
My colleague Martin Longman has made a similar case very eloquently—focused primarily on suburban voters. While I suspect there is some truth to those arguments, I think that things are more complex than they indicate.
Martin made it clear that his conclusions are based on a negative reaction to a possible Clinton dynasty, which is not something that Jonathan Chait acknowledged in suggesting that voters “simply detested her.” Mixed in with that is the misogyny that keeps people from supporting a female candidate. But if that is all there was to it, we’d be talking about Sanders benefiting in 2016 from an “anti-woman” sentiment. Most everyone making this argument is talking about something more personal than that.
I want to be clear that the problem I have with placing so much emphasis on Clinton is, in part, influenced by a gut reaction to once again hearing that it was the woman’s fault. I have an immediate reaction to the idea that what led to Sanders’ rise in 2016 is all about Hillary’s baggage. That tends to elicit a defensive reaction, but it also leads me to ask some questions that might have otherwise been overlooked.
The primary problem with these arguments is that they are based on an assumption that the 2020 primary is merely a replica of 2016, with the one difference being that Biden has replaced Clinton. I would posit two major differences between then and now.
Walter Shapiro at The New Republic writes—The Gauzy Myth of the Sanders Campaign: If there were ever hidden armies of Democratic voters yearning for a visionary presidential nominee, then they remain well camouflaged:
After Tuesday night, the undeniable truth is that the entire Sanders campaign was predicated on a gauzy myth. If there were ever hidden armies of would-be Democratic voters yearning for a visionary presidential nominee uncontaminated by the compromises of life, then these Bernie Brigades still remain well camouflaged.
Sure, as Sanders stressed in his Wednesday statement, some of his policies are popular with primary voters. In Michigan, exit polls showed that replacing private health insurance with a government program had the support of nearly 60 percent of the people who went to the polls on Tuesday. But since the February 29 South Carolina primary, most Democratic primary voters have been unwilling to buy the entire Sanders package: politically unattainable goals, such as canceling $1.6 trillion in college debt, combined with attacks on corporate interests and the “billionaire class.” [...]
After Sanders’s two presidential runs, voters possess a pretty clear-eyed sense of who he is. He is a gadfly, a goad, and a left-wing Pied Piper. These can be valuable traits in politics since the moderate, accommodationist wing of the Democratic Party sometimes needs outside pressure to force it to focus on causes larger than the next election. But Sanders was never cut out to be a traditional president forging alliances, brokering compromises, and dealing with the messiness of governing in a bitterly divided democracy. That simply isn’t Bernie’s skill set. And his lifelong rigidity would have become an even larger governing problem if he ever succeeded Trump as president.
Libby Watson at The New Republic writes—Democrats Sleepwalk Into the Nomination of Joe Biden:
Voters are not flocking to the polls because they are moved by the dazzling prospect of a Joe Biden presidency. In many cases he’s winning states in which he’s barely shown his face. But a majority of the Democratic base is convinced that Biden is the safe bet to win against Trump, and they value the way that certainty feels more than policy.
In every state that has voted so far, majorities have come out in favor of Medicare for All (specifically, replacing private insurance with a single government plan). They won’t get it anytime soon. In an interview this week, Joe Biden was asked if he would veto Medicare for All if it were sent to his desk; he said that he would “veto anything that delays providing the security and the certainty of health care being available now.” He went on to criticize the price tag of the policy, naturally without noting that the increased government spending would replace private, individual spending on things like insurance premiums, copays, deductibles, and a slew of surprise bills that drag Americans from the sickbed into bankruptcy. In Mississippi, 62 percent of voters support the plan; the candidate who has taken the most contributions from the health care industry is on track to win the state by massive margins.
Biden has also locked up the nomination with shockingly little support from voters under 40.
Dustin Guastella at Jacobin writes—Where Do We Go After Last Night’s Defeat?
[...] In five short years, Bernie’s campaigns have punctured the neoliberal political consensus with an egalitarian platform, a realistic strategy, and majority support for his ideas. I’m not going to cheerlead or sugarcoat a defeat by redefining it as a victory, but we should recognize that the past five years of “Sandersism” represents a genuine leap forward in politics in the United States, a leap that dwarfs the past half-century of liberal stupidity and backwardness.
In other words, in five years, we’ve moved forward fifty. Today’s commonsense political demands are, almost unthinkably, democratic socialist demands. Demands that insist on major state intervention in the economy, demands that are redistributive and universal. The regulation of production, distribution, and consumption for social ends through democratic means is now, finally, considered normal for many — if not most — voters. That’s pretty remarkable.
What’s more, all this happened without any real organizational strength, with every major media network against us, without any corporate sponsors, and with the labor movement on life support.
The Democratic ballot line affords us legitimacy and access to a mass base, and we cannot afford to abandon the tactic of using it.
Yet because it was a real leap, there is a big gap between the popularity of the Bernie platform and the actual institutional capacity to carry it out. This can help explain why many voters in the South — and a strong majority in Michigan — say that they support Medicare for All and Joe Biden. [...]
Guy T. Saperstein at The Guardian writes—If Jeff Bezos really wants to fight the climate crisis, he should just pay his taxes:
In the wake of the devastating Australian bushfires, Jeff Bezos announced last month that he will donate $10bn to fight the climate crisis. As a resident of California and the former president of the Sierra Club Foundation, I welcome any contribution toward the struggle against our changing climate. That said, my home state, like all communities with Amazon facilities, would be far better off if Bezos simply paid his taxes.
If Amazon’s properties in California were taxed at their current value, the added tax could help bolster our underfunded firefighters and fix our crumbling fire access roads. Contributing vast sums to the global effort is wonderful, but climate change is a local issue too. Our communities need to be well-funded if we’re going to face this threat head-on.
How California fights climate disruption will be a model for states and local governments nationwide, and if this effort fails in California, I worry what others will be able to accomplish.