We're In A Deep Recession And McConnell And Congressional Republicans Are About To Turn That Into The First Depression Since 1929

The Senate Republicans-- Mitch McConnell and his cronies-- have decided to let the 4 month long moratorium on evictions during the pandemic lapse-- despite the fact that the pandemic is raging worse than ever. Friday saw +78,009 new one-day cases and 1,141 one day COVID deaths. The pandemic is out of control in Florida, southern California, Texas and Georgia and rapidly and dangerously rising in smaller states like Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Wisconsin, Arkansas... McConnell forced the moratorium to end Friday night, knowing full well that it would cause a surge of evictions from coast to coast-- including in Louisville, Lexington, Bowling Green, and Owensboro in his own state. And McConnell planned to see that the ban on evictions would end just as pandemic-related enhanced unemployment benefits also ended. Millions-- literally, millions-- of Americans will lose their homes because of two very wealthy men: Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, the former having married into wealth and the latter who inherited it. Around 20 million Americans are now unprotected by either federal or state eviction moratoriums. Landlords who were covered by the moratorium-- 12 million households-- must give tenants 30 days notice before they can actually evict them from their homes.

In May, the House passed a rescue package-- enhanced last month by the addition of legislation that would extend the federal eviction ban until March of next year-- and both Sherrod Brown and Elizabeth Warren have introduced similar legislation in the Senate. McConnell and his Republican cronies have adamantly and arrogantly refused to take any of the bills up. On Thursday, on the Senate floor, Sherrod Brown said that "Right now, millions of Americans are in danger of losing their homes. The last thing we need in the middle of a public health crisis is families being turned out on the streets." This is a list of senators whose names should appear on every eviction notice-- along with Trump's-- before November 3:

• Mitch McConnell (R-KY)
• Cory Gardner (R-CO)
• Steve Daines (R-MT)
• Susan Collins (R-ME)
• Thom Tillis (R-NC)
• Joni Ernst (R-IA)
• Martha McSally (R-AZ)
• Lindsey Graham (R-SC)
• Kelly Loeffler (R-GA)
• David Perdue (R-GA)
• Shelley Moore Capito(R-WV)
• John Cornyn (R-TX)
• Dan Sullivan (R-AK)
• Bill Cassidy (R-LA)
• Ben Sasse (R-NE)
• Jim Inhofe (R-OK)
• Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS)
• Mike Rounds (R-SD)
• Tom Cotton (R-AR)
• Jim Risch (R-ID)

Neither rent relief nor unemployment relief are priorities for the Republicans; legal immunity for businesses that kill their employees is what drives them. As Annie Lowrey wrote Friday for The Atlantic, "Now We'll Know What The Recession Feels Like-- Congress Is Severing A Lifeline For Millions Of Americans. This week, Congress will decimate the economy, in an unfortunately literal sense: It will cut unemployment-insurance payments to more than 25 million people, more than one in 10 American adults. When it does, the coronavirus recession, already historic in its severity, will become far, far worse. The CARES Act, the coronavirus-relief legislation, included a huge expansion of the unemployment-insurance (UI) program, to include gig workers and freelancers not normally eligible for benefits. It also added a $600-a-week bonus payment to state UI payouts, which generally range from $100 to $400 a week. For four months, these $600-a-week bonus payments have prevented the country’s jobs catastrophe from becoming a catastrophe for family budgets too. They have helped laid-off workers pay their rent, put groceries on the table, and keep the lights on... [T]he $600-a-week payments were a lifeline. Research by the JPMorgan Chase Institute, a think tank housed in the mega-bank, found that the recession and the pandemic cut the spending of employed workers by roughly 10 percent. That makes sense: Many workers had their hours cut, many families spent less as they sheltered in place and worked from home, and many cut back due to fear and uncertainty about the economy. But unemployed workers actually spent a little more than they did before the pandemic hit, due to the additional UI money. The think tank concluded that 'expanded unemployment benefits are acting both as a source of stability for unemployed individuals and also as a form of stimulus to the overall economy.' Congress is now severing that lifeline. The $600-a-week bump functionally expires on Saturday. Even if Congress were to pass an extension now, state UI systems would not be able to program the benefits back in quickly enough to avoid a lapse for millions of recipients. Nor do Republicans want to extend the benefits in full. Concerned about the economy not restarting (a result of the virus, not UI), concerned about the $70-billion-a-month cost of the payments (chump change, given that the economy is collapsing), concerned about disincentivizing work (which, again, does not appear to be happening), Republicans are proposing to cut the payments to just $100 or $200 a week through December, or perhaps to cut them to $300 a week and then extend them only two more months."

Obviously, this kind of a reduction "will hurt families struggling to navigate the dangers of an incurable virus, the disastrous loss of child care and in-person education, and the worst job market in 80 years. Reopening is not leading to a boomerang in economic activity-- indeed, the number of people employed fell from mid-June to mid-July, the Census Bureau reported this week. Jobless workers can’t just go out there and make some money. Now they won’t be able to go out there and spend money either." In other words, what McConnell and his cronies are doing is quite simply "turning a stalled recovery into a double-dip recession. Workers on UI will see their income drop. With no work and no UI, they will spend less, hurting local businesses. Those businesses will purchase less from suppliers, cut their investments, and perhaps lay off employees. This vicious cycle will repeat millions of times, in millions of places across the country. The United States’ economic problems will get worse, not better." Republican politicians are already figuring out how to blame this catastrophe on Biden and the Democratic Congress in the 2022 midterms!

Last week, reporting for the Wall Street Journal, Ruth Simon, Amara Omeokwe and Gwynn Guilford wrote that small businesses are bracing for a prolonged crisis. Many small businesses are shutting down or slashing jobs again after having "brought back staff beginning in mid-April, believing they could get back to business. Now, many are shutting down or slashing jobs again as local officials and consumers pull back and the pandemic shows no signs of abating... [M]any business owners are facing make-or-break challenges. Many may not last. Businesses are entering this phase just as many are exhausting their rescue funds from the federal Paycheck Protection Program, a $670 billion coronavirus stimulus measure launched in April to offer loans to small firms." Billions of the PPP money was stolen for Trump and congressional cronies

An estimated 1.85 million U.S. businesses closed their doors or temporarily suspended operations in the second quarter, according to Oxxford Information Technology Ltd. in Saratoga, N.Y., which tracks roughly 32 million U.S. businesses of all sizes using data from credit bureaus, surveys and government sources.

Raymond Greenhill, Oxxford’s president, forecasts that total losses this year will be greater than in the last recession, when 20%, or roughly 4.5 million businesses, disappeared in just over a year. He added that some of the losses will be offset by new business formation.

Mr. Greenhill said small firms are especially vulnerable now and will account for most of the losses. He said most lack the working capital to survive the downturn or to meet customer needs when the economy recovers. He added that it’s more difficult for young businesses and for other businesses that entered the year in weak financial shape to tap funding from banks and other sources.

As states eased restrictions in May and June, spending at small businesses-- which commonly offer in-person services-- recovered more slowly than in the rest of the economy, according to Womply, a data and technology company with 500,000 small-business customers, mostly in the food and beverage, retail, health and beauty and automotive services sectors.

...Enterprises with fewer than 500 employees accounted for almost half of private-sector employment in 2017, the most-recent data, according to the Census Bureau. Small firms also employ a majority of the workers in industries such as restaurants and personal care that are most affected by capacity restrictions.

“If a small- or medium-sized business becomes insolvent because the economy recovers too slowly, we lose more than just that business. These businesses are the heart of our economy and often embody the work of generations,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said last month during testimony before Congress.

Michael Gibbons, co-owner of three restaurants in Portland, Ore., with his wife, Evelyn, reduced his staff in mid-March to 10 from 97 after shifting to takeout and delivery. The business experimented with outdoor dining on Father’s Day, but scrapped it. “Some guests are just not compliant with safety measures,” he said. Staffing was a hurdle too, as former employees were reluctant to return because they were concerned about their safety and earning more by collecting unemployment benefits, he said, adding that protests in the city didn’t factor in his decision.

Mr. Gibbons said he plans to test outdoor dining again later this month, but also said that Oregon’s uptick in Covid cases is worrisome.

Consumers are pulling back across the country, but spending in small-business categories such as food and beverage, retail, health and beauty has fallen even more sharply in places with rising coronavirus cases, such as Texas, Florida and Arizona, said Michael Stepner, economist at Opportunity Insights, a nonpartisan research institute.

At bars, for example, national spending in mid-July was less than half what it was a year ago, with even worse numbers in Texas, Florida and California, according to Womply.

“It’s hard for small businesses to weather the storm when they don’t know when this will be over,” Mr. Stepner added.

...Nearly one-third of small businesses had less than one month of cash reserves on hand at the end of June, according to the Census Bureau.

Congress sought to allay those strains with PPP funds. The program provided a quick influx of cash to struggling businesses, allowing many of them to retain employees or bring back workers. The loans are generally forgivable if businesses spend a certain share of the funds on payrolls and meet certain other requirements.

The federal government as of July 21 had approved about five million PPP loans, worth a total of $518 billion, according to the Small Business Administration, the agency overseeing the program.

But lawmakers designed the PPP to help owners manage through a V-shaped recovery-- a steep but brief collapse in demand, followed by a swift rebound. Many firms have now burned through the loans, but sales have only barely picked up-- leaving them without funds to keep paying their full pre-pandemic workforce.

On Friday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Congress should consider automatically forgiving PPP loans taken out by the smallest U.S. businesses and offer a second helping of aid to some firms.

...A July survey conducted by the National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business advocacy group, found roughly 22% of PPP loan borrowers have laid off or anticipate having to lay off employees after using their loan, according to the 615 survey respondents.

A renewed downturn in activity could especially affect minority-owned businesses, which have been harder hit by the pandemic and slower to rebound.

Robert Fairlie, an economics professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, found that 81% of Black-owned businesses and 82% of immigrant-owned businesses that had been up-and-running in February were still operating in June, compared with 95% of white-owned businesses, in a study that analyzed Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Immigrants and minorities are more likely to be in industries, such as restaurants and personal services, hard hit by social-distancing mandates and economic and health concerns, he said. Even more important, many of these businesses “are really small,” Prof. Fairlie said. “It’s much harder for them to operate during the pandemic, and many lack the financial resources to move forward.”

He said that Black and immigrant business owners tend to hire from their local communities. “If the business owners are struggling and the employees are struggling, it’s a double hit to those communities,” he said.

For some industries, economic pain might not end until the health crisis is fully extinguished.

A survey by Drizly, an online alcohol delivery company, found 13% of respondents said they would return to bars and restaurants again only when a coronavirus vaccine became available. A further 31% said they had no plans to return to bars soon.

Washington Post's Jeff Stein and Erica Werner reported that Mnuchin and the Democrats have said they want a deal by the end of the month, but McConnell said that reaching an agreement could take several weeks, "a timeline that could leave many unemployed Americans severely exposed... Part of the problem stems from a push by administration officials and GOP lawmakers to reduce a $600 weekly payment of enhanced federal unemployment benefits. The White House and the GOP disagree about how to do this, and talks remain highly contentious. They hope to release a proposal early next week... In practice, the coming lapse in the jobless benefit means millions of workers are receiving their last enhanced benefit payment this week... [L]eading Republican lawmakers have argued for cutting the $600-per-week bonus down to $200-per-week, these people said, with one possibility being that this amount slowly phases out over time."

The proposed legislation could come on Monday, a lag that has prompted scorching criticism from congressional Democrats who have been demanding action for months. Congress has not passed any coronavirus relief legislation since approving four bipartisan bills in March and April that pumped around $3 trillion into the economy. McConnell wanted to wait to see how the unemployment benefits and other programs approved in that unprecedented stimulus effort played out before taking additional action.

“This weekend, millions of Americans will lose their unemployment insurance, will be at risk of being evicted from their homes, and could be laid off by state and local government, and there is only one reason: Republicans have been dithering for months while America’s crisis deepens,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) said in a joint statement Friday.

If adopted, the new unemployment plan could complicate negotiations with congressional Democrats, who favor extending the $600 weekly payment through January. And it’s unclear if balky state processing systems would have the capacity to implement a complicated new formula on such short notice.

“We’re dealing with the mechanical issues associated with that,” Mnuchin told reporters about the wage replacement plan.

The proposal would, in key respects, meet the conflicting political and economic pressures bearing down on the GOP and White House as the unemployment deadline looms for millions of Americans months away from Election Day.

Senate Republicans and White House officials have been clear that they are not willing to extend the $600-per-week benefit, which conservatives and many business organizations say encourages people to stay home rather than work. Many economists dispute this notion. Senior Republicans have also said they do not want additional federal unemployment benefits to go away entirely, acknowledging that some additional federal help should still be provided to those made jobless during the pandemic. The benefits are politically popular, with a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll finding close to 60 percent of Americans supporting their extension.

...Congressional Democrats and many economists say the current benefit should be extended in full to prevent a crucial stimulus from disappearing from an already wobbly economic recovery.

Given the difficulty of reaching a deal with Democrats before the existing benefits expire, Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Thursday floated a stand-alone extension of unemployment provisions as part of a package with school funding and a type of lawsuit shield to make it harder for employees to sue their employers if they become sick with the novel coronavirus.

Senior lawmakers in both parties oppose this piecemeal approach, but if they are unable to reach a deal, they might be forced to pass some type of stand-alone benefit extension next week.

In March, lawmakers initially discussed increasing unemployment benefits so they would represent 100 percent of a worker’s prior income. Congress ultimately abandoned the idea in favor of the universal $600 bonus, in part because Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia warned that the nation’s unemployment systems could not handle the complexity of matching every individual’s unemployment benefits to the person’s prior income, according to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), who led those negotiations.

“Scalia said, ‘It can’t be done,’ ” Wyden said in an interview. “We have not seen a single piece of paper describing how this would be administered without the downsides Scalia pointed out months ago.”

Mnuchin acknowledged the technical challenges posed by converting from one system to another when addressing reporters on Thursday. He said the matter was being discussed with state unemployment offices. “Let me just say, different states are in different places,” Mnuchin said. “Some states can implement this quickly. Some states will take time."

Some experts are skeptical. State unemployment offices have been badly overwhelmed by the unprecedented surge in claims, and there were another 1.4 million claims last week. Thousands of the newly jobless have struggled for months to obtain benefits and in some states have camped outside unemployment offices overnight to be ahead in line for help.

The $600-per-week bonus was chosen for its simplicity compared with targeted, individual wage replacement-- but it has proved tremendously difficult for states to implement as the nation’s unemployment rate spiked to 15 percent before falling to 11 percent.

America-- And The Democratic Party-- Needed Bernie To Stay In The Race

This is a must-watch video, a discussion between Mehdi Hasan and Naomi Klein. They don't get to Bernie staying in the race 'til near the end but the whole half hour is a worthwhile way to spend some time. As for Bernie staying in the race, I very much agree with Naomi Klein and with Alan Minsky, the Executive Director of Progressive Democrats of America who penned this guest post a day before Bernie decided to drop out. I hope you agree as well-- and agree enough to contribute to congressional candidates who are running on Bernie's issues, even if it's just five or two dollars. Thats why I've included a Bernie Congress Blue America thermometer below. Just click on it and vote with a few dollars to let Bernie you agree too.


Stay In The Race Bernie Sanders-- America Needs You Now More Than Ever.
-by Alan Minsky

Progressive Democrats of America calls upon Senator Bernie Sanders to continue his presidential campaign until the end of the 2020 primary season.

We understand that many Democrats are calling for Bernie to drop out. They say that Joe Biden is so far ahead that the time has come for party unity, for focusing on Donald Trump. While we agree about the necessity of defeating Donald Trump, we arrive at the opposite conclusion: The Democratic Party, and all Americans, will benefit from Bernie continuing his campaign in this historic moment.

The severity of the COVID-19 national emergency has changed everything in this election year. Coronavirus has revealed, with tragic consequences, the failings of our public health institutions and economic safety net-- in ways that Bernie Sanders has been warning against for decades. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Bernie's platform directly addresses these failings; in marked contrast to his rival's. As many observers have noted, with each passing day the COVID-19 pandemic is proving the wisdom of the Sanders agenda.

In particular, Medicare for All needs to be the official policy of the Democratic Party and it's presidential nominee in 2020. The pandemic has exposed America's current healthcare system for the disaster that it is. There can be no denying that having tens of millions of Americans unable to access affordable care greatly increases the public health risk for everyone. America needs universal single-payer health care; and the only way to get there is through the Democratic Party. Yet Joe Biden opposes Medicare for All, while Bernie Sanders is its leading proponent.

In the wake of COVID-19, Medicare for All isn't merely a winning political issue; it's a political landslide issue. Even if Bernie doesn't win the nomination, by continuing to campaign and win delegates to the convention, he could leverage Medicare for All into the party platform. For this, America, the Democratic Party, and even Joe Biden, should want Bernie Sanders to stay in the race. We also need Bernie to stay in the race to insure that his voice is heard as we enter the peak days of the crisis. Over the past few weeks, Bernie has fought tirelessly on behalf of average Americans in the battles over the stimulus bills. As one of only three viable candidates for President, Bernie has a powerful platform. That will change overnight when his campaign ends; and his influence will wane, leaving Americans even more at the mercy of a political class that, on balance, prioritizes big money interests over those of the vast majority.

Of course, Bernie's campaign going forward is not just about building support for policies, however essential, because of one fact: the race isn't over. Joe Biden may have a significant delegate lead, but it's nothing that a string of 70-30 results wouldn't reverse. That might be a longshot, but it's not impossible. Think about it this way: Bernie's policies match this moment just like FDR's did in the early 1930s; and FDR won his share of landslides. Calling for Sanders to step aside is anti-democratic. Let the candidates campaign and let the voters decide.

On this final point, consider the parallel with FDR in light of the recent unemployment statistics. Only one period in American history resembles the wholesale devastation that is currently shredding the American economy, the Great Depression. How did we get out of that? After three years of Hoover's impotent response, FDR re-energized America with a revolutionary program that transformed the country forever, the New Deal-- an updated version of which was a central plank of Sanders' platform, the Green New Deal.

The President who will be inaugurated in January will have a unique opportunity to define the direction of the country for the foreseeable future. Do we want to re-affirm a society that only works for the few while the rest of us work multiple jobs, live entwined in debt, with underfunded public schools, and a broken health care system with little hope of overcoming America's endemic crises? Or do we choose a new path that brings both our society and the planet back into balance and ensures that America will lead the world in addressing the biggest challenges of the next century?

Be honest folks, the Bernie Sanders agenda made a lot of sense before COVID-19, now it makes all the sense in the world. It's the vision that the Democratic Party needs to unify behind. The only way that happens is if the Sanders campaign continues.

The world has changed irreparably since early March when most primary votes were cast. The fallout from COVID-19 will define politics in the 2020s. We will all benefit by having the country's leading advocate for strengthening the public sector make his case in our new, transformed, reality.

Stay in the race Bernie Sanders. America needs you now more than ever.

Trump Has Utterly Failed His Test-- Guess Who Suffers (+ Bob Dylan's 17 Minute Song)

The GOP death cult is super-duper strong in Alabama, where the moron governor has challenged the coronavirus to come and kill all her citizens. Still, Nazis, fascists and assorted racists from all over the U.S. head up to their idea of an Aryan Nation-- Idaho's panhandle. The state voted or Trump in 2016 by a massive margin-- 59.25% to just 27.48% for Hillary (who won just two of the state's 44 counties.) The panhandle counties were even Trumpier than the rest of the state:

• Benewah- 74.0%
• Bonner- 60.8%
• Kootenai- 67.1% (the neo-Nazi capital of America)
• Shoshone- 64.4%

And even though Trump's net approval has decreased by 10 points since he first occupied the White House, 58% of Idaho voters still approved of the job he is doing, compared to just 39% who don't. None the less, Idaho's very conservative Republican governor, Brad Little, just issued a statewide 21-day stay at home order. Like most states, there is a long list of exceptions to the shutdown:

• Healthcare operations
• Grocery stores including liquor stores
• Food cultivation such as farming, fishing, and food processing
• Businesses that provide food, shelter and services for economically disadvantaged individuals
• News media services
• Gas stations, auto supply and repair facilities
• Banks, credit unions and financial institutions
• Plumbers, electricians and landscapers
• Hardware stores and firearm businesses
• Businesses providing mailing and shipping services
• Educational institutions to provide distance learning resources
• Childcare providing services that enable employees exempted in this order to work as permitted
• Laundromats and dry cleaners
• Restaurants can stay open but can only provide take out or drive-thru services
• Hotels, motels and shared rental units
• Businesses that supply people products to work from home
• Shipping businesses that deliver food, goods or groceries
• Airlines, taxis and private transportation needed for essential travel
• Home-based care for seniors, adults or children
• Essential tribal operations
• Legal or accounting services when necessary

Yes, even Idaho. And even Fox News. Their website carried a warning from the Surgeon General that the U.S. could be worse than Italy if 15-day guidelines are disregarded. Who's stupid enough to disregard them?

Jerome Adams explained his divergence with Trump by noting that the non-leader in the White House "is trying to be optimistic for Americans with his Easter timeline and also asked those not taking the coronavirus seriously to understand there is a possibility America could reach a worst-case scenario if residents do not follow the guidelines."

And optimistic for himself? I mean, Pope Francis asked the faithful to stay out of churches on Easter Sunday; Trump wants them filled with people celebrating his own resurrection. That's some step from "Hoax!"

Meanwhile, the Labor Department reported that a record-breaking 3.3 million Americans applied for unemployment benefits. The Washington Post put it like this: "Last week saw the biggest jump in new jobless claims in history, surpassing the record of 695,000 set in 1982. Many economists say this is the beginning of a massive spike in unemployment that could result in over 40 million Americans losing their jobs by April. Laid off workers say they waited hours on the phone to apply for help. Websites in several states, including New York and Oregon, crashed because so many people were trying to apply at once."

“The most terrifying part about this is this is likely just the beginning of the layoffs,” said Martha Gimbel, a labor economist at Schmidt Futures.

The nation’s unemployment rate was 3.5 percent in February, a half-century low, but that has likely risen already to 5.5 percent, according to calculations by Gimbel. The nation hasn’t seen that level of unemployment since 2015.

...“We may well be in a recession,” said Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell in his first appearance on morning television on NBC’s Today show. “The first order of business is to get the virus under control and then resume economic activity.”

...Both the scale of the layoffs and the speed at which they are happening are unprecedented. During the Great Recession, for example, the worst week for jobless claims was 665,000. Last week the nation saw five times that amount.

The Trump recession has begun and now what we have to hope for is that it doesn't become the Trump Depression. With him at the helm, we could be looking at 40 million unemployed by Easter. Read any independent economist and the words "it’s going to get worse" are always in their analysis. Writing for HuffPo, Zach Carter and Amanda Terkel reported that Mnuchin is basically in his own delusional world and that everything will be fine after he gets his hands on the half trillion dollar slush fund. After the unemployment spike was announced yesterday, he told CNBC's audience that "I just think these numbers right now are not relevant, and you know, whether they’re bigger or smaller in the short term. I mean, obviously, there are people who have jobless claims. And again, the good thing about this bill is the president is protecting those people. So you know, now with these plans, small businesses hopefully will be able to hire back a lot of those people. Last week, they didn’t know if they had protections. They didn’t have any cash. They had no choice. Now with this bill passed by Congress, there are protections."

This is wishful thinking, to put it mildly. Despite its big price tag, economists believe the legislation passed by the Senate on Wednesday is far too modest to meet the scope of the coming economic crash.

The $349 billion the legislation sets aside for small businesses will be exhausted quickly, but experts also believe that it will take months for the aid to reach most small firms. During that time, many of them will simply fail, and you can’t rehire workers if you don’t have a company.

The key provision of the bailout bill is a $454 billion program overseen by Mnuchin that can be leveraged 10 times over by the Federal Reserve to do essentially anything Mnuchin and the Fed want to do with it. But firms that receive this money will still be allowed to lay off up to 10% of their workforces over the next six months-- and that figure would be calculated based on this week’s employment. The 3.3 million people who were laid off last week wouldn’t count.

The coronavirus crash isn’t a simple shortage of cash. It’s a crisis on several different economic fronts that will require months, if not years, of aggressive government action to combat.

Global supply chains are breaking down as companies that manufacture goods in other countries find themselves unable to access factories and materials that they have relied upon for years. The collapse in U.S. consumer spending won’t simply return to normal.

The legislation’s protections for people who are laid off or struggling to pay the bills are simply too paltry to restore the plunge in purchasing power from unprecedented layoffs, not to mention the fear that most families are now experiencing. Every household in America will be pinching their pennies for the foreseeable future, and that loss of spending translates into a loss of revenue for businesses, and lower payrolls. The loss of American purchasing power will resonate both at home and abroad. This may well culminate in a shock to the financial system akin to the meltdown of 2008.

Thursday’s unemployment number is likely undercounting how many people are without work as well. Some people who have tried to apply for unemployment benefits have reported phone lines and websites frozen and jammed up by the crush of applicants. And people who are self-employed, undocumented, students or gig workers are ineligible to apply and therefore not counted.

Don Beyer (New Dem-VA), vice chair of the Joint Economic Committee: "These numbers are far worse than anything we saw during the Great Recession. We need to move quickly to help those that are getting hurt. It not only protects those families but it protects the economy-- so everyone benefits. That is why the bill passed by the Senate to increase unemployment insurance by an extra $600 a week for four months and make billions available for small business grants and loan payments is so important-- only Congress can make sure that those who are out of work right now, and the small businesses that employ them, do not go broke. It is vital that the federal government continue to follow the directives of medical professionals and public health experts, and not yield to the urge to 'reopen' the economy too soon. Doing so could cost lives and drastically deepen and prolong the damage to the economy. Stopping this pandemic and protecting human life is the most important thing we can do, and it is also the best thing we can do for the economy. I continue to urge all who can to please stay home."

As Chris Martenson says every single day in his podcast-- not to mention Erasure-- it didn't have to be this way. Obama made it look so easy that even a brainless blowhard-- who assured us he only hires "the best people"-- could be president. Turns out, he only hires the worst people. In yesterday's NY Times Jennifer Steinhauer and Zolan Kanno-Youngs noted that "Of the 75 senior positions at the Department of Homeland Security, 20 are either vacant or filled by acting officials, including Chad F. Wolf, the acting secretary who recently was unable to tell a Senate committee how many respirators and protective face masks were available in the United States. The National Park Service, which like many federal agencies is full of vacancies in key posts, tried this week to fill the job of a director for the national capital region after hordes of visitors flocked to see the cherry blossoms near the National Mall, creating a potential public health hazard as the coronavirus continues to spread. At the Department of Veterans Affairs, workers are scrambling to order medical supplies on Amazon after its leaders, lacking experience in disaster responses, failed to prepare for the onslaught of patients at its medical centers. Empty slots and high turnover have left parts of the federal government unprepared and ill equipped for what may be the largest public health crisis in a century, said numerous former and current federal officials and disaster experts. Some 80 percent of the senior positions in the White House below the cabinet level have turned over during President Trump’s administration, with about 500 people having departed since the inauguration. Mr. Trump is on his fourth chief of staff, his fourth national security adviser and his fifth secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. Between Mr. Trump’s history of firing people and the choice by many career officials and political appointees to leave, he now finds himself with a government riddled with vacancies, acting department chiefs and, in some cases, leaders whose professional backgrounds do not easily match up to the task of managing a pandemic."

Trump rules by chaos, fear, personal loyalty and whim. No American president was ever less prepared for something as catastrophic as this pandemic as Trump was. There is no part of the federal government functioning adequately.





Last night, Bob Dylan alerted his fans, via tweet, that this previously unreleased 17 minute song, "Murder Most Foul," is now available. Alexis Petridis for The Guardian: "People have mooted that it’s a standalone release, appearing now because Dylan understandably thinks it’s timely, March 2020 being a pretty apropos moment to release an epic song filled with death and horror and apocalyptic dread ('The age of the antichrist has just begun... it’s 36 hours past judgment day'), or perhaps to give his diehard fans further incentive to stay indoors. You rather get the feeling some of them will still be self-isolating months after the coronavirus all-clear has sounded, delicately unpicking its manifold knotty allusions-- the line about playing it for Carl Wilson down Gower Avenue requires the listener to know that the late Beach Boy sang backing vocals on Desperados Under the Eaves, the concluding track from Warren Zevon’s eponymous 1976 album, which ended with the line 'look away down Gower Avenue'-- and arguing on message boards as to whether the Susie mentioned midway through is just a reference to the Everly Brothers, or to Suze Rotolo, the girlfriend with whom Dylan watched the aftermath of Kennedy assassination unfolding, holed up in their New York apartment... The point is clearly the lyrics, which are dense and intriguing enough to hold your interest, and give the listener plenty to digest. Quite aside from all the cultural references, there’s a narrator that keeps switching from Kennedy himself to Dylan, who in turn seems to keep switching from firebrand mode to the grimly resigned old grouch of Things Have Changed and It’s All Good ('I hate to tell you Mister but only dead men are free') and a plethora of details about the assassination itself: 'Don’t say Dallas don’t love you, Mr President' is a mangling of the last words spoken to Kennedy by Nellie Connally, the first lady of Texas."

Is Biden Fit To Be President? Let's Get Real And Open Our Eyes

After nearly 5 decades in politics, suddenly one of the most conservative Democrats in the Senate is trying to "look" vaguely progressive. Status Quo Joe, once fought against Elizabeth Warren's bankruptcy proposals now says he backs them. Friday, at a small town hall in Illinois he said "I’ve endorsed Elizabeth Warren’s bankruptcy proposal, which... allows for student debt to be relieved in bankruptcy and provides for a whole range of other issues." I don't believe him. I believe his record. Watch the Mehdi Hasan video up top, "Forget the Gaffes, What About Biden's Lies?"

He doesn't lie as much as Trump. But he lies too much for public office. He's probably not as senile as Trump-- although I'm not certain-- but both of them are way too senile to lead our country. In fact Meagan Day took up Biden's severe cognitive decline at Jacobin the other day. "Biden’s boosters," she wrote, "want to sell him as the safe bet against Donald Trump. But running a man in clear cognitive decline against a mean-spirited bully who relishes the exploitation of weakness is anything but safe-- it would all but hand the election to Trump." Biden is afraid to participate in a real debate with Bernie and he's afraid to do extended TV interviews. He knows he's senile and doesn't want the American people to see it. And he's right to be worried. "The elder statesman," Day wrote, "is prone to lapses in coherence, to put it politely. The signs have been there for months: when Biden asked supporters to “go to Joe 30330 and help me in this fight” in the August debate, The Guardian called it 'one of the most cryptic gaffes of his career.' But it was only the beginning.

In his bid for the nomination, Biden has forgotten Barack Obama’s name repeatedly, proclaimed he was running for Senate, declared that over 150 million people have been killed by gun violence since 2007, confused his wife with his sister, confused Angela Merkel with Margaret Thatcher, and confused Theresa May twice with Margaret Thatcher. He’s issued an endless litany of baffling and embarrassing statements, including, “Tomorrow’s Super Thursday,” “We choose truth over facts,” “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids,” “Why, why, why, why, why, why, why?” and “We hold these truths to be self-evident: all men and women created by the, go, you know the, you know the thing.”

Biden’s allies have attempted to explain all this away by pointing out that Biden has long struggled with a stutter. It’s true that Biden stuttered as a child, but it is not true that he’s always labored to verbally convey his ideas. For decades Biden’s speech was lucid, convincing, at times even charismatic. In 2012, he was lavished with praise for verbally eviscerating Paul Ryan during a vice presidential debate. Less than ten years ago he was confident, composed, funny, and alert when he spoke in public. Nowadays, his campaign makes a concerted effort to limit his exposure to prevent the likelihood of verbal slip-ups, confessing that they tend to happen “late in the day.”

If Biden’s stutter has anything to do with his constant verbal fumbling, even his allies have to concede that it somehow seemed under control for decades and has now reemerged. So, what’s triggering its comeback? The answer to many-- including many in the Democratic Party before they decided to consolidate around him-- is some kind of mental decline caused by aging. Some have speculated dementia specifically, but there’s no need to attempt a diagnosis. Many neurological conditions become more probable and pronounced with age. Some kind of age-related cognitive impairment seems more likely to underlie the issue than stuttering, given that not all of Biden’s gaffes involve searching for the right word and failing to find it.

For example, Biden is also given to sudden displays of aggression, such as when he called a voter fat and challenged him to a physical contest, and extended incoherent ramblings, such as when he answered a question about the legacy of slavery by complaining that parents are failing to make their children listen to record players at home. And when he tells blatant untruths, which is often, he seems less like someone who’s being intentionally deceitful than someone who can’t remember the truth-- for example when he said his son had acted as Attorney General or that he was arrested for protesting apartheid in South Africa.

Whatever its root cause, Biden’s extreme incoherence poses a serious liability in a contest with Donald Trump. The potential insensitivity of pointing it out is eclipsed by the danger of nominating someone who can’t hold his own in a general election. Trump’s mockery of Biden has already started, and offers a preview of what’s to come. Biden “makes a mistake every time he speaks,” says Trump. “I can just see these handlers … ‘Alright, get him off now, he’s been up there long enough!’ So they’re screaming, ‘Get off! Get off! Sleepy Joe, get off the stage! Please! … Damn it, he should have left sooner.’”

Over the weekend, Biden appeared for a mere seven minutes in St Louis, where he said, “We cannot get reelect, we cannot win this reelection, excuse me, we can only reelect Donald Trump, if in fact we get engaged in this circular firing squad here,” a bungled attempt to castigate his opponent Bernie Sanders for criticizing Biden’s efforts to cut Social Security. Trump ridiculed Biden by posting a clip of the speech that was edited down to say, “We can only reelect Donald Trump.”

News outlets sympathetic to Biden described the clip as manipulated, fake, or doctored. The editing was indeed dishonest, but while the full clip may clarify their meaning, they also show Biden struggling to articulate himself in public on one of the very recent few occasions that he’s ventured to do so.

Biden’s entire candidacy is premised on the idea that he’s the safe option. He stands for little, and even those close to him appear unimpressed by him. But at least nominating him is less perilous than nominating the radical Bernie Sanders, right?

Many of us on the Left argue that this is an incorrect assessment for political reasons. Biden’s record contains ugly betrayals of huge swaths of the electorate, from championing NAFTA, to authoring the 1994 crime bill, to supporting the Hyde Amendment, to selling Democrats on the Iraq War, to muscling through the 2005 bankruptcy bill that intensified the devastation of the economic recession. Between this past record and his forward-looking promise that “Nothing would fundamentally change,” his centrist politics alone make him an unappealing and therefore unsafe nominee.

But even if you find the political case unconvincing, it’s incumbent on you to at least give his mental state some serious consideration. If Biden is nominated, he’ll be forced into the spotlight every day for four months, without reprieve and with nowhere to hide. You can bet he’ll say many more things he will regret. He’ll no doubt make more gaffes than any candidate in history, and Trump will make the most of his windfall.

Running someone experiencing rapid cognitive decline against a mean-spirited bully who relishes the exploitation of weakness is worse than a risk. It’s a guaranteed disaster.

And for tonight, expectations aren’t high for Status Quo Joe after a series of mediocre debate performances during primary season. The Sanders campaign, among other Biden detractors, views the debate as a chance for him to fall flat on his face, reviving questions about the durability of his candidacy just as Biden is poised to break the race wide open with a four-state sweep in the March 17 primaries... Biden is prepared for Sanders to question his shortcomings with reaching out to the youth vote, and to acknowledge he needs to make gains with young voters. But the former vice president’s advisers say he’ll also note that Sanders fell short of his own promise that he had the singular ability to attract new voters and build a coalition that would beat Trump."

Biden is also expected to mention how most of the top former presidential candidates in the race endorsed him-- and not Sanders.

Sanders, meanwhile, is operating under some self-imposed constraints. The Vermont senator likes Biden and loathes Trump, and he doesn’t want to eviscerate Biden out of concern that it would only weaken him and therefore help Trump, Sanders advisers say. And they note the difficulty of being overtly political onstage at a time when coronavirus dominates the nation’s consciousness.

Attacking Biden too much could be perceived as just out of step with the moment in which Democrats want unity and seriousness of purpose.

“Bernie’s going to be careful about not looking too political-- too electoral-- and being the guy who says, ‘Well, I can get this many delegates and go on to the convention...’ No. That’s not where Americans’ heads are at,” an adviser said. “People are worrying about their families. They’re at the grocery store buying batteries.”





Because coronavirus has made health care an even more important issue, Sanders is expected to press Biden on his opposition to Medicare for all. Sanders also wants Biden to explain why he advocated for cutting Social Security years ago only to inaccurately suggest he never did.

“It’s not going to be an all-out assault. It’s going to be a policy debate. And it’s going to be a vigorous one,” said Jeff Weaver, Sanders senior adviser. “But it’s going to be on policy.”

...Last week, the two campaigns clashed over the debate format. Sanders campaign wanted a standing debate that was moderated by professionals. Biden’s campaign was more inclined for a seated town hall-style format where citizens could ask questions.

...The dispute with the Sanders campaign over the debate format came as Democrats sympathetic to Biden started privately raising concerns that Biden didn’t have the physical or mental stamina to face Sanders on stage. Rumors circulated that the Democratic National Committee was under pressure to cancel the debate, which both the DNC and Biden’s campaign denied.

The debate ultimately wasn’t canceled, but it was moved to Washington, D.C., from Phoenix over concerns about coronavirus contagion.

Mike Ceraso, a former adviser to Sanders’ 2016 campaign, said Biden has captured the feeling of the party better than his opponents, winning a different type of expectations game.

“Expectations this time around isn’t about brains or performance. It’s about the story, man. Pete and Warren and Bernie’s stories are okay,” Ceraso said. “Biden’s story hits home. Loss and anger and sense of service and sadness are relatable qualities. They amplify with Trump in the background. Take the intellectual out of it. And focus on the heart. It’s cliche as hell. But...imagine if you’re someone who has a mom with Alzheimer’s or a depressed child or someone addicted to drugs.”

Some people say America deserves what it got for electing Trump and Democrats deserved what they got for nominating Hillary Clinton. That's pretty much the feeling I'm hearing today-- Democrats will deserve what they get if they nominate Biden-- whether he wins or loses in November. And the rest of us? Screwed again.

Biden And Black Voters

Ibram X. Kendi is the director of the Antiracist Research and Policy Center at American University. About 5 weeks ago The Atlantic published a piece he wrote about what he fears a conservative Democrat winning the nomination. He refers to the conservative wing-- incorrectly as just as the corporate media wants him to-- as moderates. His analysis is so good, it's a shame he doesn't understand the importance of not ceding that word-- moderate-- to the right. Anyway, he points out that these conservative Democrats who think they own the Democratic Party "are calling for a rematch against Trump in the 2020 election, claiming they are the most electable. The thought is haunting me, like Trump’s hell. As much as moderate Democrats fear that nominating a progressive will ensure Trump’s reelection, I am haunted by the fear that nominating a moderate will ensure Trump’s reelection."

When moderate Democrats assure us that they would win back more white swing voters than progressive Democrats would, I am haunted by the thought that the evidence is hardly so reassuring. I see moderate candidates struggling with younger voters, who are more likely to favor progressive policies, and are more likely than older voters to stay home or vote third party if they don’t like the Democrat. The leaders of nine progressive organizations recently told The Atlantic that a Biden nomination “would trigger a huge deflation in enthusiasm, and a shrinking ... volunteer pool.”

...I don’t prefer the misleading term moderate (or progressive for that matter). Self-identified moderates, independents, and undecided voters are not necessarily centrists. But there are Democratic candidates claiming that they are best equipped to win these moderates, independents, Republicans, and undecided voters. There are candidates opposing Medicare for All, free public college, the Green New Deal, and a wealth tax. I will call these candidates moderates. And these are the Democrats I fear will lose to Trump.

I am not alone. Nearly one-third of Democratic-primary voters fear their party could lose the presidential election if their nominee is not progressive enough. A relatively equal number of Democratic-primary voters fear their party could lose if their nominee is not moderate enough. But it seems like moderate fears have received the most airing. Every time I looked up over the past year, I saw broadcasts of “stark” warnings like “The latest wave of far-left ideas ... could lead to electoral disaster in 2020.” I heard moderate candidates like Biden saying, “Show me the really left-left-left-left-wingers who beat a Republican.” After stepping off a summer debate stage, Senator Amy Klobuchar said on CNN, “People [who] are watching right now” are “moderate Republicans, and we need to win them to win the election.” In The Atlantic, Yascha Mounk urged Democrats to win back those Obama-to-Trump voters who “made a real difference” in the 2016 election.

Mounk is right. But maybe the candidate of change-- no matter his or her party-- is the most attractive to these all-important Obama-to-Trump voters, almost all of whom are white. It may have been their campaigns of change, when compared with Mitt Romney and Clinton, that caused Obama and Trump to attract the same white voters. Even their original campaign slogans fit together: Yes, we can make America great again.

After the 2016 election, a young white independent in Michigan said Obama was “really likable” and Trump earned her vote by being “a big poster child for change.” After Obama, Clinton lost ground among young and liberal working-class white voters, the two groups Democrats probably have the best chance of winning back from Trump-- and the two groups moderate Democrats struggle to attract.

In 2016, Trump managed to win 20 percent of liberal white working-class voters, and 38 percent of those who desired policies more liberal than Obama’s policies. How? Obama and Trump “had the same winning pitch to white working-class voters,” according to a New York Times analysis. Obama and Trump successfully cast Romney and Clinton as dismantlers of companies and outsourcers of jobs, and themselves as the defenders of the forgotten people. And, Trump added, they have been forgotten because they are white.

Working class (and non-working-class) white voters were more likely to switch from Obama to Trump if they embraced racist ideas. Maybe Obama’s more liberal economic and foreign-policy appeal-- when compared with Romney-- kept white racist ideas at bay in his 2012 voters. Maybe Trump inflamed their racist ideas in 2016, while being less conservative on economic and foreign-policy issues than past GOP nominees. Maybe a progressive candidate can better expose Trump’s conservatism and corruption on economic and foreign policy to winnable young and liberal white swing voters, which could break their racist allegiances to Trump, which perhaps explains why Senator Bernie Sanders currently leads Trump by the widest margin of all Democratic candidates. Maybe a pro-diversity, pro-corporate, and hawkish moderate Democrat will again alienate winnable white swing voters in 2020.

Maybe it is strategically unwise to build a presidential candidacy based on winning back a sizable number of white voters who supported Obama and flipped to Trump. Roughly seven in 10 Obama-to-Trump voters approve of Trump’s job performance, according to a recent Morning Consult poll of these voters in the swing states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. How can anyone who is serious about defeating Trump think Democrats should nominate a candidate on the theory that he can win back voters who Morning Consult says “resemble Republicans” and who overwhelmingly approve of Trump-- over a candidate who can win back voters who “resemble Democrats” and who overwhelmingly disapprove of Trump? Roughly seven in 10 other swing voters-- those who voted for Obama in 2012 and did not vote in 2016-- disapprove of Trump in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Morning Consult called them “low-hanging electoral fruit” in three states Clinton lost by less than 80,000 votes combined.

The low-hanging fruit is disproportionately composed of young voters, and especially young black voters. Democratic primary voters should value candidates’ performance with these other swing voters as much as they value their performance with white swing voters. Sanders and Senator Elizabeth Warren are running first and second among voters under 35, according to the latest national poll by Quinnipiac University. Among young black voters, Sanders is outpacing Biden by double digits. Only Warren and the businessman Andrew Yang register more than 1 percent support among this crucial group of swing voters. Black support-- young or old-- for Buttigieg and Klobuchar is nearly nonexistent-- as is their chance of defeating Trump without heavy black support.

Young black swing voters who are not supporting Biden are more likely to be progressive and less likely to identify as Democrats than their elders. They look at Biden’s record-- from pushing “tough on crime” and welfare-reform legislation to mistreating Anita Hill during the Clarence Thomas hearings to demeaning black parents-- and are repelled. Like Clinton’s super-predator video, I fear Biden’s record can push the other swing voters into not voting.

...Democrats should be more worried about a moderate nominee being out of touch with winnable voters. If the 2018 midterm elections are any indication, moderate Democrats may also be out of touch with winnable Obama-to-Trump swing voters, according to data from Sean McElwee and Brian F. Schaffner. Eighty-three percent of Obama-to-Trump swing voters who switched back to the Democratic Party in 2018 support Medicare for All, nearly mirroring the overwhelming support among other swing voters who voted Obama, didn’t vote in 2016, and then voted for Democrats in the 2018 midterms. These two groups also opposed Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, supported a $12 minimum wage, and backed a millionaire’s tax at similarly high rates. These two seemingly distinct groups of swing voters (one prototypically white, the other prototypically young and black) may be in line with each other on economic, foreign-policy, and climate issues-- and crucially, also may be most closely aligned with progressive candidates. This pumps the heart of electability-- any progressive nominee would have clear pathways to two of the most important groups of swing voters whom Democrats lost in 2016.

Yesterday, in Grand Rapids, Jesse Jackson endorsed Bernie. Jackson noted that Bernie and he see eye to eye on expanding Pell Grants, nominating African American women to the Supreme Court and to the Cabinet. "With the exception of Native Americans, African Americans are the people who are most behind socially and economically in the United States and our needs are not moderate. A people far behind cannot catch up choosing the most moderate path. The most progressive social and economic path gives us the best chance to catch up and Senator Bernie Sanders represents the most progressive path. That's why I choose to endorse him today."

Jacobin's Branko Marcetic sees things a lot like Kendi and Jackson do, pointing out that "Biden’s string of primary victories highlights a central paradox of his career: he has secured the loyalty of African American voters while working nonstop to let them down. Big PhRMA whore Jim Clyburn (D-SC) resuscitated Biden's dead-in-the-water campaign. Clyburn, a prototypical DC establishment shill, doesn't give a shit who Biden really is and how he's betrayed black voters in the past.

[S]urveying Biden’s record, one is left with a different impression: that Biden has, in fact, built a career on the back of steadfast African-American support while consistently betraying those same voters.

Elected as county councilman in 1970, Biden was known as an advocate for public housing, earning him racist abuse from bigoted locals in Delaware. Yet he quickly assured the press about his public housing stance: “I am not a Crusader Rabbit championing the rights of people.”

True to his word, when plans for a controversial moderate-income housing project came to the New Castle County Council in 1972-- one opposed by a crowd of hundreds who attended the meeting-- Biden voted with the rest of the council to table it indefinitely. More accurately, Biden disappeared after a recess, and the vote had to be delayed until he could be found and his vote put on the record. When the county’s housing authority later drew up plans to buy a complex to convert to “non-elderly” public housing, the agency’s outreach to discuss the plan with Biden fell on deaf ears; Biden was too busy campaigning for the Senate.

Upon entering the Senate, Biden went where one would expect a champion of civil rights to go: on the Senate Banking Committee, where he worked on bills to regulate predatory private debt collection and sat on its housing subcommittee.

But not for long. Explaining that “other issues are more important for Delaware-- the issues of crime and busing,” Biden departed Banking in 1977 for the Judiciary Committee. The decision paved the way for him to become the Senate’s leading liberal opponent of busing and architect of mass incarceration, each of his efforts calamitous to the cause of black equality.

The full significance of Biden’s anti-busing crusade has rarely been explored. Though his 1975 anti-busing amendment failed, by clearing the Senate, it was credited by the Congressional Quarterly as signaling the end of the upper chamber’s previous commitment to defending desegregation measures. Meanwhile, his lasting anti-busing achievement-- the 1977 Eagleton-Biden amendment, which barred the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare from using its funding for busing-- became the bane of existence for civil rights activists and school administrators around the country, whom it blocked from fully implementing desegregation plans. That it had no effect whatsoever on the court-ordered busing in Delaware, the ostensible reason for Biden’s sharp right turn on the issue, didn’t prevent him from being pleased with its impact. Biden was so against busing that, on a Judiciary Committee filled with former segregationists, he became the member who would vote against two historic black nominees to the Justice Department because of their stance on the matter.

Meanwhile, as Biden pushed the flurry of tough-on-crime legislation in the 1980s and 1990s that would prove so disastrous for communities of color, he was well aware of its dangers. He referred to the “political hysteria of the law and order campaigns” of the 1960s and later chided Reagan for his punitive approach: “It costs more money to keep a prisoner in jail than to send your son or daughter to Harvard or Yale,” he told a crowd. As early as 1972, as Biden demagogued on the dangers of crime and drugs for his Senate campaign; one expert whom Biden himself deemed “eminently qualified” to talk about crime trends had complained about politicians misleading the public on the issue; he assumed the expert wasn’t talking about him, Biden said.

The carceral avalanche that resulted was one half of a post–civil rights counterrevolution; the other took place in the courts. As a member and later chair of the Judiciary Committee, Biden let through several hard-right justices to the Supreme Court, Anthony Kennedy chief among them. Handpicked by Biden as a nominee acceptable to Democrats, he praised Kennedy throughout his confirmation hearing while feeding him softballs, hoping they could “all get out of here,” declining to investigate his anti-abortion views and earlier controversial rulings. Once on the court, Kennedy completed its right-wing takeover, working with his fellow conservatives to weaken civil rights protections. Biden’s failure was compounded four years later with the Clarence Thomas nomination, when, at Republicans’ behest, he did everything humanly possible to undermine Anita Hill’s testimony about the judge’s sexual harassment.

All the while, Biden lectured Democrats to forget the multiracial coalition that formed the bedrock of their party and move closer to the politics of the suburban South. “You have been where the Democratic Party was, and now the Democratic Party must be where you are,” he told Democrats in North Carolina as he toured with the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). At one stop in Alabama, he dropped from his stump speech references to police brutalization of civil rights protesters and his (nonexistent) civil rights activism.

Key to his argument was that Democrats had “lost the middle class” by becoming beholden to “special interests” and “interest groups,” who “had a stranglehold on us.” But Biden meant something very specific with these innocuous-sounding terms. Even earlier in his career, he had referred to “minorities and other vested interests” and blamed unchecked growth in federal spending on constituent interest groups who wouldn’t give up on programs they benefited from. As he told the NAACP Convention in 1986: “You can’t try to pit the Rainbow Coalition, blacks, Hispanics, poor whites, gays, against the middle class.” For good measure, he pointedly snubbed Jesse Jackson by publicly ruling him out as his running mate. Jackson hit back, griping about unnamed deficit-cutters “combing their hair to the left like Kennedy and moving their policies to the right like Reagan.”

“It’s about time politicians stop making pro-black speeches before pro-black groups and pro-labor speeches before the labor groups,” Biden once said. “People don’t want to hear what they think you think they want to hear.”

Yet throughout his career, Biden would routinely and cravenly change his talking points depending on whether he was speaking to a black audience. Upon receiving a 1978 endorsement from Howard Jarvis, the anti-tax businessman who had backed California’s Proposition 13, Biden’s office issued a statement that he was “delighted,” and that Jarvis had “recognized the fact that I have consistently voted for lower taxes and lower government spending.” Days later, talking to a mostly black audience, he warned them about the consequences of measures like Proposition 13, before saying he didn’t “have any feeling about [Jarvis’s] endorsement.” Twenty-four years later, after spending the whole of 2002 pushing for war with Iraq (a conflict hugely unpopular with black voters) and suggesting Saddam Hussein was connected to Al-Qaeda, he turned around a month after voting for the war to tell an audience of African-American columnists that it was “the dumbest thing in the world,” and that he didn’t “consider the war on Iraq the war on terror.”

Then there’s Biden’s infamous 2003 eulogy of segregationist and sexual predator Strom Thurmond, the man with whom Biden had worked to shift the US criminal code in a more punitive, unforgiving direction. Today, Biden’s South Carolina eulogy is viewed as an uncomfortable relic of a less enlightened era; in reality, it was unusual even then. Not only was Biden one of only two Democrats to show up to the funeral (the other, Fritz Hollings, had served with Thurmond for thirty-six years in the state), he was one of a mere seven of 225 living former and sitting senators to do so. Thurmond, who had famously filibustered the 1957 Civil Rights Act into oblivion, was a “brave man” whose “lasting impact” was a “gift to us all,” Biden told attendees.

That’s not to mention Biden’s long history of taking aim at entitlements like Social Security, a program of enormous importance to African Americans, and which large numbers of black Americans rely on to survive.

It’s one of those strange ironies of history that Biden, having spent a career betraying African Americans on key, consequential issues, now counts them as the main reason for his electoral viability; and that after insisting to Democrats that the party could only survive by prioritizing conservative white voters in the South over its multiracial base, he has been rescued from oblivion by mostly older black voters in the South. The fact that most of those in South Carolina backed him while telling pollsters that the US economic system needs a “complete overhaul” reveals this irony to be a tragedy.

Let me leave you with a few words from Norman Solomon: "Let’s be blunt: As a supposed friend of American workers, Joe Biden is a phony. And now that he’s running for president, Biden’s huge task is to hide his phoniness... Biden has a media image that exudes down-to-earth caring and advocacy for regular folks. But his actual record is a very different story. During the 1970s, in his first Senate term, Biden spouted white backlash rhetoric, used tropes pandering to racism and teamed up with arch segregationists against measures like busing for school integration. He went on to be a fount of racially charged appeals and “predators on our streets” oratory on the Senate floor as he led the successful effort to pass the now-notorious 1994 crime bill... Meanwhile, for well over four decades-- while corporate media preened his image as 'Lunch Bucket Joe' fighting for the middle class-- Biden continued his assist for strengthening oligarchy as a powerful champion of legalizing corporate plunder on a mind-boggling scale. Now, Joe Biden has arrived as a presidential candidate to rescue the Democratic Party from Bernie Sanders... Biden exemplifies a disastrous approach of jettisoning progressive principles and failing to provide a progressive populist alternative to right-wing populism. That’s the history of 2016. It should not be repeated."