Who's More Likely To Grant Biden A Honeymoon-- The Republicans Or The Progressives?

 

In her powerful Washington Post OpEd-- Working People Delivered Biden His Victory; Now He Needs To Deliver For Them-- early this morning, former Ohio state Senator Nina Turner noted that is was Black, brown and white families making under $100,000, along with the vast majority of young people who delivered Biden his victory. "These voters," she wrote, "are the heart and the future of a massive progressive movement inside and outside of the Democratic Party, and it is to them that Joe Biden and Kamala D. Harris must answer."

And in a letter to his supporters this afternoon, Bernie had a very similar message: while everyone claims credit for Biden's victory, it "multi-racial, multi-generational progressive grassroots organizations all across this country played an extraordinary role in helping to make this victory possible. We made phone calls, we texted, we registered voters, we did virtual rallies, we distributed literature and we knocked on doors when possible. Knowing the importance of this election we did everything that we could, and more. Together, we built widespread support for Biden among young people, people of color and the working class. In my view, Biden's success would not have been possible without those extraordinary efforts... [O]ver 53% of young people ages 18 to 29 voted, which not only eclipses 2016's turnout rate, but would be the highest youth turnout rate in American history. And those young people voted overwhelmingly for Biden and other Democrats... Further, the strong economic agenda that the progressive movement fought for helped bring out low-income working people to vote for Biden. National exit polls show that voters with an annual family income under $50,000 voted against Trump by a 15-point margin... [W]e're going to have to do everything possible to make sure that Congress and the new president move rapidly and aggressively to address the enormous crises facing our country."

On Thursday, Paul Krugman was already urging Biden to "claim that he has been given a strong mandate to govern the nation" (even though most of his votes were anti-Trump votes more than pro-Biden votes. Krugman warned that "there are real questions about whether he will, in fact, be able to govern. At the moment, it seems likely that the Senate-- which is wildly unrepresentative of the American people-- will remain in the hands of an extremist party that will sabotage Biden in every way it can." He then explained why divided government is such a problem and points to GOP obstruction during the Obama years.

Republicans used hardball tactics, including threats to cause a default on the national debt, to force a premature withdrawal of fiscal support that slowed the pace of economic recovery. I’ve estimated that without this de facto sabotage, the unemployment rate in 2014 might have been about two percentage points lower than it actually was.

And the need for more spending is even more acute now than it was in 2011, when Republicans took control of the House... We desperately need a new round of federal spending on health care, aid to the unemployed and businesses, and support for strapped state and local governments. Reasonable estimates suggest that we should spend $200 billion or more each month until a vaccine brings the pandemic to an end. I’d be shocked if a Senate still controlled by Mitch McConnell would agree to anything like this.

Even after the pandemic is over, we’re likely to face both persistent economic weakness and a desperate need for more public investment. But McConnell effectively blocked infrastructure spending even with Donald Trump in the White House. Why would he become more amenable with Biden in office?

Krugman is not without influence but it is Mohamed El-Erian, president of Cambridge's Queens' College, who is probably the single most respected voice in the world in the circle of serious investors and, like Krugman, he warns that A divided electorate spells trouble for the US economy. "The 2020 election," he wrote, "has confirmed that the US remains a deeply divided country facing mounting challenges that threaten both this and future generations. Despite a collective wake-up call in the form of a severe health and economic crisis, the country seems both unwilling and unable to embark on the decisive measures needed. The unwillingness comes from fundamental differences of views on how best to pursue economic and financial reforms while urgently dealing with the threats from COVID-19. The inability is due to a probably divided Congress, where the damage of the past few years to the most basic of cross-party working relationships has been accentuated by the past month's rush to approve a new Supreme Court justice."

What is at risk here is not just the longer-term oriented reforms seeking to limit another move down in productivity, yet more household economic insecurity, and a worsening in inequality. Also at risk is the short-term health and economic effort to help the nation recover from the considerable damage that the first COVID-19 wave left in its wake.

...[T]he Federal Reserve will be pushed yet again to do more with increasingly ineffective and inevitably distortionary policy tools. The traditional monetary policy mindset will continue to give even more ground as the Fed faces pressure to insure risks that are difficult to price, let alone underwrite properly.

This venturing into even bigger experimental unconventional monetary policies will do little to genuinely stimulate the economy. Instead, it is likely to create further distortions in financial markets, increase incentives for irresponsible risk-taking and lead to the misallocation of resources throughout the economy. This will heighten the threat of financial instability. In the process, the already large disconnect between Main Street and Wall Street will widen, adding political and social challenges.

...[This] translates into a more difficult outlook for both the short and longer term. It means less dynamic supply and less buoyant demand. The growth in the economic pie will not just be less than what's needed. It will also fall short of what the two sides of the political divide believe is possible under their different approaches, fuelling a messy blame game that will further undermine the social fabric.

The US plight is also problematic for a global economic recovery that is now more likely to become more uneven and more uncertain. America's internal divisions will preclude the early resumption of its traditional role in informing, influencing and sometimes imposing outcomes in multilateral economic co-ordination forums. They will also increase the risk of deglobalisation and the further weaponisation of economic and investment tools.

Ultimately, the combination of another health emergency, a weakening economy and increased financial instability will force the US government into decisive action-- but not before considerable damage to the lives, livelihoods and mental wellbeing of this generation, and perhaps future ones as well.

Not very cheerful-- and quite ominous, considering the source. Matt Viser, Seung Min Kim and Annie Linskey reported for the Washington Post over the weekend that Biden plans immediate flurry of executive orders to reverse Trump policies. He'll start on January 20 by having the country rejoin the Paris climate accords, reversing Trump’s withdrawal from the World Health Organization, repealing the ban on Muslims, and reinstateing the DREAMER program. "Biden’s top advisers have spent months quietly working on how best to implement his agenda, with hundreds of transition officials preparing to get to work inside various federal agencies. They have assembled a book filled with his campaign commitments to help guide their early decisions." That's good-- since his campaign commitments are much better than his instincts. It's good that his team recognizes that pushing major legislation through Congress is pretty much off the table with McConnell running the Senate. [Reminder: this.]

Biden is planning to set up a coronavirus task force on Monday, in recognition that the global pandemic will be the primary issue that he must confront. The task force, which could begin meeting within days, will be co-chaired by former surgeon general Vivek H. Murthy and David Kessler, a former Food and Drug Administration commissioner.

...“The policy team, the transition policy teams, are focusing now very much on executive power,” said a Biden ally who has been in touch with his team who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “I expect that to be freely used in a Biden administration at this point, if the Senate becomes a roadblock.”

A Republican-held Senate-- or even one with a narrow Democratic majority-- probably will affect Biden’s Cabinet picks given the Senate’s power to confirm nominees.

One option being discussed is appointing Cabinet members in an acting capacity, a tactic that Trump also used.

“Just by virtue of the calendar and how many positions are filled, that’s always a possibility,” the person said. “Because the Senate moves so slowly now, so much more slowly than it used to.”

...If Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) stays as majority leader, he would be trying to manage a conference torn between two factions with different interests, but neither necessarily eager to help Biden-- one with senators running for reelection in swing states in 2022 [Note: Lisa Murkowski, Rubio, Chuck Grassley seat, Richard Burr seat, Rob Portman, Pat Toomey seat, and Ron Johnson] and another with those seeking the national spotlight as they vie for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination [Note: Marco Rubio, Josh Hawley, Tom Cotton, Ted Cruz].

“In the old days, the mandate meant that the other side would be more amenable, or feeling they had an impetus to work,” said Sen. Robert P. Casey Jr. (D-PA). “I’m not sure that applies any longer.”

It is unclear whether Biden has communicated with McConnell yet directly; aides have not commented on any conversation.

A closely divided Congress could hamper Biden’s efforts to do sweeping legislative actions on immigration changes. He has also said he would send a bill to Congress repealing liability protections for gun manufacturers, and close background-check loopholes. He has pledged to repeal the Republican-passed tax cuts from 2017, an effort that could be stymied if Republicans hold the Senate majority.

Without congressional cooperation, however, Biden has said that he plans to immediately reverse Trump’s rollback of 100 public health and environmental rules that the Obama administration had in place.

He would also institute new ethics guidelines at the White House, and he has pledged to sign an executive order the first day in office saying that no member of his administration could influence any Justice Department investigations.

...Much of Biden’s early agenda-- including which pieces of legislation to prioritize-- will be determined in the coming weeks as his transition team begins taking on a far more prominent role.

Biden’s transition effort is being overseen by Ted Kaufman, one of his closest advisers. Kaufman, who was appointed to replace Biden in the Senate when Biden became vice president in 2009, also helped co-write an update to the law governing the transition process, which was passed in 2015 and signed by President Barack Obama.

Biden’s transition team has been given government-issued computers and iPhones for conducting secure communications, and 10,000 square feet of office space in the Herbert C. Hoover Building in Washington, although most of the work is being done virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic. His advisers have been granted temporary security clearances and undergone FBI background checks to fast-track the processing of personnel who can receive briefings on intelligence.

But one important next step is for the head of the General Services Administration to rule that the election results are final, enabling Biden’s transition team to expand its work and gain access to government funds. Biden officials are prepared for legal action if that administrator-- Emily W. Murphy, a Trump political appointee-- delays that decision, according to officials familiar with the matter.

Trump has so far not conceded defeat, falsely claiming Saturday that he won the election.

Pamela Pennington, a GSA spokeswoman, said that Murphy would ascertain “the apparent successful candidate once a winner is clear based on the process laid out in the Constitution.” Until that decision is made, she said, the Biden transition team would continue to receive limited access to government resources.

The transition from Trump to Biden would have few historic parallels, rivaled perhaps only by 1860-1861, when southern states seceded before Abraham Lincoln took office, and 1932-1933, when Herbert Hoover sought to undermine Franklin D. Roosevelt and prevent him from implementing his New Deal policies.

The last time there was a prolonged delay in a transfer of power was in 2000, when uncertainty over the results in the contest between then-Vice President Al Gore (D) and then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush (R) stretched out until the Supreme Court ended a Florida recount that gave Bush the victory on Dec. 12.

The Bush administration’s sluggish start and lack of qualified personnel in place was cited by the 9/11 Commission Report as a critical vulnerability to U.S. national security for the attacks that occurred less than eight months after the inauguration. That prompted changes to the law and the granting of access at an earlier date following the political conventions.

“When George W. Bush left he made clear to his Cabinet that this is going to be the best transition of power that’s ever occurred. Because we weren’t treated very well when we came into power,” said Michael Leavitt, who at the time was the outgoing secretary of Health and Human Services. “Barack Obama to his credit said the same thing. There was a spirit of cooperation that went on and needs to continue. Whether it will or not I don’t know. But we’re better prepared.”

Chris Lu, the executive director of the Obama-Biden transition in 2008, said that within two hours of the election being called in 2008 he had a formal letter beginning the transition process.

“We literally at 9 a.m. the next morning walked into a transition office and had access to it,” he said. “It was the model for the smoothest transition of power.”

Making a clear break from the Trump administration's adversarial posture toward the civil service is also a top priority for the Biden transition team.

The Trump administration's suspicion of career officials and early calls for them to “get with the program” or “go” created tensions with incoming political appointees that never dissipated. Biden officials are hoping to create a positive atmosphere by avoiding some of the terminology and labels they think contributed to the mistrust.

The Republican Plague?

From When He Came by Nancy Ohanian

"The Department of Justice has confirmed the existence of a memo laying out its rationale for not bringing charges against President Trump," wrote Conor Shaw and Anne Weismann on Friday morning, "but it refuses to make its reasoning public. In response to ongoing litigation involving a Freedom of Information Act request by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, DOJ turned over a heavily redacted version of one of the most important legal documents the American people have never seen: the official grounds for not charging Trump with obstruction of justice."

Ultimately, it won't be his fascism that drives Trump from office, though. It will be his incompetence in the face of the pandemic, something more and more frequently being called #TheRepublicanPlague. As Paul Krugman noted in a New York Times editorial yesterday, it has been Trump-- and his acolytes who have crippled America's response to the pandemic, not the American people. Like many people, Krugman notes that all the sacrifices Americans made to fight the pandemic's first five months in America have been squandered by the Trumpists. As he wrote, we never really got the coronavirus under control and now infections are surging in most of the country. "And the bad news isn’t just a result of more testing. In new hot spots like Arizona-- where testing capacity is being overwhelmed-- and Houston the fraction of tests coming up positive is soaring, which shows that the disease is spreading rapidly. It didn’t have to be this way. The European Union, a hugely diverse area with a larger population than the U.S., has been far more successful at limiting the spread of Covid-19 than we have. What went wrong?"

The simple answer is obvious: America's leadership is what went wrong: Trump and Trumpism failed us. Krugman is more nuanced:

The immediate answer is that many U.S. states ignored warnings from health experts and rushed to reopen their economies, and far too many people failed to follow basic precautions like wearing face masks and avoiding large groups. But why was there so much foolishness?

Well, I keep seeing statements to the effect that Americans were too impatient to stay the course, too unwilling to act responsibly. But this is deeply misleading, because it avoids confronting the essence of the problem. Americans didn’t fail the Covid-19 test; Republicans did.

After all, the Northeast, with its largely Democratic governors, has been appropriately cautious about reopening, and its numbers look like Europe’s. California and Washington are blue states that are seeing a rise in cases, but it’s from a relatively low base, and their Democratic governors are taking actions like requiring [meh-- "requiring" without enforcement is not requiring] the use of face masks and seem ready to reverse their reopening.

So the really bad news is coming from Republican-controlled states, especially Arizona, Florida and Texas, which rushed to reopen and, while some are now pausing, haven’t reversed course. If the Northeast looks like Europe, the South is starting to look like Brazil.

Nor is it just Republican governors and state legislatures. According to the new New York Times/Siena poll, voters over all strongly favor giving control of the pandemic priority over reopening the economy-- but Republican voters, presumably taking their cue from the White House and Fox News, take the opposite position.

And it’s not just about policy decisions. Partisanship seems to be driving individual behavior, too, with self-identified Democrats significantly more likely to wear face masks and engage in social distancing than self-identified Republicans.

The question, then, isn’t why “America” has failed to deal effectively with the pandemic. It’s why the G.O.P. has in effect allied itself with the coronavirus.

Part of the answer is short-term politics. At the beginning of this year Donald Trump’s re-election message was all about economic triumphalism: Unemployment was low, stocks were up, and he was counting on good numbers to carry him through November. He and his officials wasted crucial weeks refusing to acknowledge the viral threat because they didn’t want to hear any bad news.

And they pushed for premature reopening because they wanted things to return to what they seemed to be back in February. Indeed, just a few days ago the same Trump officials who initially assured us that Covid-19 was no big deal were out there dismissing the risks of a second wave.

I’d suggest, however, that the G.O.P.’s coronavirus denial also has roots that go beyond Trump and his electoral prospects. The key point, I’d argue, is that Covid-19 is like climate change: It isn’t the kind of menace the party wants to acknowledge.

It’s not that the right is averse to fearmongering. But it doesn’t want you to fear impersonal threats that require an effective policy response, not to mention inconveniences like wearing face masks; it wants you to be afraid of people you can hate-- people of a different race or supercilious liberals.

So instead of dealing with Covid-19, Republican leaders and right-wing media figures have tried to make the pandemic into the kind of threat they want to talk about. It’s “kung flu,” foisted on us by villainous Chinese. Or it’s a hoax perpetrated by the “medical deep state,” which is just looking for a way to hurt Trump.

The good news is that the politics of virus denial don’t seem to be working. Partly that’s because racism doesn’t play the way it used to: The Black Lives Matter protesters have received broad public support, despite the usual suspects’ efforts to portray them as rampaging hordes. Partly it’s because the surge in infections is becoming too obvious to deny; even Republican governors are admitting that there’s a problem, although they still don’t seem willing to act.

The bad news is that partisanship has crippled our Covid-19 response. The virus is winning, and all indications are that the next few months will be a terrifying nightmare of rampant disease and economic disruption.

Trump's Pandemic Policies Aren't Killing Enough People To Impact His Vote Totals, But It's The People Left Behind Who Will Get Their Revenge In November

Remember a couple of weeks ago when I was making fun of the professional prognosticators for rating Montana's Senate race a "lean Republican?" I predicted they would all be backing away from that foolishness by summer. It's still mid-May and the National Journal's Hotline Power ratings has already tipped Montana as a viable target for Democrats-- as well as both Georgia Senate seats!

In his Tuesday email, even Charlie "walking on eggs" Cook-- acknowledging the enormity of the implications of a Democratic takeover of the Senate-- ventured to say that the chance of the GOP holding onto the Senate majority, once 66% in Cook-world, is now a "50-50 proposition." For someone as overly cautious and conservative as Cook, that is tantamount saying the Democrats have a lock on a big win for the Senate races. "Now with popular Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock challenging GOP incumbent Steve Daines in Montana," he wrote, "newly-appointed Georgia Senator Kelly Loeffler mired in a horrific political situation and the possibility that Republicans could draw an exceedingly weak candidate in what should be a safe seat in Kansas (filing deadline June 1), among other problems adding to previous woes with incumbents Martha McSally in Arizona, Susan Collins in Maine, Cory Gardner in Colorado and North Carolina’s Thom Tillis all in races that are, at best, toss ups. Combine those... with a recession that has effectively eliminated any tailwind that President Trump had been enjoying from a strong economy and it is hard to see his re-election prospects looking anything but more dire by the week. Today there is more than a one-in-three chance that Democrats will win a trifecta in November, the White House, the Senate and the House. The policy and governing implications are enormous." [This morning Cook speculated that both Georgia Senate seats may be competitive!]

Keep in mind that these outcomes are not independent of each other, a Trump victory would be more likely to be accompanied by retention of the Senate, a Trump defeat would raise the odds of Democrats taking over the Senate. This isn't 'coattails," (I don't believe in coattails), but the turnout dynamics, the issue agenda and priorities and the political environment that would exist to re-elect, or defeat Trump would also be in place for a Senate that is already teetering on the edge. Our system isn't quite parliamentary but is getting increasingly more so, the linkage is greater, the ticket-splitting diminishing.

It would be hard to overstate the importance that the combination of President Trump in the White House and a Mitch McConnell-led Republican Senate majority has had on shaping the Federal judiciary. Two U.S. Supreme Court Justices, 51 judges on the 13 U.S. Circuit Courts of Appeals and 138 Federal District judges have been confirmed under this Trump-McConnell combo, two more Circuit and 40 more district judges are in the pipeline, awaiting confirmation. As enormous as the consequences are and will be for a generation or two, the implications of yet another two or four years of Republicans controlling even more judicial nominations is enough to give most on the left or right heart palpitations, out of either joy or terror.

Moving beyond judicial nominations, the policy implications are incredible as well. Back in the day, one party holding the White House and a House majority but a razor-thin edge in the Senate would find itself greatly stymied, real limits on what they could accomplish. But now, with the threshold for most executive and all judicial confirmations down to a simple majority and the possibility of the filibuster being completely scrapped, the governing implications are head-spinning.  

And the unofficial mouth of Inside-the-Beltway conventional wisen, Josh Kraushaar, noted at the same time that "Republicans are growing increasingly worried that President Trump’s shaky political position will not just cost them the presidency, but also sweep in a Democratic Senate majority and further diminish their House minority. The latest round of polling shows the president losing to Joe Biden, as well as Democrats gaining ground in red-state Senate seats that once looked like long shots, from Georgia to Montana to Kansas. There’s a growing chance that Democrats may capture control of the Senate with a seat or two to spare."

It's horrifying that Schumer has it rigged to make sure the new Democratic Senate majority is a dogged conservative, anti-progressive majority. There's still time do something about that in a few states, especially Colorado, where progressive Andrew Romanoff and conservative John Frackenlooper each is a sure bet to beat walking dead GOP Senator Cory Gardner. Schumer is doing all he can to paint Frackenlooper as inevitable. But he isn't and Romanoff is beating him by every metric but corporate cash, which has gushed into the Frackenlooper campaign. Please consider contributing to Romanoff and the other progressive Senate candidates by clicking on the 2020 Senate thermometer on the right and giving what you can. Back to Kraushaar:

The current political environment is reminiscent of 2008, two years after Democrats swept control of the House and Senate under President George W. Bush. It’s mostly remembered for Barack Obama’s historic election, but the Democrats’ downballot dominance was just as remarkable. Riding deep dissatisfaction with GOP leadership, Democrats expanded their Senate majority to a near filibuster-proof margin and won House seats in some of the most reliably conservative territory in the country.

Like the political environment today, the 2008 election took place in the middle of a national crisis. Back then, the Republican presidential nominee insisted that the fundamentals of the country were strong during a deepening recession. Now a Republican president is publicly insisting he has “met the moment” and prevailed, despite rising death rates and massive unemployment from the coronavirus. Then, as now, a Democratic challenger used the GOP candidate’s own words in devastating attack ads.

As the New York Times’ Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman wrote: “The two elections were effectively a single continuous rejection of Republican rule, as some in the GOP fear 2018 and 2020 could become in a worst-case scenario.”

Having covered the 2008 congressional campaigns closely, I’m also struck by how much in common that the two elections share. That year, Democrats netted eight Senate seats, sweeping comedian Al Franken into office while winning races in conservative strongholds such as Alaska and South Dakota as part of a big blue wave. Republicans didn’t even field a candidate in Arkansas, one of the most conservative states on the map. Mitch McConnell faced the closest race of his Senate career, barely defeating a not-ready-for-prime-time Democratic challenger.

“[My race] isn’t going to be a landslide,” McConnell told me at the time. “The president is not popular. The economy is certainly slow, so it’s a much more contested environment.”

Repeat McConnell’s words 12 years later and they hold true today. Look at the wider Senate map, and you can see eerie parallels. A poll conducted by Georgia Republicans shows the state’s senior Sen. David Perdue only polling at 45 percent, just 6 points ahead of Democrat Jon Ossoff. Perdue hasn’t been considered particularly vulnerable, but it’s now plausible to see him locked in a competitive race if the bottom falls out for the president. (This is the “other” Senate election in Georgia, which hasn’t gotten nearly as much attention as the special Senate election involving embattled GOP Sen. Kelly Loeffler.)

The possibility of other red-state surprises are apparent: The emergence of conservative hard-liner Kris Kobach as a possible Senate nominee in Kansas is giving Democrats an unusual opportunity in a state that hasn’t voted a Democrat to the Senate in nearly 90 years. Gov. Steve Bullock’s entrance into Montana's Senate race is putting Sen. Steve Daines’s seat squarely in play. McConnell even faces well-funded opposition from another not-ready-for-prime-time Democratic challenger in the middle of another crisis. If Republicans lose even one of these red-state seats, the odds that Democrats win an outright majority in the Senate increases dramatically.

Another major storyline this year is the Republican Party’s inability to recruit credible House candidates, particularly in districts that Trump carried in 2016. Many freshman Democrats representing Trump districts aren’t facing tough Republican opposition. Twelve years ago, that dynamic was similarly apparent on the Senate side. Only one Democratic senator faced credible GOP competition that year-- Louisiana’s Mary Landrieu-- and she still coasted to victory over now-Sen. John Kennedy. Then-Sen. Mark Pryor, a Democrat, ran unopposed by Republicans in Arkansas, a state that John McCain comfortably carried.

...[R]ight now, Trump and his Republican party are in dire shape. The history of embattled presidents facing reelection during a worsening crisis doesn’t offer much comfort. Even Trump, always averse to uncomfortable truths, recognizes this.

In a series of half a dozen tweets this week, Paul Krugman asserted that the GOP has given up "on trying to control Covid and reopen the economy; the propaganda arm (Fox and worse) is going all in for conspiracy theorizing and virus trutherism. At one level this shouldn't be surprising. It's the same script the party has followed on climate change, and the virus truthers are a lot like the inflation truthers who insisted that we had runaway inflation under Obama. But what's going on now seems to involve a new level of political recklessness. Climate change takes place over decades; inflation truthers paid no political or personal price for being wrong again and again. But if the virus erupts, it will happen quickly. In other words, the GOP has in effect decided to ignore the science at the clear risk of being held accountable in the near future both for killing thousands and for wrecking the economy, because that's what a premature opening would do. Why take that risk? Partly they may be high on their own supply, no longer able to conceive that there is an objective reality that might be politically inconvenient. Partly I think it's because they know in their hearts that they can't actually do the job of governing. But anyway, we're witnessing a lethal abdication of responsibility whose consequences will be quickly apparent. It's truly awesome to watch."





Earlier today we saw what Republicans in control of the state legislature and state Supreme Court are doing to Wisconsin. It's as if they want to kill people! And in nearly every state where Republicans can, they are making the pandemic worse. Yesterday, writing for the NY Times, Trip Gabriel reported that GOP defiance of Pennsylvania's lockdown has 2020 implications. Pennsylvania has been horribly hit by the pandemic. There are 63,122 cases-- 6th worst in the country-- with 4,320 more confirmed cases yesterday and 4,931 cases per million in the population, the 11th hardest hit state by the metric. And although, predictably, Philadelphia has been hardest hit, cases have spiked in Trump counties as well. This list shows cases + Trump's 2016 percentage of the votes in the 15 worse hit counties:

• Philadelphia- 19,093 cases-- Trump- 15.5%
• Montgomery- 5,583 cases-- Trump- 37.6%
• Delaware- 5,252 cases-- Trump- 37.4%
• Bucks- 4,248 cases-- Trump- 47.8%
• Berks- 3,530 cases-- Trump- 52.9%
• Lehigh- 3,378 cases-- Trump- 45.9%
• Northampton- 2,566 cases-- Trump- 50.0%
• Luzerne- 2,477 cases-- Trump- 58.4%
• Lancaster- 2,364 cases-- Trump- 57.3%
• Chester- 2,008 cases-- Trump- 43.3%
• Alleghany- 1,551 cases-- Trump- 40.0%
• Lackawana- 1,256 cases- Trump- 46.8%
• Monroe- 1,240 cases-- Trump- 48.1%
• Dauphin- 895 cases-- Trump- 46.6%
• Lebanon- 856 cases-- Trump- 65.9%

Gabriel reported that on Monday, addressing county lawmakers, Governor Tom Wolf slammed the GOP with "a stunning rebuke, as resistance to lockdown orders flares around the country." Wolf "a military metaphor to accuse Republican officials of desertion in the battle against the pandemic: 'To those politicians who decide to cave in to this coronavirus they need to understand the consequences of their cowardly act.'"

The normally mild-mannered governor’s comments turned up the temperature of a national debate over the health emergency, one fanned by President Trump as he eggs on protesters at state capitols, including in Harrisburg, and by lawmakers in Congress, where the government’s top health officials warned this week of dire consequences if the economy reopens too soon.

On Thursday, the president arrived in Pennsylvania, one of several battleground states crucial to his re-election, where the political combat over limiting the virus’s death toll or easing its economic devastation could have weighty consequences in November. While 26 percent of the state’s work force has filed for unemployment, the governor is relying on metrics about the virus’s spread to keep many people in their homes and all but “life-sustaining” businesses in populous regions closed.

Republicans, sensing a gut-level anger in exurban and rural areas after nearly two months of restrictions, see an issue with the potential to drive turnout by voters in a state where Mr. Trump, as elsewhere in the industrial and Midwest region, needs a surge of support to repeat his narrow victory of 2016. In Wisconsin, also a swing state, the State Supreme Court sided with Republicans on Wednesday and threw out the stay-at-home order of Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. In Texas, armed men have shown up to support businesses defying government orders to stay closed, an extreme sign of the politicizing of social distancing rules.

At the same time, polls show that Mr. Wolf, like other governors moving cautiously and heeding scientific benchmarks to reopen, is enjoying record support, including among many Republicans.

Mr. Trump seemed to address Mr. Wolf on Monday via Twitter. “The great people of Pennsylvania want their freedom now, and they are fully aware of what that entails,” he tweeted. “The Democrats are moving slowly, all over the USA, for political purposes.”

The governor’s accusation of cowardice was directed at officials in half a dozen Republican-led counties that have said they would defy his timeline for reopening businesses. Mr. Wolf has partly lifted restrictions on 37 counties, mainly in rural regions where community spread of the virus is more easily contained.

But with the rest of the state, including its populous southeast, still under a strict stay-at-home order through June 4, officials in some counties said they would ignore the governor and open up starting Friday.

“The health crisis is real, but the economic devastation is real also,” said Josh Parsons, a commissioner of Lancaster County, one of those moving to loosen restrictions despite not meeting all of the governor’s health benchmarks.

He described “chaos on the ground” as people openly disregarded stay-at-home orders in recent weeks. “People have been voting with their feet and going back to work because they have to,” he said.

Some Republican strategists said the issue of reopening Pennsylvania would add motivation to turn out for Mr. Trump against the Democratic Party in November.

“I’ve sensed a very, very strong backlash in, quote, the hinterlands,” said Charlie Gerow, a Republican strategist in Pennsylvania.

Mr. Trump narrowly carried Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes in 2016. To compensate for population growth and rising anger at his presidency in the Philadelphia suburbs, which lifted Democrats in recent elections, he needs higher support among white men, with and without college degrees.

“My sense is there is a significant number of voters who did not vote in 2016 for whatever reasons who will be voting for President Trump in 2020, and part of it is this overreach by Governor Wolf,” Mr. Gerow said.

Mr. Gerow may be on strong drugs. The pre-COVID Morning Consult Trump Tracker showed Trump having lost 11 approval points since his inauguration and his net job approval underwater 49-48%. Since the pandemic kicked in, Trump's numbers have submerged. The Real Clear Politics polling average shows Biden beating him 48.3- 41.8%-- a 6.5% spread. The most recent polling (last week in April) was conducted by a Republican polling firm, Harper. It shows 49% of voters ready to vote for Biden and just 43% ready for Trump. Only 23% of respondents say the disagree with Pennsylvania ordering all non-essential businesses closing under threat of criminal prosecution and only 14% disagreed with Pennsylvania closing all schools for the remainder of the school year. 16% disagreed with the governor's stay-at-home orders. I wonder if Mr. Gerow is ready for those odds.

Gabriel noted that "A survey released this week by the Washington Post/Ipsos showed that 72 percent of Pennsylvania adults approved of how the governor has handled the coronavirus outbreak, including 51 percent of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents. Only 45 percent of all adults in the state supported Mr. Trump’s handling of the outbreak. In addition, seven in 10 Pennsylvanians said the United States should keep trying to slow the virus’s spread even if it means keeping businesses closed. Nearly half of Republicans agreed."

“I’m baffled by what the Republican game plan is here,” said J.J. Balaban, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania. “I guess they think this will rally their base, but it seems to speak to a narrow base that is already riled up, while alienating them from the kinds of voters they need to carry Pennsylvania.”

In Lancaster County, as well as others that have moved to reopen despite the governor’s orders, the rate of new coronavirus cases remains higher than 50 per 100,000 people over the previous two weeks, a target Mr. Wolf’s administration set for moving counties to a “yellow” phase of partial reopening. Lancaster County also has one of the highest death tolls in the state, with 183 as of Thursday.

Other counties where Republican officials vowed late last week to defy the governor include Dauphin, Franklin, Lebanon, Berks and Schuylkill, roughly the region from the Philadelphia exurbs west to Harrisburg. Some county sheriffs and district attorneys said they would not pursue businesses that opened despite the governor’s orders. On Wednesday, after Mr. Wolf warned that defiant counties would face consequences, Dauphin County’s commissioners backed down and said they would not unilaterally move to yellow status.

Mr. Parsons, the Lancaster County commissioner, and other local Republican officials argue that the county has met more important metrics for reopening than the growth of new virus cases, including the availability of intensive-care beds and ventilators in hospitals. Deaths are high because the county has many nursing homes, he said.

“We need to protect those people in nursing homes, but that doesn’t mean some people can’t safely and prudently go back to work,” Mr. Parsons said.

On Monday, Mr. Wolf threatened to withhold federal coronavirus relief money from counties that disobeyed him and reopened early.

He also told business owners who reopened too early that they risked losing certificates of occupancy, liquor licenses and insurance. “Insurance does not cover things that happen to businesses breaking the law,” he warned.

Centrism Has Proven Itself Disastrous For Most Americans-- Which Is Why Bernie Is Going To Be President

The more we see the anti-working class MSNBC personalities and other contemptible pundits attack Bernie, the more he rises in the polls. Literally. Eli Yokley explained it a little differently for Morning Consult readers: Sanders Rises as Primary Voters Grow More Confident About His Chances Against Trump. Morning Consult polled after the Nevada blowout and Bernie already considerable lead grew by 2 points while Biden dropped into third place, confirming his slow Jeb Bush-like decline back into the political oblivion Obama warned him was waiting for him.

Despite the hysterical and desperate efforts of the hated punditocracy and media elites, Democratic primary voters grow more bullish on Bernie’s chances of beating Señor Trumpanzee in November. Morning Consult's poll on Sunday "found 32 percent back Sanders as their first choice for president, widening the gap over former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg to 13 percentage points-- his biggest national lead of the campaign. Sanders’ support is up 2 points from a Feb. 20 survey conducted the day after the party’s debate in Las Vegas and up 4 points from a Feb. 12-17 survey conducted after the New Hampshire primary.

At the same time, a separate Morning Consult survey of 954 Democratic primary voters also conducted Sunday found 34 percent said Sanders has the best chance of beating Trump, up 5 points from the post-New Hampshire poll and 11 points higher than the share who identified Bloomberg as the most electable Democratic candidate.

The latest Morning Consult tracking poll also finds Sanders leading the field among black voters for the first time as the race moves to South Carolina, the second successive state with a significant black population that former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign views as a firewall. Thirty-three percent of black Democratic primary voters said they’re backing Sanders, compared with 29 percent who said Biden, within the subsample’s 4-point margin of error.

With Biden at his lowest point since Morning Consult began tracking the race, and no moderate contender solidifying support, Democratic primary voters are increasingly coming to terms with the possibility that Sanders could lead the ticket in November. Among the 69 percent who correctly identified Sanders as the winner in Nevada, a 43 percent plurality said they expect him to be the party’s nominee, up 11 points from the post-New Hampshire poll.

While Sanders’ early victories in the nominating contests have raised alarm bells for some Democrats who fear he could jeopardize gains in the House, chances of taking back the Senate and even of beating Trump, the party’s voters are expressing more confidence in the democratic socialist’s ability to win.

Fifty-two percent of Democratic primary voters who knew Nevada’s victor said they believe Sanders can beat Trump in November-- up 5 points from the share measured immediately following New Hampshire.

Paul Krugman should give his Nobel Prize, or at least his column, to Richard Wolff. This is a very valuable video-- a friendly debate between Krugman and Wolff-- inspiring, compelling and really worth watching.

The Establishment's Stop Bernie Movement Isn't Resonating With Democratic Voters

Reminder-- and this isn't just about Republicans vs Democrats

Bernie's political revolution IS resonating. Economic royalism isn't. Even the Washington Post, economic royalism's biggest cheerleader among newspapers, was forced to admit after the way Bernie's revolution crushed the status quo conservatives in Nevada yesterday that Bernie won "in nearly every demographic group, allowing him to set down a marker in the first state with a significant share of nonwhite voters. Sanders expanded the electorate by attracting relatively large numbers of first-time caucus-goers, providing momentum as the race shifts into a critical stretch over the next 10 days. He prevailed among those with college degrees and those without; those living in union and nonunion households; and in every age group except those over 65. He won more than half of Hispanic caucus-goers-- almost four times as much support as his nearest rival, former vice president Joe Biden-- and even narrowly prevailed among those who identified as moderate or conservative. Despite attacks on his health proposal by the powerful Culinary Union, he won in caucus sites filled with union members."

It's almost like Democratic grassroots voters are abandoning their tainted and corrupt leadership. About time! Early this morning the the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Elections Research Center released a new poll showing Bernie winning in Michigan primary (just as he had in 2016), the Pennsylvania primary and the Wisconsin primary.

Remember, Biden pretends delegate-rich Pennsylvania is his home state instead of tiny Delaware where he lived and based his entire career. Bernie is even beating him there! The primary is April 28.

• Bernie- 25%
• Status Quo Joe- 20%
• Bloomberg- 19%
• Mayo Pete- 12%
• Elizabeth- 9%
• Klobuchar- 5%

Wisconsin is Bernie country again, of course. It was a big state for him in 2016 and looks like it will be an even bigger state for him in 2020. The primary is April 7.

• Bernie- 30%
• Status Quo Joe- 13%
• Bloomberg- 13%
• Elizabeth- 12%
• Mayo Pete- 12%
• Klobuchar- 9%

By the way, that poll also shows Bernie beating Trump in head-to-head match-ups in each of the crucial battleground states that Hillary and the Democratic establishment managed to lose in 2016:

• Michigan- 48 to 41%
• Pennsylvania- 47 to 45%
• Wisconsin- 46 to 44%

Ryan Lizza, writing for Politico this morning, was definitive: Sanders eviscerates the conventional wisdom about why he can't win. Lizza is no revolutionary but even he had to admit that Nevada exposed the opposition to Bernie "as weak, divided, and grasping at increasingly tenuous arguments about their viability." But his main point-- and his most important one-- is that Bernie "laid waste not just to his five main rivals but also to every shard of conventional wisdom about the Democratic presidential primaries." And it wasn't just the anti-working class media establishment that fell; it was also the anti-working class Democratic establishment that got flushed down the toilet. The leaders of powerful Culinary Union, went to war against Bernie over Medicare for All and were tasked by state party boss and anti-Bernie fanatic Harry Reid and by the DNC with weakening him. But the union's grassroots went with Bernie not their overseers. He won 34% of caucus-goers from union households, beating pretend union-supporter Status Quo Joe and all of his other rivals.

Lizza explained how Bernie's campaign "exploded a lot of myths," basically the bullshit the anti-working class pundits and Democratic establishment has been floating about his campaign to derail it. If you watch MSNBC, you can probably repeat all of them with ease.

He was said to have a ceiling of 30% or so. Remarkably, against a much larger field of candidates Sanders is poised to come close to the same level of support as he did in 2016 in a one-on-one race against Hillary Clinton, to whom he lost 47%-53%. (He was at 46% with a quarter of precincts reporting as of this writing.) He was said to be unable to attract anyone outside his core base. But he held his own with moderate voters (22%) and won across every issue area except voters who cared most about foreign policy, who went with Biden.

All of this makes the results of the Nevada caucuses, which in the past have not been treated with the same importance as the contests in the three other early states-- Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina-- matter more this year. They have helped settle lingering questions about Sanders' appeal.

Pete 3 by Nancy Ohanian

The momentum of Buttigieg, who was Sanders' strongest opponent in Iowa and New Hampshire, stalled out in Nevada. He slipped into third place, well behind Biden. Long-shot candidacies need to continue to surge forward with unexpected results to overcome doubts. But Buttigieg’s success in Iowa and New Hampshire was not enough to change the minds of enough people in Nevada. A victory here for him would have been catalytic, but the Sanders blowout has halted his rise. (He is still likely to be second behind Sanders in the delegate race, but the early states are all about momentum, not delegates.)

Let's wrap this up with two narrative versions of relevant Twitter threads from this morning, one from former insurance industry executive Wendell Potter and one from The Times' Paul Krugman. Potter first:

Tonight’s results in Nevada confirm something momentous that would have shocked me when I worked as a health insurance executive: Medicare for All is hugely popular & the winning position for Democrats. Between Iowa, New Hampshire and now Nevada, this is a fact. Here’s why:

Entrance polls out of Nevada show 6 in 10 want a single-payer system. Entrance and exit polls from Iowa & New Hampshire found 6 in 10 voters in both states support Medicare for All. All this after millions were spent by my old industry trying to scare voters away from it.

In Nevada, two top candidates, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar, both put deceptive ads on the air attacking Medicare for All. They campaigned explicitly against Medicare for All. And they lost by 30 points.

With these three state results in, we now see that Medicare for All is popular in the Midwest, Northeast, and the West, all with different, diverse populations. Medicare for All can win anywhere-- as the primary's front-running campaign demonstrates.

We know the health insurance industry and its lobbyists won’t quit trying to scare the public. But politicians who parrot their talking points do so at their own peril. It's now clear: Medicare For All is the winning position in the 2020 Democratic primary. And opposing it is not.

And Krugman, the NY Times centrist economist who has been an opponent to much of Bernie's platform for years and who still opposes him but is willing to make the case for Bernie in the general election against Trump, unlike many of our MSNBC "friends," who-- largely to protect their tax breaks-- prefer Trump over Bernie:

Well, Bernie Sanders is now the clear favorite for the Democratic nomination. Lots of things to say about that, but the most important is that he is NOT a left-leaning version of Trump. Even if you disagree with his ideas, he's not a wannabe authoritarian ruler.

America under a Sanders presidency would still be America, both because Sanders is an infinitely better man than Trump and because the Democratic Party wouldn't enable abuse of power the way Republicans have.

And if you're worried about his economic agenda, what's your concern, exactly? That he'll run budget deficits? Trump is doing that already-- and the economic effects have been positive.

I'm more concerned about (a) electability and (b) if he does win, squandering political capital on unwinnable fights like abolishing private health insurance. But if he's the nominee, it's the job of Dems to make him electable if at all possible.

To be honest, a Sanders administration would probably leave center-left policy wonks like me out in the cold, at least initially. But this is no time for self-indulgence and ego trips. Freedom is on the line.

Marianne Williamson has gotten to know-- and generally like-- all the candidates running for president. Once she suspended her campaign, all the remaining candidates have reached out to her for her endorsement. She has a tendency to see what's good about each one-- and she was busy working on helping congressional candidates with platforms akin to her own... but this afternoon, she made her decision. Marianne Williamson is definitely feeling the Bern and has endorsed Bernie's campaign for the presidency!

Chicken Or Egg: People In Trump States Have Lower Life Expectancies

Trump states have lower life expectancy. Is that because they embrace Trumpist policies that make them more likely to die sooner than normal people? Or is it the deleterious impact of those policies that cause them to embrace Trumpism in the first place? Monday, Paul Krugman took a closer look: America's Red State Death Trip. Pointing out a Tom Edsall piece that showed "red and blue voters live in different economies," Krugman's point is that "the political divide is also, increasingly, an economic divide [and] that red and blue voters don’t just live differently, they also die differently."

About the living part: Democratic-leaning areas used to look similar to Republican-leaning areas in terms of productivity, income and education. But they have been rapidly diverging, with blue areas getting more productive, richer and better educated. In the close presidential election of 2000, counties that supported Al Gore over George W. Bush accounted for only a little over half the nation’s economic output. In the close election of 2016, counties that supported Hillary Clinton accounted for 64 percent of output, almost twice the share of Trump country.

The thing is, the red-blue divide isn’t just about money. It’s also, increasingly, a matter of life and death.

Back in the Bush years I used to encounter people who insisted that the United States had the world’s longest life expectancy. They hadn’t looked at the data, they just assumed that America was No. 1 on everything. Even then it wasn’t true: U.S. life expectancy has been below that of other advanced countries for a long time.

The death gap has, however, widened considerably in recent years as a result of increased mortality among working-age Americans. This rise in mortality has, in turn, been largely a result of rising “deaths of despair”: drug overdoses, suicides and alcohol. And the rise in these deaths has led to declining overall life expectancy for the past few years.

What I haven’t seen emphasized is the divergence in life expectancy within the United States and its close correlation with political orientation. True, a recent Times article on the phenomenon noted that life expectancy in coastal metropolitan areas is still rising about as fast as life expectancy in other advanced countries. But the regional divide goes deeper than that.

A 2018 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association looked at changes in health and life expectancy in U.S. states between 1990 and 2016. The divergence among states is striking. And as I said, it’s closely correlated with political orientation.

I looked at states that voted for Donald Trump versus states that voted for Clinton in 2016, and calculated average life expectancy weighted by their 2016 population. In 1990, today’s red and blue states had almost the same life expectancy. Since then, however, life expectancy in Clinton states has risen more or less in line with other advanced countries, compared with almost no gain in Trump country. At this point, blue-state residents can expect to live more than four years longer than their red-state counterparts.

Is this all about deaths of despair in the eastern heartland? No. Consider our four most populous states. In 1990, Texas and Florida had higher life expectancy than New York and almost matched California; today, they’re far behind.

What explains the divergence? Public policy certainly plays some role, especially in recent years, as blue states expanded Medicaid and drastically reduced the number of uninsured, while most red states didn’t. The growing gap in educational levels has also surely played a role: Better-educated people tend to be healthier than the less educated.

Beyond that, there has been a striking divergence in behavior and lifestyle that must be affecting mortality. For example, the prevalence of obesity has soared all across America since 1990, but obesity rates are significantly higher in red states.

One thing that’s clear, however, is that the facts are utterly inconsistent with the conservative diagnosis of what ails America.

Conservative figures like William Barr, the attorney general, look at rising mortality in America and attribute it to the collapse of traditional values-- a collapse they attribute, in turn, to the evil machinations of “militant secularists.” The secularist assault on traditional values, Barr claims, lies behind “soaring suicide rates,” rising violence and “a deadly drug epidemic.”

But European nations, which are far more secularist than we are, haven’t seen a comparable rise in deaths of despair and an American-style decline in life expectancy. And even within America these evils are concentrated in states that voted for Trump, and have largely bypassed the more secular blue states.

So something bad is definitely happening to American society. But the conservative diagnosis of that problem is wrong-- dead wrong.

Americans born in 2017 can expect, on the average, to live to be 78.6 years old. But in bright blue states, people will live longer and in the reddest states with the stupidest people, people will die earlier First the 10 states with the highest life expectancy:

• Hawaii- 81.5
• California- 80.9
• New York- 80.8
• Minnesota- 80.7
• Connecticut- 80.6
• New Jersey- 80.5
• Colorado- 79.9
• Massachusetts- 79.9
• Vermont- 79.9
• Washington- 79.9

Those states are all "blue" and Trump lost them all, some in landslides. In Hawaii, California, and New York, the 3 states with the highest life expectancy Trump only received, respectively, 30.03%, 31.62% and 36.52% of the vote. Now let's look at the ten states with the lowest life expectancy:

• Mississippi- 74.5 (same as Vietnam)
• West Virginia- 74.8
• Alabama- 74.9
• Kentucky- 75
• Arkansas- 75.4
• Louisiana- 75.4
• Oklahoma- 75.4
• Tennessee- 76
• South Carolina- 76.2
• Ohio- 76.6

These wretched states, filled with people who make poor choices about everything in life, from what they eat to whom they vote for, all went for Trump in 2016, many by landslides. The three sickest states-- Mississippi, West Virginia and Alabama-- gave Trump, respectively 57.94%, 68.50% and 62.08% landslide victories. Moral of the story: if you vote for Trump-- and for Republicans-- you will die before your time and so will your children. You want change? Forget Trump and his lies... vote Bernie Sanders; he's offering what you want and need.