You Know How Biden Is Better Than Trump? That's Pretty Much How Jaime Harrison Is Better Than Lindsey Graham

In 2016 Trump carried South Carolina 1,143,611 (54.9%) to 849,469 (40.8%). He won all but 15 of the state's 46 counties. One of the ones Trump lost was Charleston County, the second biggest in the state. Two years later Charlestown elected, albeit narrowly (50.7- 49.3%), a quasi-Democrat, Blue Dog, Joe Cunningham, to Congress. Is South Carolina changing-- enough to elect a Democrat-- a Black Democrat-- to the Senate? Earlier this year, no one thought so. Now-- despite the heavily-populated northwest part of the state, around Greenville, being a fascist-oriented hellhole-- it's looking like there's a slight possibility that Jaime Harrison could replace Lindsey Graham in the Senate. Imagine that!

I noticed that in the CIVIQS poll a few days ago, Trump job approval was barely positive. 49% of South Carolina voters approve of the job he's doing and 48% disapprove. More telling, the new poll of South Carolina voters has Harrison tied with Graham 44-44%. Harrison is leading among self-identified independents 47-37%.

Journalist Lisa Rab took a deep dive into the race for Politico yesterday. She wrote that "College-educated moderates and self-described independents have turned on Trump and their anger is threatening the reelection prospects of one of the president’s most prominent surrogates. 'I’m not gonna vote for any Republican who doesn’t disassociate himself or herself from the Trump political school,' said Andy Savage, a prominent Charleston attorney and moderate who has donated to Graham’s campaigns since at least 2004. Normally, this anger might not be particularly worrisome for Graham. He won reelection in 2014 by a margin of more than 15 percentage points, and he hasn’t had a credible Democratic challenger since he was first elected 18 years ago. But that is not the case this year. The anger at Trump comes at a moment when Graham is facing his most serious opponent yet: an exceptionally well-funded, politically connected, centrist Democrat who is forcing election observers to wonder if South Carolina might, improbably, be in play."

As of their last reports, Graham had raised $29,941,512 and Harrison had raised $28,641,476. Maybe a more important number is 102,130-- the number of South Carolinians who have been confirmed to have COVID-19, which is a staggering 19,836 cases per South Carolinian. Their were 971 more cases announced yesterday-- and well as 49 new deaths, bringing the total deaths to 2,098. Greenville, the heart of Trump country, has had the most deaths-- 198 and rising. South Carolinians who are not part of the GOP death cult are starting to blame Trump and his puppet governor, Henry McMaster.





Harrison has a nice resumé-- at least if you choose to view it positively. He's the first African American chair of the South Carolina Democratic Party and now associate chair of the Democratic National Committee. He worked as a lobbyist for the Podesta Group, one of the top lobbying firms in DC. His clients included a roster of some of America's best-known companies-- Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Berkshire Hathaway and Avenue Capital Management, pharmaceutical companies Merck, gambling giants Caesars and Harrah's, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, Walmart, General Motors, Google, and Lockheed Martin. In the past, he has defended his choice of careers and clients by saying "It's how I pay back the $160,000 of student loan debt." It's better than other career options, I guess. Yesterday, I asked someone close with him how he defends himself from Graham attacks along those lines now-- a lobbyist being the most hated category of professions year after year in Gallup polling? The best I could get was "After 25 years in Washington, Lindsey Graham has changed so much he'll attack a South Carolinian who has lived the American Dream. Graham puts himself first, playing Washington political games, spending special interest dollars on luxury travel overseas, and voting to keep lobbyist funded perks for himself." Sounds like it was focus group-tested.

I also asked the same person what Harrison's campaign says when Graham accuses him of being Chuck Schumer's handpicked candidate. "Jaime Harrison," he told me, "chose to run to put South Carolina first. He grew up poor in Orangeburg and knows what it's like to struggle and the pitfalls of the current system.Jaime is running to fight for opportunity for all South Carolinians, and he’s willing to work with anyone to do it." I guess that works-- as long as there's no follow-up question. Besides, the GOP line this year is that every Democrat is a socialist and best friends with Pelosi and AOC and Bernie. Normal people laugh that off-- and nothing is going to persuade brainwashed Fox viewers otherwise.

Ran wrote that "Donors and political experts agree Harrison’s path to victory is a narrow one. 'If Graham’s fortunes are closely tied to Trump’s ... then, for Graham to lose, you either have to predict a Trump loss in South Carolina (which would precipitate a Graham loss) or a situation in which Trump wins in South Carolina and many Trump supporters either vote against Graham, or don’t vote in the Senate race,' Scott Huffmon, political science professor and executive director of the Center for Public Opinion & Policy Research at Winthrop University, said in an email. FiveThirtyEight’s average of polls now puts Trump ahead of Joe Biden by 6.4 percent in South Carolina-- half the lead the president held in February before the coronavirus pandemic tanked the nation’s economy. Yet even if Graham’s popularity continues to decline with Trump’s, Harrison still has to convince some crucial constituencies, including wary Black voters conditioned to believe that Democrats have no real chance in South Carolina, that he is the exception. Add to that the challenges of campaigning during a pandemic and Harrison’s path seems especially daunting. But his sizable war chest-- including $10.2 million cash on hand at the end of June-- has the potential to alter the race with a barrage of advertisements that few Democrats have ever been able to afford."

A memo released by Harrison’s campaign in early February laid out a clear, if ambitious, path to victory. He planned to register a quarter of eligible African Americans, mobilize “new and inconsistent” voters of color and “persuade white suburban voters who are already moving away from Republicans.” Harrison was also counting on some Republicans to abandon Graham for more conservative candidates. About 6.6 percent of voters chose Libertarian or independent candidates over Graham six years ago, and there are similar candidates on the ballot this year who could help Harrison’s cause.

...The question remains whether Harrison can turn the anger at Graham into votes for him. That will mean flipping independents and moderates who have historically had no trouble voting for a Main Street conservative who worked across the aisle on issues like immigration and climate change.

Andy Savage, who leans Democrat but has donated to candidates in both parties, said he supported Graham from his first election because “I just thought he was a really good person. I still think the world of him, I just don’t understand what’s happened to him.”

His disillusionment began with Graham’s “disgraceful” treatment of John McCain. As McCain was dying, Graham went golfing with Trump, whom McCain hated and later forbade from attending his funeral. Trump continued to attack McCain after his death, and Graham, who had once called Trump a “kook” and a “bigot,” was criticized for not defending his friend forcefully enough. “I’m not into this idea the only way you can help honor John McCain is to trash out Trump,” Graham told CNN in March 2019.

Savage didn’t see it that way. “[Graham] promoted that friendship politically, and then to really just turn his back on him after he died-- that didn’t go well with me,” he said. Then he watched Graham explode in anger at the Kavanaugh hearings and take a “strong right-hand turn that’s hard to explain.” It would be one thing if Graham’s allegiance to Trump had translated into some kind of benefit for South Carolina, Savage said, but “I don’t see that. All I see is something for him.”

“It’s sort of an insult to all of us who supported him,” Savage said. “We thought that he was such a good, moderate leader of the country.” Now Savage has donated $2,200 to Harrison, whom he calls a “cheerleader for those who have been left out.”

Johnny Hagins, a Greenville attorney and former state legislator, served on Graham’s finance committee when he ran for president in 2016. He’s a moderate Republican who finds Trump “repugnant” but is not sure whether he’ll vote for Graham this year. “What bothers me about him is his support of Trump,” Hagins said. “On the other hand, if we want our way about something, it’s good to have him.”

...Hagins is certain the women in his family won’t vote for Graham. Like a lot of women, Republicans included, they were turned off by his behavior at the Kavanaugh hearings. Hagins’ wife, Priscilla, has already donated $200 to Harrison’s campaign.

The State newspaper in Columbia has identified at least 24 South Carolina donors who have defected from Graham to Harrison. The most prominent among them is [Richard] Wilkerson, the former Michelin North America CEO who met Harrison during his lobbying days. In an op-ed in the Greenville News, Wilkerson explained that he supported Graham until 2017 because he saw him as “a moderate Republican who could work across the aisle to get positive change made.” But Graham’s perceived failure to defend McCain angered Wilkerson, as did his support for Trump’s 2017 tax bill, which “disproportionately favored those who are financially well off.” Finally, he disagreed with Graham’s attempts to delay the March coronavirus relief package because he felt the unemployment benefits were too generous. “Apparently, he feels that it is OK to share government dollars with those who don’t truly need the money but deny any small windfall to working people who have lost their jobs,” Wilkerson wrote.

In recent months, Harrison has picked up on this theme, emphasizing the impact Covid-19 has had on his state’s most vulnerable citizens. He often cites a Washington Post analysis, which found that South Carolina’s businesses received the smallest Paycheck Protection Program loans per worker of any state in the nation. He points out that most Black businesses haven’t received those loans, and, as of late June, 160,000 households with school-age children didn’t have access to the internet, according to the South Carolina Department of Education. In late July, Harrison held a news conference calling for virtual schooling to be an option for all students and for the Republican governor, Henry McMaster, to issue a mask mandate. He also criticized Graham for opposing the extension of unemployment benefits under the CARES Act, the $2.2 trillion economic stimulus bill passed in March to address the impact of coronavirus on the economy. “We're gonna constantly remind people that he hasn’t done anything,” Harrison told me. “I have never seen such a dereliction of duty in my life.”

...Harrison’s policy stances generally avoid the far left. He has not advocated to defund the police or apologized for his work as a lobbyist. His platform on health care—in favor of expanding Medicaid and protecting rural hospitals, but against a completely government-run health care system—is in line with the national party and Biden. Harrison tweeted his support for "Medicare for All" in February 2019, but later explained he supports a public option, alongside government insurance. Still, he’s too liberal for Graham’s taste. Arrighi calls the closure of rural hospitals “one of the many negative legacies of Obamacare,” and says Medicaid expansion is a decision made by state leaders, not senators. Arrighi also pointed out that Harrison has accepted campaign donations from MoveOn.org, which has petitions on its website advocating to defund the police. “Sen. Graham has made it crystal-clear that defunding the police is insane,” Arrighi said.

As protests over the killing of George Floyd convulsed the nation, Harrison published an op-ed in The Root that cast the struggle for racial justice as deeply personal rather than political. He talked about his grandmother watching the KKK march through her neighborhood, and the murder of his friend, state Senator Clementa Pinckney, during a racist church massacre five years ago. Above all, he worried about his young sons. The thought of having “the talk” about police brutality with them “rips my heart out,” he told me later. Yet the policy proposals in his op-ed were hardly revolutionary: “toughen hate crime legislation, end private prisons and cash bail, and train law enforcement officials on implicit bias.”

This middle-of-the-road platform helps Harrison court moderate voters. Quattlebaum said he appreciates Harrison’s humble roots, his support for the military and his emphasis on improving infrastructure in South Carolina. “I don't think he’s so left wing,” he said. “There’s not anything from a policy perspective that makes me think there’s no way I can support that.”

And nowhere in the Politico story-- let alone in Harrison's campaign-- is there a hint that Lindsey Graham is a deceitful and severely conflicted closet case, something that is universally known in DC and fairly well-known in South Carolina. I can't imagine Harrison's ultra-generic, campaign-in-a-box would get anywhere near it. It would be smart of them, though to drive a wedge between Graham and Republican voters in other ways. This kind of thing would be helpful for them to emphasize:

Why The U.S. Is Failing In Confronting The Pandemic-- Is It All Bad Leadership?

The other day, the very Trumpist governor of West Virginia was complaining about South Carolina. West Virginians, apparently, like going down to Myrtle Beach as their vacation spot of choice. Increasingly, according to Gov. Justice, they're coming back with COVID-19. Although there has been some monkeying around with reporting, generally West Virginia has had a very easy pandemic-- just 2,222 cases per million residents. Only Vermont, Alaska, Montana and Hawaii have lower numbers. But West Virginia has begun spiking in the last 10 days. Thursday there were 119 new cases. Yesterday it was another 157. But South Carolina is far worse off. There are a rapidly growing 10,181 cases per million (higher than the national average). Thursday there were 1,782 new cases, 9th worst in the country and it was 1,728 yesterday. Their hospital system is breaking down, the worst outcome for the Herd Immunity strategy favored by right-wing ideologues like Governor Henry McMaster. "We’re going to be worse than New York. But at least in New York, people took the virus seriously. Here, we’re in a war zone that people refuse to accept," a Charleston emergency room nurse told Pilar Melendez of the Daily Beast.

South Carolina’s current surge of cases is so bad that it’s currently one of the top three worst coronavirus outbreaks in the world. In a New York Times study of the number of daily infections between June 28 and July 5, Arizona and Florida are the two most impacted areas in the world-- followed by South Carolina, the country of Bahrain, and Louisiana. Hospitals are overwhelmed, understaffed, and short on supplies-- unable to keep up with what researchers believe is the “tipping point” before the state loses control of the pandemic.

“We’ve completely lost control of the situation in South Carolina-- and it’s completely embarrassing,” Helmut Albrecht, chairman of the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of South Carolina in Columbia and Prisma Health, told the Daily Beast. “In the medical community, we feel like we are getting completely dumped on.”

Some doctors insist the surge in South Carolina was inevitable, given the state officials’ response to the virus. Aside from closing schools, in the first month or so of the coronavirus’ spread in South Carolina, there was very little in the way of a statewide effort to slow the pathogen. As late as the end of March, the Republican-led state government was actively discouraging local public health efforts. “We affirm that local governments cannot exercise the emergency powers delegated to the governor by the general assembly,” Attorney General Alan Wilson stated on March 27. The general assembly is South Carolina’s state legislature.

...Myrtle Beach, a popular tourist destination along South Carolina’s coast, seems to be one of the biggest problem zones in the Palmetto State. A spring-break destination with a large elderly community, Myrtle Beach has contributed to increasing COVID-19 cases nationwide-- including 50 cases around Philadelphia.

  An internal state report obtained by ABC News foreshadows that South Carolina’s COVID-19 outbreak has no end in sight. The July 4 report, which warned of the state’s hot-spot status, particularly in coastal counties, said that in Horry County, where Myrtle Beach is located, “cases continue to sharply rise” with “widespread travel to the area contributing to cases.” In Charleston, there is “no sign of cases slowing down,” according to the report.

Locals, however, refuse to let the pandemic that has killed more than 131,000 people nationwide ruin their summer.

“We’re making no changes. Everything is going according to plan,” Copeland, 61, said about the 81st Annual Myrtle Beach Bike Week.  

Badge of Honor by Nancy Ohanian

South Carolina doesn't even have a mask mandate. Anyone who tells you they're doing down there early has a death wish. On Thursday we looked at what a catastrophe the herd immunity strategy has been for Sweden and its clueless neo-liberal prime minister, Stefan Löfven, who has steered his country over a cliff. Friday Axios' Caitlin Owens looked into how much of the U.S. has been dragged into the failed herd immunity strategy by Trump and the foolish governors who take their cues from him, like McMaster. "By letting the coronavirus surge through the population with only minimal social distancing measures in place," she wrote, "the U.S. has accidentally become the world’s largest experiment in herd immunity. Letting the virus spread while minimizing human loss is doable, in theory. But it requires very strict protections for vulnerable people, almost none of which the U.S. has established. Cases are skyrocketing, with hospitalizations and deaths following suit in hotspots. Not a single state has ordered another lockdown, even though per capita cases in Florida and Arizona have reached levels similar to New York and New Jersey’s in April."

• Most states never built up the testing, contact tracing and isolation systems it would take to prevent the virus from spreading widely, and and health care workers are once again facing shortages of protective medical gear.
• The Trump administration is generally ignoring or downplaying soaring caseloads across the South and West, and is pushing schools to fully reopen in the fall.
• In Florida, where infections, hospitalizations and deaths are surging, Gov. Ron DeSantis “has repeatedly ruled out a sweeping mask mandate or taking the state back into a lockdown to stem the virus, although local governments have acted on their own,” per Bloomberg.

"Separating older, sicker people from younger, healthier ones while the virus burns through the latter group could be a way to achieve herd immunity-- assuming immunity exists-- without hundreds of thousands of people dying.

But the U.S. hasn’t adopted such a strategy with any planning or foresight. Although younger people make up a larger portion of coronavirus cases now than they did earlier in the pandemic, vulnerable people still go to work or live with non-vulnerable people.

Frontline workers have generally been left unprotected, contributing to disproportionate caseloads, hospitalizations and deaths among people of color.

Even nursing homes are still vulnerable to outbreaks. Nursing home deaths have continued to climb in Florida, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina and California, The Atlantic recently reported.

...Sweden embraced the model and, as the NYT reported earlier this week, saw thousands more deaths than its neighbors with nothing to show for it economically.

In the next post this morning, we're going to take a look at how this is playing out electorally.

People Who May Have Thought They Were Safe From COVID At A Crowded Bar In South Carolina, Died From Gunshots Instead

South Carolina's lame Republican governor, Henry McMaster, was too chickenshit to take any real action against the pandemic-- and the state is in the throes of a catastrophic spike right now. On Saturday there were 1,854 new cases, bringing the state total to 43,386-- 8,427 cases per million South Carolinians, worse than any country in Europe including Sweden (7,071), Spain (6,366), Russia (4,668) and Italy (3,996). So far 813 South Carolinians have died but the huge uptick in cases since Memorial Day indicates deaths will rise percipitouslyly all summer and into the autumn, probably peaking as South Carolina voters much to the polls, probably masked by then-- but who knows?-- to vote for Trump.

And the county doing worst is in the heart of Trump country-- Greenville County-- with 5,696 confirmed cases (and 86 deaths). The death count does not include the two rap fans who died early Sunday morning at the Lavish Lounge on White Horse Road. People who trekked out to Emerald Point on Lake Austin in Texas that night to see '90s revival band, Color Me Badd, were disappointed that the show was cancelled at the last minute, but a Foogiano gig at the Lavish Lounge went on as scheduled. Ten people were shot around 2 AM.

How crazy, desperate or just plain stupid do you have to be to go to a crowded bar, illicitly opened on a 4th of July night, to get soused and hear a buzzing, publicity-mad rapper? For at least two, possibly 3, people that will be the last terrible decision they ever make.

Local law enforcement reflexively blamed "gangs," but there's no evidence that suggests that, at least not yet. In fact, the county sheriff, Hobart Lewis, watched surveillance footage and concluded that members of Foogiano's crew "were involved in the shooting, but that the performer himself was not part of the violence."

Mike Winslow of All Hip Hop News reported Sunday morning that "Foogiano, who recently signed a million-dollar-deal with Gucci Mane's 1017 Records, was performing at the holiday-themed concert at Lavish Lounge around 2 a.m. Local cops patrolling the area noticed an unusually large crowd in the area, which is supposed to be locked down over coronavirus restrictions. The cops noticed the patrons were fleeing the venue as they pulled in, and were immediately encountered with a frantic situation. According to witnesses, gunmen open fire inside of the venue in the middle of the crowd."

Sources stated there someone in the crowd may have attempted to rob Foogiano.

Investigators are looking to see if Lavish was even supposed to be open, or if it was operating illegally since Govoner Henry McMasters ordered all the local bars and clubs to close down again over the pandemic.

Meanwhile, over on Instagram friends of one of the reported victims have been dragging Foogiano, claiming his entourage sparked the gunfire during the botched robbery attempt. 

There were claims that someone tried stealing his chain and that his crew started shooting-- "the only ones shooting"-- although it's too early to know how fact-based any of that is. What it isn't too early to know for sure is that Henry McMaster has been as terrible confronting the pandemic in South Carolina as Trump as been nationally-- and that the two of them are pawns of the NRA and should be forced to wear gun violence statistics around their necks.

Masques

The Situation Room by Nancy Ohanian

Yesterday Bruce Springsteen blasted the so-called leaders who refuse to wear masks in public, particularly Señor Trumpanzee. He used his Sirius XM radio show, From My Home to Yours, to make it clear what he think of calculating politicians who refuse to wear masks. Strumming a guitar, he said "With 100,000-plus Americans dying over the last few months and the empty, shamed response from our leaders, I'm simply pissed off. Those lives deserve better than just being inconvenient statistics for our president's re-election efforts. It's a national disgrace... We will be contemplating on our current circumstances with the coronavirus and the cost that it has drawn from our nation. We will be calculating what we've lost, sending prayers for the deceased and the families they've left behind... I'm going to start out with sending one to the man sitting behind the Resolute Desk. With all respect, sir, show some consideration for your countrymen and your country. Put on a fucking mask." He then played Trump Bob Dylan's "The Disease of Conceit."





Also yesterday Trump Regime press secretary Kayleigh McEnany announced that from here on masks, though recommended, are no long required for White House staff, a big mistake according to the results of a study in Health Affairs. In their abstract, they noted that "there is now substantial evidence of asymptomatic transmission of COVID-19" and that "mask wearing by infected individuals can reduce transmission risk, and because of the high proportion of asymptomatic infected individuals and transmissions, there appears to be a strong case for the effectiveness of widespread use of face masks in reducing the spread of COVID-19."

In the US, public health authorities did not recommend widespread facial mask use in public at the start of the pandemic. The initially limited evidence on asymptomatic transmission and concern about mask shortages for health care workforce and individuals caring for patients contributed to that initial decision. On April 3, 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued new guidance advising all individuals to wear cloth facial covers in public areas where close contact with others is unavoidable, citing new evidence on virus transmission from asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic individuals. Guidelines differ between countries, and some including Germany, France, Italy, Spain, China, and South Korea have mandated use of face masks in public.

This study adds complementary evidence to the literature on impacts of widespread community use of face masks on COVID-19 spread from a natural experiment based on whether states in the US have mandated the use of face masks in public for COVID-19 mitigation or not. Specifically, we identify the effects of mandating face mask use in public on daily COVID-19 growth rates based on differences in the timing and issuance of state mandates.

In the US, 15 states plus DC have issued mandates for face mask use in public between April 8 and May 15. We examine the effects of state mandates for use of face masks in public on the daily COVID-19 growth rate using an event study that examines the effects over different periods. We also consider the impact of mandates for mask use targeted only to employees in some work settings, as opposed to community-wide mandates. This evidence is critical as states and countries worldwide begin to shift to “reopening” their economies and as foot traffic increases. Mandating public use of masks has become a socially and politically contentious issue, with multiple protests and even acts of violence directed against masked employees and those asking customers to wear face masks. Face cover recommendations and mandates are part of the current set of measures, following earlier social distancing measures such as school and non-essential business closures, bans on large gatherings, and shelter-in-place orders being considered by states and local governments, especially as regions of the country reopen. For example, most recently, Virginia started its phase one reopening on May 22, 2020 and required everyone in the state to wear face masks in public where people congregate. Therefore, it is critical to provide direct evidence on this question not only for public health authorities and governments but also for educating the public.

...There is a significant decline in daily COVID-19 growth rate after mandating facial covers in public, with the effect increasing over time after signing the order... The study provides direct evidence on the effectiveness of widespread community use of face masks from a natural experiment that evaluates effects of state government mandates in the US for face mask use in public on COVID-19 spread... Using an event study that examines daily changes in county-level COVID-19 growth rates, the study finds that mandating public use of face masks is associated with a reduction in the COVID-19 daily growth rate.

...These estimates are not small and represent nearly 16–19% of the effects of other social distancing measures (school closures, bans on large gatherings, shelter-in-place orders, and closures of restaurants, bars, and entertainment venues) after similar periods from their enactment. The estimates suggest increasing effectiveness and benefits from these mandates over time. By May 22, the estimates suggest that as many as 230,000–450,000 COVID-19 cases may have been averted based on when states passed these mandates. Again, the estimates of averted cases should be viewed cautiously as these are sensitive to assumptions and different approaches for transforming the changes in the daily growth rate estimates to cases.

Their conclusion is clear, though I doubt anyone could explain it to Trump. "The study provides evidence that states in the US mandating use of face masks in public had a greater decline in daily COVID-19 growth rates after issuing these mandates compared to states that did not issue mandates. These effects are observed conditional on other existing social distancing measures and are independent of the CDC recommendation to wear facial covers issued on April 3. As countries worldwide and states begin to relax social distancing restrictions and considering the high likelihood of a second COVID-19 wave in the fall/winter, requiring use of face masks in public might help in reducing COVID-19 spread."

Earlier today, the Wall Street Journal published an interview with Señor T by Michael Bender in which, among other assorted nonsense, the worst president in American history claimed many people wear masks as a sign they disapprove of him, rather than to stay healthy or keep people around them healthy. This literally defines what a narcissistic sociopath is.

Still no mask on the damn sociopath

Earlier in the week far right sociopath Tom Rice (R-SC) announced that he, his wife and their son have the "Wuhan Flu," the xenophobic, racist term neo-fascists and fascists use to describe COVID-19. Rice has refused to wear a mask on the House floor and has probably spread it to other Republican members who eschew masks. He represents the very red 7th district of eastern South Carolina, which includes Myrtle Beach and 8 counties. South Carolina-- where social distancing hasn't been taken seriously, is spiking badly now.

The counties in Rice's district haven't fared well. The state reports 388 cases per 100,000 people. As of yesterday, 6 of the 8 counties in Rice's district were faring worse than that average:

• Marlboro- 874
• Dillon- 654
• Chesterfield- 637
• Florence- 601
• Darlington- 531
• Horry- 404 (with the 3rd most infections of any county in the state)

Rice isn't the only House Republican refusing to wear a mask on the floor and endangering the other members and congressional employees. And Pelosi is now trying to force them to-- at least in committee meetings-- asking all the committee chairs to "enforce mask-wearing in all hearings." Republicans, of course, see this as tyranny rather than an attempt to save lives. They're also going berserk that she authorized the sergeant at arms to refuse entry to anyone who is not wearing a mask. (All the Democrats and most of the Republicans members where masks; it's just a handful of extremist Trumpian lunatics like Rice, Clay Higgins, Ted Yoho and Jim Jordan who refuse.)

The Associated Press reported that "The tightening mask rules came as the House Judiciary panel conducted a drafting session Wednesday on a policing bill, the first such meeting held under new rules permitting remote attendance. At a hearing last week, several GOP lawmakers, including Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California, declined to wear masks, which are considered an easy, effective way to combat the spread of the virus. An advisory by Attending Physician Brian Monahan said that for House members 'in a limited enclosed space, such as a committee hearing room, for greater than 15 minutes, face coverings are REQUIRED.' It said face coverings will be provided for those who arrive without face covers. The Capitol physician’s guidance 'cites new studies that speak to the broad scientific consensus on the effectiveness of mask-wearing to prevent the spread of COVID-19,' the Democratic aide said in an accompanying statement, adding that the Sergeant of Arms will deny entry to lawmakers who don’t wear masks and committee chairs can refuse to recognize them."

With new coronavirus caseloads spiking in Oklahoma just before Trump's Death Cult Rally on Saturday, his campaign's "precautions" go no further than forcing attendees to sign a waiver saying if they contact the disease they cannot sue the campaign or the venue.

Trump’s campaign advisers believe his first rally in three months on Saturday night at an indoor arena will rejuvenate his base at a time when a string of national and state opinion polls have shown the president falling behind Democratic rival Joe Biden.

“Ultimately, the president doesn’t ask for permission before he” goes to places, said Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt during a briefing on Wednesday. “So we found out that president was coming, so we are going to make sure it’s the best and as safe as possible.”

Oklahoma health officials are urging anyone attending the rally to get tested for the coronavirus before arriving and then to self-isolate following the event and get tested again. The health commissioner urged those over 65 or at higher risk of coronavirus-related complications to stay home.

...In most of the states where cases are spiking, COVID-19 hospitalizations are also rising or at record highs. Unlike spikes reported in new infections, rising hospitalizations cannot simply be attributed to increased testing.

"Die For Me" by Nancy Ohanian

This morning, John Pavlovitz warned the country that a mask is a stupid hill to die on. Lots of people seem to think that not wearing a mask will Make America Great Again. Pavlovitz wrote that "Despite how many people have died, despite how decimated our economy is, despite the near complete shutdown of life (that you’ve been moaning like a dirty-diapered infant for months about)-- this minuscule task is too much to ask? A mask is the small, selfish, ignorant hill you’re choosing to die (and kill) on? The multitudinous non-maskers aren’t a monolith, of course, but most can be loosely organized into two groups:

1) Self-centered narcissists, who simply refuse to make the smallest sacrifice for the health and well-being of others, because they’ve been so weaned on individualism and have so little appreciation for interdependent community-- that anything less than completely unfettered freedom feels restrictive.

2) People with such a cultic adoration of this president that they refuse to wear a mask, because to do so would mean that he was wrong all along and that they were lied to and that we are in grave danger-- so in an oxymoronic attempt at self-preservation, they swallow a toxic cocktail of tearful nationalism, Fox News fakery, macho flexing, and willful ignorance-- and kill people to own the Libs.  

He continued to remind the non-mask wears that "this isn’t about your personal freedom... [or] about physical toughness... If you refuse to wear a mask in a pandemic, you’re not making America great. You’re abusing your freedom, you’re intentionally placing fellow citizens in harm’s way, you’re damaging the economy, and you’re dooming us to far longer restrictions than if you simply put a piece of cloth over your mouth. If you refuse to wear a mask in a pandemic, you’re also not pro-life. You are showing a reckless disregard for yourself and for loved ones and for strangers; the supposedly sacred lives you preach to treasure in the womb, but in practice really aren’t all that concerned with outside of it. And if you refuse to wear a mask in a pandemic-- you’re just not a very good person. We’re in an unprecedented health crisis that has literally shut down the world, and you won’t do literally the simplest thing you’re being asked to, in order to prevent other people from getting sick and dying. Congratulations. You’re failing the 'human' test. Enjoy your hill. It will look great with a headstone."

Georgia, South Carolina And Tennessee vs Argentina

Yesterday afternoon, three gubernatorial fools-- gubers for short-- announced that they're prematurely opening their states up for the pandemic-- although none of their states were very closed down to begin with. The 3 imbeciles are Brian Kemp (R-GA), Bill Lee (R-TN) and Henry McMaster (R-SC). Let's start by looking at some numbers-- total cases and cases per million.

• Georgia- 18,947 (1,840 per million)
• Tennessee- 7,238 (1,088 per million)
• South Carolina- 4,377 (883 per million)

Remember those numbers, because by Memorial Day weekend they're all going to be much higher. On Good Morning America yesterday, Dr. Fauci made it clear that this is a big mistake that will steepen the curve and cause the nation's efforts to banish the pandemic to slow down. He said that "this is something that is hurting from the standpoint of economics, from the standpoint of things that have nothing to do with the virus... unless we get the virus under control, the real recovery economically is not gonna happen. So what you do if you jump the gun and go into a situation where you have a big spike, you’re gonna set yourself back... it’s gonna backfire. That’s the problem."




Wire Train was a band on my indie label, 415 Records. The original drummer, was Federico Gil-Sola, a kid from Argentina, who has since moved back there. Last night he suggested I read a piece in The Nation by Jacob Sugarman about how Argentina is handling the pandemic, Argentina Is Showing the World What a Humane Covid-19 Response Looks Like. "In December of 2019," wrote Sugarman, "the Peronist-progressive coalition party Frente de Todos (Everyone’s Front) swept into power after four years of neoliberal mismanagement. Now that it had begun enacting a social democratic agenda, against the backdrop of an unprecedented public health crisis, the forces of reaction were making their voices heard. Indeed, their demonstration began shortly after Minister of Labor Claudio Moroni ordered the country’s largest steel manufacturer, Techint, to pause the firing of 1,450 temporary workers. (President Alberto Fernández has since issued an emergency decree banning layoffs for a period of two months.) “Muchachos, les tocó la hora de ganar menos,” Fernández told the country’s business leaders at the time. “Boys, it’s time for you to earn less.”

Herein lies the challenge not just for Argentina but also for countless other liberal democracies across the West. While the outlines of our global crisis are only beginning to emerge, it is clear that Covid-19 demands that these nations reimagine the role of the state after decades of free-market hegemony. New possibilities have presented themselves that seemed unimaginable as recently as February. Even the editorial board of the Financial Times recently conceded that more radical reforms like a wealth tax and a universal basic income will have to be put on the table. Fernández, whose conservative predecessor, Mauricio Macri, reduced the Minister of Health to a non-cabinet position, understands this intuitively, implementing a pandemic response that, if not offering an exemplar for the Americas, stands in stark contrast to the region’s more overtly authoritarian regimes.

“I was concerned that the Argentine state apparatus wouldn’t be up to the task, but the response [has been] good,” says Marcelo Leiras, a political scientist and adviser to Argentina’s minister of the interior, Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro. “The Minister of Health [Ginés González García], at the beginning, thought that this epidemic would not strongly effect Argentina. For good reasons, I think. We didn’t know how contagious this thing was. The president was wise enough to widen his circle of advisers and heed the most prudent, conservative advice. He was [also] bold in choosing a strong quarantine policy, which in economic terms was incredibly risky.”

“We have to keep in mind how inarticulate the international response has been to the [coronavirus],” he adds. “It’s reflective of the political disarray of the West in domestic and international terms. I think the president sensed that and reacted very quickly and consistently.”

Whereas U.S. President Donald Trump and Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro have abdicated responsibility for their nations’ pandemic responses, with each openly flouting epidemiologists and sniping at the governors of their respective states and provinces, Fernández issued a nationwide shelter-in-place order on March 20. At the time, Argentina had only 128 official cases nationwide, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. As with the Argentinian president’s prior decisions to close the country’s borders and place visitors from global hot spots in a two-week quarantine, the aim was simple: to flatten the curve before a swell in cases could overwhelm the country’s latticework of trade union clinics, public hospitals, and private health care providers. It is far too early to call the measures a success, but early returns suggest that they are working. Infections have come in well below initial projections, and as of April 12, Argentina’s death rate stood at two per 1 million habitants. Chile’s, by contrast, was four, and Brazil’s was five. The United States’ was 62.

“Argentina has acted very quickly in comparison with other countries,” says Rodrigo Quiroga, a bioinformatician at Argentina’s National Scientific and Technical Research Council. “[That includes] the rapid closure of the border, the mandatory isolation of those who came from countries with high rates of infections and the closing of schools. These measures, along with the quarantine, have reduced the number of cases in this first stage of the pandemic.”

Fernández’s economic actions have been no less audacious, especially when considering that his administration inherited a $311 billion debt that includes a record $57 billion loan in 2018 from the International Monetary Fund-- the institution that imposed punishing austerity measures after the country’s crash in 2002. Argentina has invested as much as 2 percent of its gross domestic product in an economic and social relief package-- among the highest within the G20-- while an executive order issued last month has ensured that no essential services be cut for retirees, social welfare recipients and households earning less than a combined 33,750 pesos (about $520) due to a lack of payment. These services include electricity, gas, water, mobile, and fixed landlines, as well as Internet and cable television. The Fernández administration has also suspended evictions and frozen all rent hikes through September, in addition to absolving “monotributistas,” the country’s bottom tax bracket, of penalties for failing to make their March tax payments.

More significantly, the president has created via executive order a 10,000-peso (about $150) Ingreso Familiar de Emergencia (Emergency Family Income) for domestic workers and other low-income earners, giving first priority to those who qualify for Asignación Universal por Hijo (Universal Child Allowance) and Asignación para Embarazadas (Allowance for Pregnant Women). Nearly 8 million Argentines will receive subsidies beginning April 21. The administration has further made every employer, regardless of trade and size, eligible for a Programa de Asistencia de Emergencia al Trabajao y la Producción (Emergency Assistance Program for Work and Production), postponing or reducing the tax commitments of small businesses by up to 95 percent and paying out between 50 and 100 percent of a monthly minimum wage salary for each of their employees. Meanwhile, the federal government has compelled banks to extend hundreds of millions of dollars in loans at a reduced interest rate in an effort to keep the economy afloat.

Although Argentina has declined to nationalize its private hospitals as Spain has done, it has secured their cooperation during the crisis so that its health care system doesn’t face a shortage of hospital beds. Fernández has likewise activated the armed services to build a number of triage centers in the event of a surge in cases. Taken together, these actions amount to a mass mobilization of the Argentinian state.

...Fernández has investigated relaxing quarantine restrictions in order to stimulate the economy, but the challenges will be immense. While the government maintains that its testing of Covid-19 is proportionate to the country’s low rate of infection (2,142 official cases as of April 12), it had administered just 19,758 tests-- 437 per million habitants-- two weeks before quarantine was tentatively set to end April 26. As the country attempts to ramp up the numbers of ventilators and test kits after years of funding cuts to the Administración Nacional de Laboratorios e Institutos de Salud “Dr. Carlos Malbrán” (the Malbrán Institute), and amid supply chain disruptions that have hampered much of Latin America, it may be all but impossible to control the virus’s spread in the more impoverished suburbs of Buenos Aires, where population density is high, access to quality health care is limited, and few enjoy the luxury to self-isolate. At the same time, a 2019 poll from Argentina’s Catholic University finds that nearly half of the country’s labor force (49.3 percent) works off the books, with 81.7 percent of that segment in low-quality jobs.

“The response has ultimately been reflective of the strengths and weaknesses of the Argentinian state,” says Leiras. “The Argentinian state is strong in dialogue and politics but bad in terms of infrastructure, in its ability to go to places and do things, to reach people with health services [for example]. In that respect, it’s like an octopus with very short tentacles.”

Yet, despite its deficiencies, Argentina has thus far managed to avoid the kinds of catastrophes emerging in countries like Ecuador, where bodies have piled up in the streets of Guayaquil, and Brazil, whose president now faces impeachment calls for his homicidal denialism. More recently, Fernández has encouraged the congress to pass a tax on the country’s biggest fortunes-- a response to his political opposition’s calls for government officials to reduce their salaries by 30 percent. The tax, which targets, among others, those who were granted immunity by the prior administration for hiding their wealth overseas, signals the president’s desire to fundamentally reorder Argentinian society as much as it aims to ameliorate the worst economic effects of the crisis. Fernandez grasps what many of his counterparts on the world stage have not: that our fates are intrinsically bound together, and that the historical epoch we’ve been thrust into demands a new social contract.

“For many years, Argentinians have been led to believe that politicians and union leaders were the source of all their problems,” the president mused in late March. “The real problem is those who believe that there are too many people, that this [isn’t] a country where we all have a place…. After the pandemic, everything will be different. We’ll live in another world. I believe that ours is a time of reflection, in which we can recover something that postmodernity has robbed of us.”

“Postmodernity has led us to believe that individualism was the secret and that success meant earning money,” he continued. “[We’ve seen] a microscopic bug lay waste to vast fortunes and destroy accumulated wealth. Microscopic. This same bug can kill [the rich] as easily as it can kill any one of us. What was the purpose then of accumulating so much?”

As Expected, Obama Obsession Gave Status Quo Joe A Plurality In Beet Red South Carolina

You probably know by now that Biden came in first with almost half the votes in South Carolina. Biden's last hurrah! The #NeverTrump Republicans who dominate the cable stations couldn't wait to start crowing about someone like them won. Look at this tweet from former Republican congressman-- and former Trump crony-- Joe Scarborough:

South Carolina looks like the Democratic Party? I wonder what he's been snorting? Two-thirds of the electorate yesterday was Black. That isn't remotely like the Democratic Party. Biden's big win was primarily among elderly conservative rural Black voters without college educations. A very significant number were undecided and just like old hack politician Jim Clyburn make the call for them. Scarborough knows that isn't what the Democratic Party looks like. Why is he lying?

The #NeverTrumpers and their conservaDem allies-- like crooked fixer Terry McAuliffe, who endorsed Biden as soon as he won and right-of-center Alabama Senayor Doug Jones, who did likewise-- are so eager to declare the race reset or even that Biden is some kind of "comeback kid" or the new frontrunner that they were all about ignoring what's coming on Tuesday. The actual national delegate count after last night:

Trumpists are looking at the Democratic race a little differently. There was a straw poll at CPAC yesterday and Bernie was rated as the biggest threat to Trump's reelection.

• Bernie- 34%
• Bloomberg- 23%
• Biden- 9%

In case you missed Steve Phillips NY Times most talked about post last week-- Bernie Sanders Can Beat Trump. Here's The Math.-- here it is:

Whatever you think about Bernie Sanders as a potential president, it is wrong to dismiss his chances of winning the office. Not only does most of the available empirical evidence show Mr. Sanders defeating President Trump in the national popular vote and in the critical Midwestern states that tipped the Electoral College in 2016, but his specific electoral strengths align with changes in the composition of the country’s population in ways that could actually make him a formidable foe for the president.

Almost all of the current polling data shows Mr. Sanders winning the national popular vote. In the most recent national polls testing Democratic candidates against Mr. Trump, Mr. Sanders beat him in every single one, with margins varying from 2 percent to 6 percent. This has been the case for nearly a year now, with Mr. Sanders outpolling the president in 67 of 72 head-to-head polls since March.

As 2016 proved when Hillary Clinton defeated Mr. Trump in the popular vote by nearly three million votes, however, the Electoral College is what matters most. There, Mr. Sanders also does well, outperforming Mr. Trump in polls of the pivotal battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In the one poll showing significant Trump strength in Wisconsin (Quinnipiac), Mr. Sanders still fares the best of the Democratic contenders.

In addition to the polling data about how voters might act in the future, there is now the much more valuable information of actual voter behavior in the first three nominating contests, in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada. It is not just the fact that Mr. Sanders won the popular vote in all three states, it is how he won that portends hidden and underappreciated general election strength.

Exit polls and precinct analyses show that Mr. Sanders runs strongest with some of the most overlooked and undervalued sectors of the population-- young people and Latinos in particular. In all three early states, he received twice as much support from voters under 30 than his closest competitor. In Nevada, he received about 70 percent of the vote in the most heavily Latino precincts.

These particular strengths matter because the composition of the electorate in 2020 will be appreciably different than it was in 2016. Pew Research projects that this will be the most racially diverse electorate ever, with people of color making up fully one-third of all eligible voters. The share of eligible voters from Generation Z (18-23 year olds) will be more than twice as large in 2020 as it was in 2016 (10 percent versus 4 percent).

Notably, the expanding sectors of the population are much more progressive and pro-Democratic than their aging and white counterparts. Mrs. Clinton defeated Mr. Trump by nearly 20 points among voters under 30, and the anti-Republican tilt of that demographic was even more pronounced in 2018, when 67 percent of them voted Democratic, 35 points more than the number who voted Republican. As for Latinos, nearly two-thirds of that population consistently vote Democratic.

The implications of these developments are most significant in the specific states where the election will be most fiercely fought. In Michigan and Wisconsin, which were decided in 2016 by roughly 11,000 and 22,700 votes respectively, close to a million young people have since turned 18. Beyond the Midwestern trio of states, the demographic revolution has even more transformative potential. Mr. Trump won Arizona, for example, by 91,000 votes, and 160,000 Latinos have turned 18 in that state since then.

To fully harness the energy from the demographic revolution, Mr. Sanders will need to strengthen his support among African-American voters who were more resistant to his candidacy when he faced Mrs. Clinton. His strong support among younger African-Americans could help, but he would be best served by choosing as his running mate an African-American with strong electoral appeal, such as Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives who received more African-American votes in a statewide election than anyone not named Barack Obama.

In addition to those particular parts of Mr. Sanders’s strength, he is also well-positioned to win back those voters who defected in 2016 because Mrs. Clinton was too moderate for their tastes. For all the focus on Obama-Trump voters, it was Obama-Stein voters who created the critical cracks in the Democratic firewall (the increase in votes for Jill Stein from 2012 to 2016 was greater than Mr. Trump’s margin of victory in Michigan and Wisconsin). Of all the remaining candidates, Mr. Sanders is the most likely to reclaim those Democratic voters who defected to the Green Party in search of a more progressive standard-bearer.

Much of the angst about Mr. Sanders topping the ticket stems from fear about negative fallout in down-ballot congressional races. Here, too, the concerns are overblown. In the vast majority of congressional districts where Democrats ousted Republican incumbents in 2018, it was enthusiasm and the high turnout of Democratic voters that made the difference, much more than alienated moderate Republicans switching their party allegiance. In all but five of the 41 seats picked up by Democrats, increased Democratic turnout alone would have been enough to flip the seats without any Republican crossovers.

While some small number of down-ballot House races could become more competitive, that risk is offset by the opportunity for Democrats to flip even more seats by mobilizing younger and more diverse voters. In 2018, Democrats fell just 1,000 votes short in both the Seventh District of Georgia, for example, where there is a sizable African-American population, and San Antonio’s 23rd District, which is more than half Latino. There are several other seats where Democrats could make additional gains with Mr. Sanders atop the ticket.

The empirical evidence shows that there is no need for alarm about Mr. Sanders being the Democratic nominee, and even some cause for confidence. If you want to engage in theoretical thought experiments, a useful exercise would be to ask how many people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 would switch their votes to back Mr. Trump just because Mr. Sanders was the nominee? Common sense suggests that the answer is infinitesimally small.

If that is the case, then Mr. Sanders would win the popular vote. As for the roughly 78,000 votes in three states that flipped the Electoral College, the particular strengths that Mr. Sanders brings to the contest strongly suggest that he could close that gap and make the leap into the Oval Office.

South Carolina Voters Need To Ask Themselves If Mayo Pete Respects African Americans?

I had dinner with civil rights icon Fergie Reid last night and we were discussing how both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders had backed the 90for90 voter registration initiative but how Mayo Pete's team had refused. I noted that Mayo's racism was hardly something new or unknown. Oddly, after having tried to get him to embrace the initiative, he finally did-- just hours after our dinner and hours before South Carolina primary day! A creation of intelligence agency spooks, did the Mayo campaign have our table bugged? I doubt it but it does seem like an act of desperation or, at least, one that lacks a certain comprehension. His outsider imagine has been carefully constructed by spin-masters to obscure his deep establishment roots, such as the fact that his foreign policy adviser is a powerful Pentagon insider , Doug Wilson, who started mentoring him right out of college, the same man who encouraged once-peacenik Buttigieg to join the military, an important factor in his political climb. Russ Baker:

In a February 25 pre–South Carolina primary debate during which Sanders took fire from all five candidates, Buttigieg called attention to himself by the intensity of his attacks on the frontrunner.

At one point, an argument broke out between the two after Sanders took aim at US foreign policy for being responsible for overthrowing “governments all over the world in Chile, in Guatemala, in Iran,” and supporting pro-business dictatorships. Buttigieg responded that Sanders represents the “revolutionary politics of the 1960s”-- and hammers a recurring theme, that the Vermont senator is as divisive and dangerous as Trump.

Buttigieg was able to put his military service front and center at the debate. Responding to a question framing him as the only veteran on the stage, he brought up his first trip to the state, when he attended Fort Jackson for three weeks of special training before being deployed to Afghanistan in 2015. He recalled looking down at his uniform sleeve and feeling pride that “the flag on [his] shoulder represented a country known to keep its word.”

Since 400,000 vets live in South Carolina, and it has eight bases, representing Army, Navy, the Marines, and Airforce, military service carries special weight there.

How was the little-known mayor of a small American city (ranked 308th largest) transformed into a candidate deemed most qualified to handle some of the most complex decisions facing this country and the world, at a time perhaps more challenging than any in history?

The answer, research suggests, is that Buttigieg has benefited — like many politicians — from a career-long shaping, punctuated by repositionings and makeovers, until he had the right set of credentials and backers to make it to the top. But the particulars of the makeover are like no other.

The Buttigieg we think we know today came into focus over the course of about 16 years, as he was bundled into a package of appealing but vague impressions-- energetic, reformer, articulate, thoughtful, youthful, reasonable.

During his presidential campaign, his handlers have pivoted from difficult-to-prove and politically profitless assertions about his tenure in South Bend, IN, to equally vague but far more savvy branding as a healing national figure, a hardheaded realist, and seasoned man of the world: global businessman and traveler, and, not least, military veteran.

Perhaps paradoxically, he turns out to be backed by a mighty retinue from the very national security elite he says he hopes to “upend.”

Henry Davis, Jr., currently serving his third term on the South Bend City Council, and Jordan Giger, a school teacher and leader of the South Bend chapter of Black Lives Matter, are clearly not on Team Buttigieg. Yesterday the two had an OpEd published by one of South Carolina's biggest newspapers, The State: If black voters in SC support Pete Buttigieg, they will only re-elect President Trump. "Before South Carolina votes in Saturday’s Democratic Party primary," they wrote, "we feel a duty-- as black leaders who know former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg very well-- to issue a political warning to anyone who cares about defeating President Donald Trump in 2020." And did they ever!

Simply put, if Buttigieg becomes the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, his candidacy will be damaged by at least three ticking legal time bombs that are set to go off during the 2020 election-- all of which will serve to help Trump depress black voter turnout and win re-election.

Voters deserve to know that there is a pending special prosecutor investigation into the June 2019 death of Eric Logan, an unarmed black man shot by a white South Bend police officer while walking to his mother’s home from a family event. Buttigieg was still mayor when the shooting occurred, and he was forced to leave the presidential campaign trail to face the anger and anguish of our community. The Indiana attorney general’s office says that the special prosecutor’s report on Logan’s death will likely be released soon.

There is also a wide-ranging federal civil rights lawsuit into systematic racism in the South Bend Police Department while Buttigieg was the city’s mayor. Civil rights law gives plaintiffs broad discovery power to unearth the racist behavior that plagued our community during Buttigieg’s two terms leading South Bend-- and our former mayor may be among those subpoenaed to give a deposition.

That represents the second ticking legal time bomb hovering over Buttigieg’s campaign.

And here is the third one that voters deserve to know about: the South Bend City Council brought a pending lawsuit against Buttigieg to demand the release of secret tapes revealing racist and criminal acts, including white police officers plotting against the city’s first black police chief in an attempt to get him fired.

This controversy has drawn national coverage: the New York Times, for example, published an April 2019 bearing the headline “Pete Buttigieg Fired South Bend’s Black Police Chief. It Still Stings.”

During the 2020 election President Trump will try to suppress the black vote, possibly with help from the Russians. Now just imagine the field day they will have as these Buttigieg-related lawsuits, depositions, subpoenas, reports and other revelations become public throughout the 2020 campaign.

It could resemble the 2016 election furor over Hillary Clinton’s emails, only on steroids. And the furor over the Buttigieg material will be far more warranted, because the systemic racism Buttigieg appeared to tolerate is real.

Before they vote, South Carolinians deserve to know that Buttigieg’s problems with black voters will not go away anytime soon, and that these problems exist for good reason.

Thanks for listening to our voices.

Hard to understand how a completely fabricated empty suit like Mayo could be polling even 4th-- and at almost double what Elizabeth Warren is polling-- in South Carolina. The Real Clear Politics average for the state looks like this going into primary day today:

• Status Quo Joe- 39.7%
• Bernie- 24.3%
• Steyer- 11.7%
• Mayo Pete- 11.3%
• Elizabeth- 6.0%
• Klobuchar- 5.7%
• Tulsi- 2.3%

We'll see how accurate that turns out to be in a few hours but now consider this. Did Mayo Pete just expose South Carolina Blacks to whatever contagion prevented him from meeting Florida Whites? In South Carolina on Thursday afternoon, Buttigieg shook hands and greeted each of nine African American health care leaders. But in Florida Mayo canceled plans for two rich people-only fundraisers scheduled for Wednesday evening at private residences in Palm Beach and Wellington as well as two appearances scheduled for earlier Wednesday in Miami, citing an unspecified illness.