Hi! I’m back! Let’s talk about elections.
With Super Tuesday knocking at the door, the race has gotten so, SO exciting.
Bernie is the front runner, but the party leaders aren’t sold on him. They think that he won’t bring out the voters that will be needed to beat Trump in November. So, they’re clearly putting pressure on the other moderates in the campaign to coalesce Biden’s support.
Buttigieg is out. Klobuchar is out and has already endorsed Biden. With Warren’s disappointing turnout in the past few primaries, I’m sure that there is pressure on her, too. But maybe not. Her supporters are probably more likely to go to Sanders than Biden. So, maybe they’re pressuring her to stay in the race.
The one person that they can’t pressure is Bloomberg, who with all the cash that he’s thrown in this race, is a poster child for Sander’s ridiculously rich guy, who really should be taxed up the wazoo.
More soon…
Apt. 11d 
Aargh, I hate that you are dealing with so much. I’m sure there’s pressure on Warren, but it makes me almost ill to even think about a choice among 3 white men born within a year of one another during World War II. Apparently I am in the demographic of academics supporting Warren and women supporting Warren. If she has not suspended her campaign I will vote for her. I am hoping Bloomberg will collapse, but I have a suspicion that i fhe doesn’t, warren will drop out.
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bj said,
“it makes me almost ill to even think about a choice among 3 white men born within a year of one another during World War II.”
Bernie was born September 8, 1941, so nearly two months before the US’s official entry into WWII.
After 4 Boomer presidents in a row (Clinton, GWB, Obama, Trump), I never thought we’d have a pre-Boomer president again, but here we are.
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I have various fantasies, and one of them is that Bernie steps aside (for his health) and hands his baton to Warren.
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Well, I have basically lost all my faves – I liked Bullock, kind of liked Yang, kind of liked Buttigieg, liked Klobuchar. So off to the local Methodist church at 6 in the morning to vote for Biden. Can’t stand Sanders and Warren has too much fraud in her history, also she’s too far to my left. Biden it is.
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Good catch. I always forget how late the US entered the war.
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Of course, the guys at the deli and my Trump-supporting secretary and cafeteria chef friends think all of us should be taxed up the wazoo.
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“Taxes are what we pay for civilized society.”
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So everyone here should be happy to pay more, because we’ll be more civilized. You first.
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Under Bernie’s tax plan, there is no increase for households under $250,000. If you make more than that and are still complaining about a tax increase, you’re one of the reasons “eat the rich” is a popular saying.
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I’m happy to be first, if I have more money than you. Our government is underfunded (even at current levels of spending, as the growing deficit shows). If indeed, the growing deficit is something we can tolerate (i.e. MMT, or whatever it is called), then there is more spending we need to do. For example, I do not know why we don’t have COVID-19 test kits and China, South Korea, and Italy do.
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It isn’t remotely possible to pay for Sanders’ proposed spending solely with taxes on people making over $250,000, and it’s just dishonest to suggest otherwise. The social services of Europe are supported by heavy taxes on the middle class. It’s even more dishonest to suggest that taxes solely on billionaires would pay for any significant fraction of government spending.
Occasionally one sees an honest article, in some earnest liberal publication like The Atlantic, frankly advocating for higher taxes on the middle class to pay for benefits for the middle class. However, the middle class in America never votes for that. It may be the result of false consciousness, but unless you are prepared for the government to dissolve the people and elect another, you have to stage elections with the people you have.
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For example, I do not know why we don’t have COVID-19 test kits and China, South Korea, and Italy do.
It was a multi-step, bureaucratic process: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/02/united-states-badly-bungled-coronavirus-testing-things-may-soon-improve
In principle, many hospital and academic labs around the country have the capability to carry out tests themselves. The PCR reaction uses so-called primers, short stretches of DNA, to find viral sequences. The CDC website posts the primers used in its test, and WHO publicly catalogs other primers and protocols, too. Well-equipped state or local labs can use these—or come up with their own—to produce what are known as a “laboratory-developed tests” for in-house use.
But at the moment, they’re not allowed to do that without FDA approval. When the United States declared the outbreak a public health emergency on 31 January, a bureaucratic process kicked in that requires FDA’s “emergency use approval” for any tests. “The declaration of a public health emergency did exactly what it shouldn’t have. It limited the diagnostic capacity of this country,” Mina says. “It’s insane.”
Not a budget issue, per se. A conflict between government departments, each with its own area of control.
It is now being reported that a million tests will be able to be run by the end of this week.
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Cranberry quoted, “But at the moment, they’re not allowed to do that without FDA approval. When the United States declared the outbreak a public health emergency on 31 January, a bureaucratic process kicked in that requires FDA’s “emergency use approval” for any tests. “The declaration of a public health emergency did exactly what it shouldn’t have. It limited the diagnostic capacity of this country,” Mina says. “It’s insane.””
Oh, crud.
Cranberry said, “It is now being reported that a million tests will be able to be run by the end of this week.”
That’s much better.
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bj,
I spend the day toiling virtuously away from the internet, and Western WA turns into a plague zone while I’m not watching.
https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-outbreak-death-toll-us-infections-latest-news-updates-2020-03-02/
What’s the deal?
Bringing this back to politics, it strikes me that (given high mortality rates for older Coronavirus victims) the campaigning process (lots of hugging and kissing and hand-shaking and tightly packed crowds) is a really, really bad idea for all of our older presidential candidates.
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-age-sex-demographics/
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https://www.uschina.org/reports/2019-state-export-report#4
Pages 13 & 14. Texas and California are also huge markets.
Some cases on the east coast arise from trips to Italy. I think this virus has been building behind the scenes for some time.
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Rapidly evolving situation that has resulted in panic shopping and people washing their hands. Events are being cancelled, schools closed for cleaning, and least one closed with a plan for online courses.
There’s a cluster of known infections/exposure at a long term care facility in Kirkland, which is the source of the deaths. But, there are a number of cases of people with no known connection to travel, travelers, or the cluster who have the coronavirus.
Community infection cases now outnumber direct travel cases (excluding the evacuation/cruise ship cases).
The CDC is no longer reporting complete information — they’ve dropped the number of tests, for example and other information is lagging. I think the virus has spread in the United States to the point where management is relevant (an not just travel bans). I am disturbed about the CDC reaction (including the botched test kits, and the restrictive testing). The US is now exceptional in having tested orders of magnitude fewer people than other countries. But, I am hopeful that like the H1N1 flu, this coronavirus is mild enough that we can manage it.
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I’m always slightly surprised to be reminded that Kirkland is a place and but just a label on giant boxes.
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A pretty place, too, with a booming waterfront area.
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bj said,
” I am disturbed about the CDC reaction (including the botched test kits, and the restrictive testing). The US is now exceptional in having tested orders of magnitude fewer people than other countries.”
It’s irritating, because we had literally weeks of head start on this.
I checked in with my Boomer parents last night and suggested that it might be a good idea for them to not deal with tourists for a bit (these are largely weekending Seattle folk) and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to just shut the store down on the days during spring break that they don’t have an employee.
The only positive I see is that (so far) coronavirus doesn’t seem as dangerous to little kids as normal flu is.
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Huge amount of angst in the Dems – Donna Brazile furious https://www.thedailybeast.com/donna-brazile-tells-rnc-chairwoman-ronna-mcdaniel-to-go-to-hell-on-fox-news/main-info?via=twitter_page that Ronna McD called them on rigging the process, when it’s as plain as the nose on your face that they are, well, rigging the process. I am highly in favor of rigging the process, myself – I want the Dems to come up with a nominee for whom I can tolerate voting – but it’s not a good look to try and yell it away. One of the great moments in Presidential debates was when Mondale said of Reagan, “what do you believe, him, or your own eyes?” and that is applicable here.
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