Early-Voting States Aren’t a Problem for Democratsby Jonathan Bernstein



Early-Voting States Aren’t a Problem for Democrats

by Jonathan Bernstein, bloomberg.com

February 11, 2020 06:54 AM

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With the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, get ready for another round of complaints about how Iowa and New Hampshire are unrepresentative of the Democratic Party and warp the process by going first and second. After all, they are dominated by white voters in a party in which Black and Latino voters are major constituencies. So one last reminder for this cycle that those complaints are, while not entirely wrong, very much exaggerated.

That’s been particularly evident in the 2020 cycle. It’s true that a number of well-qualified candidates won’t be on the ballot in Nevada, South Carolina, and other more diverse states. Senators Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand; Governors Jay Inslee and Steve Bullock; former governor John Hickenlooper; and former secretary of housing and urban development Julián Castro are all gone. What did them in, however, was a national process: the “invisible primary” of donors, endorsements, other support from party actors, media attention, and early success or failure in public opinion polls.

None of those winnowed candidates were doing well in Nevada, South Carolina or the national polls when they dropped out. Most of them had very little support from party actors. Harris did have quite a bit of national support, but she took the risk of ramping up her campaign when polling was good, and wound up collapsing when her polling, and therefore her fundraising, went south everywhere.

The other piece of this is that the results in Iowa and New Hampshire are interpreted — by party actors and by the media — with their demographics in mind. Pete Buttigieg did get a boost from winning (sort of) in Iowa, but a lot of observers discounted it because it was regionally and demographically friendly for him; similarly, Joe Biden’s weak showing did hurt him, but if he really keeps his support among black voters in future states and party actors across the nation, he’ll probably survive it — and if they desert him, there’s a good chance he would have lost them anyway had South Carolina gone first.

The same thing will be true today. A Sanders win would be discounted because he’s from Vermont. Biden would be in big trough if he can’t break 10% of the vote, but a solid third-place vote would help him because no one thinks New Hampshire is a good state for him. Of course, that’s not the only thing that determines media reactions. But then again, any candidate who does well in Iowa and New Hampshire but can’t convert that into success in Nevada and South Carolina isn’t going anywhere anyway.

Yes, it’s true that Iowa and New Hampshire (and Nevada and South Carolina) may have a better chance than other states to have candidates pander to their parochial interests. But the importance of the national invisible primary puts some serious constraints on that. A candidate who ignored groups just because they aren’t present in Iowa would soon find national support drying up, and no amount of local campaigning can make up for that.

All of this is separate from the question of Iowa’s caucus system — and the ability to administer it competently. That may well be a good reason to strip that state of its position at the head of the line, although as Josh Putnam points out such changes are easier said than done, given the severely limited authority of the national parties. The idea I like, which I’ve seen floated by political scientist Dan Hopkins, would be to let a city or county — not a whole state — get added to the current early mix. There’s no particular reason that it couldn’t happen in theory, although see again what Putnam says for why it would be hard to make it actually happen.

(Disclaimer: Michael Bloomberg is also seeking the Democratic presidential nomination. He is the founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News.)

1. Dan Drezner on Trump’s 5G policy.

2. Dante J. Scala on Sanders and the rest in New Hampshire.

3. Rachel Bitecofer on Buttigieg’s prospects. The problem with handicapping the Democratic contest right now is there is good reason to believe that each of the candidates other than Biden has real vulnerabilities with black voters — but it’s not at all clear yet how any of that will play out. That said, there seem to be more hints so far of black voter resistance to Buttigieg than to any of the others. It’s still early, however.

4. Catherine Rampell on Fed candidate Judy Shelton.

5. Megan Messerly on the possibility of another botched count in Nevada.

6. Margot Sanger-Katz on Trump’s budget for health care.

7. And Jacey Fortin on ranked-choice voting.

Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe. Also subscribe to Bloomberg All Access and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net

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A Game-Theory Solution for a Fractured America



A Game-Theory Solution for a Fractured America

by Noah Smith, bloomberg.com

September 8, 2017 06:00 AM

It’s time for some game theory.

The U.S. is divided as never before. Partisan polarization has been on the rise for many years now. Anyone who uses American social media knows that the culture has degenerated into a never-ending shouting match over politics, race, ideology and other fault lines. People don’t want to work or shop next to Americans from the opposite tribe. They don’t even want their kids to marry someone from across the political divide.

This excessive animosity is hurting the country. It’s paralyzing policy, for one thing. The use of filibusters and other veto points in the political system is making it very hard to reform U.S. health care, the tax system and other creaking institutions. In addition, it’s probably reducing social trust -- both in government in each other. Lower levels of trust are bad for economic growth. And to top it all off, partisanship is probably making Americans less happy.

But I believe that a concept from game theory can help reduce partisan rancor. Once Americans of all stripes realize that the other side is never going away, they’ll realize that it makes more sense to find a way of living in harmony.

Game theory -- one of the main branches of economic theory -- is often used to make very precise, quantitative predictions, but it’s also sometimes useful as a metaphor for human interaction. And the deepest metaphor in game theory is the prisoner’s dilemma. In this hypothetical situation, each of two prisoners in separate cells has to decide whether to cooperate with the other, or betray them to the cops. The best outcome overall would be if the prisoners cooperated. But because of the way the game is set up, each prisoner has an incentive to sell out the other.

If the prisoner’s dilemma gets played only one time, the dread logic of self-interest prevents the good outcome from ever happening. Each prisoner chooses to betray the other, and so both end up losing out. Even if the game is repeated a finite number of times, the outcome is the same -- betrayal and disaster, again and again. The prisoner’s dilemma would seem to be a good reason to be pessimistic about human interaction.

Except that if the game is repeated an indefinite number of times, something amazing happens. People start to cooperate. Because they don’t know exactly when the game will end, the players can’t plan to screw each other over at the end. And knowing this, as long as they care about the future, they choose to cooperate again and again -- leaving both parties much better off in perpetuity.

The repeated prisoner’s dilemma is a powerful metaphor for real human interaction. If people know that they’re going to have to live with each other into the indefinite future, the incentive to fight is reduced, and the incentive to cooperate increases. So to reduce American partisanship and social fracture, it helps to realize a fundamental truth: Neither side is going anywhere.

First, take race -- the country’s oldest and bitterest divide. On one hand, the country is not going to return to being 85 percent non-Hispanic white. Only three out of five Americans are non-Hispanic whites, and soon it’ll be closer to one in two:

U.S. Population by Race

Source: Census Bureau, July 2016 estimates

The U.S. population is 323 million. That means that there are already more than 120 million nonwhite Americans, and the number will soon be more than 150 million. This is not a small minority that can be ignored, suppressed or waved away.

But white America is also here to stay. Rumors of the demographic eclipse of white people have been greatly exaggerated. For one thing, non-white fertility rates, especially Hispanic fertility rates, have plunged over the last decade, and are now pretty close to white rates:

U.S. Fertility Rates by Race

Average number of children per woman in child-bearing years

Source: National Vital Statistics Report

Also, Hispanic immigration has slowed dramatically. Immigration from Mexico, including illegal immigration, has been in reverse for around 10 years now.

Finally, more Hispanics are identifying as white. Between the 2000 and 2010 Census, approximately 1.2 million Hispanic Americans -- almost 4 percent of the total -- changed their race from “some other race” to “white.”

So among reduced Hispanic immigration, reduced nonwhite birth rates and slowly changing racial identification, white America will not vanish. Instead, the nation will remain about evenly split between whites and nonwhites, with a slowly increasing number of people who identify as two or more races.

The political divide isn't going away anytime soon, either. This should be apparent just from looking at history -- there has always been a left and a right. Even Spain, where a bloody left-right civil war killed hundreds of thousands in the 1930s, still has conservative and socialist parties.

The future of liberalism and conservatism can also be seen by looking at a map. Unlike in the period before the Civil War, when the divide was mostly regional, today’s political division is between big cities and small towns. Smaller cities and the rural countryside lean strongly Republican, while urban areas are deep blue, with the suburbs split roughly down the middle. This pattern holds true even in strongly Republican and Democratic states.

Big cities, small cities and rural areas aren't going away anytime soon. Big cities are essential to U.S. prosperity -- the counties won by Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election are responsible for almost two-thirds of the economy. Rural areas and smaller cities are essential, too, because they command natural resources, are attractive places to raise children, and have fewer restrictions on housing development.

In other words, there can be no secession of Red America from Blue America, or vice versa -- the two are inextricably connected and dependent on one another. 

So all political groups and races in the U.S. need to understand that nobody is going anywhere. This truth runs exactly counter to the apocalyptic thinking currently in vogue in the U.S., where every election is treated as the must-win final battle that will secure the future of the country. Poisonous short-term rhetoric creates the illusion that U.S. politics is a one-shot prisoner’s dilemma, where the only rational option is to fight to the bitter end. But it’s an illusion. There will be another election after 2020. And another, and another. There is no end in sight.

The U.S. is an indefinitely repeated prisoner’s dilemma. Everyone is locked in a room with everyone else, forever. There is no escape, so the only rational strategy is to learn how to get along.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:

Noah Smith at nsmith150@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:

Mark Whitehouse at mwhitehouse1@bloomberg.net

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the two words Trump didn't say at the state of the union

February 9, 2020

By Will Bunch 

 

Imagine that it’s January 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt is delivering his annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. The planet is literally on fire from the Big One, World War II. Nazi Germany has overrun France, and Adolf Hitler’s regime has been raining bombs on London for months. Japan has overrun much of Asia.

But FDR begins his speech with a long riff on how great the American economy has done under his presidency— including some gratuitous swipes at his predecessor Herbert Hoover, even though it’s been eight years since Hoover left the Oval Office. There’s a brief, bloodless mention that “our relationship with our European allies has never been stronger," and then he moves on — urging a standing ovation for the oldest living veteran of the Civil War. And when the speech is done, the radio pundits gloss over Roosevelt’s snub of the global conflagration.

 

That’s too crazy to contemplate, so then how insane was it that President Trump rambled on for one hour and 18 minutes (and four seconds) last Tuesday in his reality-show-influenced 2020 State of the Union address and ignored the cataclysmic fires that have engulfed Australia and echoed the flames that are ravaging California year after year, let alone the increasing scientific evidence that we’ve entered a time of rapid sea rise, drought and killer storms?

 

How could the leader of a global superpower give a serious talk on the current state of his nation in 2020 and never once utter the words “climate change”?

And how did so few people even notice? Delivered just hours before his impeachment trial ended in acquittal, Trump’s third State of the Union summoned up a whirlwind of distracting pop-culture headlines — awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to cancer-stricken hatemonger Rush Limbaugh to own the libs! — and a now-predictable blizzard of lies, including a false narrative about a black Philadelphia schoolgirl that was exposed by my Inquirer colleagues.

Amid that 130-decibel assault of political noise, the planet’s actual crisis of climate change became the equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’ most famous clue, the dog that didn’t bark. Centuries from now, when Rush Limbaugh’s hate words have drifted off to space and his name is long forgotten, scholars -- if there still are scholars -- will find that Trump’s stunning denial of science and a raging crisis was this speech’s only historical significance.

The president occasionally tries to deny being a “climate denier,” but Tuesday’s silence was deafening. Especially when Trump did take time to brag that America under his so-called leadership is pouring fossil fuels on the world’s fires. “Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world, by far,” he declared to thunderous applause.

That truth — hardly comforting in a time when oil and natural gas are the major sources of greenhouse-gas pollution — was typically followed by Trumpian distortions. If the U.S. is “energy independent,” then why do we continue to import about 10 million barrels of oil every day, much of it from murderous dictatorships? If our interest in fuel production is job creation, why does Team Trump ignore the employment power of clean energy?

But those deceptions pale in comparison to the biggest problem — that the American president is bragging about its oil-and-gas growth when scientists are predicting planetary catastrophe without major cutbacks by 2030 in fossil fuels, and near elimination in the generation after that.

Trump’s ode to climate denial came just before the news that Antarctica — with its massive glaciers that could swamp the low-lying areas where 40 percent of Americans (and billions elsewhere) live — posted its warmest day in history, 65 degrees. This followed a report that one of Antarctica’s largest glaciers, the size of the state of Florida, is melting much faster than earlier predicted, with a potential to sharply increase projections of sea level rise.

But you don’t have to travel to the South Pole to see climate change. I can just look in my back yard here in suburban Philadelphia, where snowdrops and other spring plants are blooming after January was nearly six degrees warmer than normal. Ditto for Europe, which just experienced its hottest January on record.

And yet, of course, President Trump dared not mention any of this, because viewers might question why his administration keeps making it easier to burn coal or drill for oil — both as a sop to his full embrace of oil-and-gas lobbyists and their money, and because undoing all things Obama is catnip to his base. (Although worth noting is that Obama also hailed rising oil-and-gas production, and history will also not remember that kindly, either.)

Team Trump is betting that 2020 voters will only care about low gas prices at the pump. But that’s only true if you talk only to the typical Fox News viewer, a white person over 50. Ask most Americans currently under 35 — a voting bloc that gets bigger by the day — and they’ll say climate change is their No. 1 issue. (And among all Democrats, it ranks No. 2 behind only health care.) Trust me, these voters heard the dog that didn’t bark on Tuesday.

This weekend, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, reporting from the final frantic days of the New Hampshire primary, found a thirsting among voters — especially, but not exclusively, younger ones — to hear even more from the Democrats about what they will do to roll back four years of devastating climate denial from Trump.

 

Marcotte noted that at an Elizabeth Warren event, her biggest applause moment came from a seemingly arcane question about the Granite State’s endangered moose population, because it teed up a stirring defense of the Green New Deal. She also hung out with a group of mostly under-25 protesters outside Friday’s ABC News debate who are mad there’s been such little discussion of climate. Said 19-year-old Kyle Burzycki: “It’s embarrassing how little they’re talking about it, seeing as it’s the most important issue facing our country.”

 The so-called grown-ups don’t seem to be receiving the message. The one ABC debate question on climate came late, and it came with the how-are-you-going-to-pay-for-it baby boomer skepticism that continues to alienate under-35 voters. The Democratic National Committee — which nixed a plan for a climate-only debate and reversed itself on taking fossil-fuel donations — hasn’t helped, either. The party seems to have learned little from 2016, when young-voter defections to the Green Party’s Jill Stein helped elect Trump.

Many Democratic voters are demoralized right now by Trump’s acquittal, the triumphalism of his base, and the inept chaos of their own party’s Iowa caucus. And while there are significant differences between the Democrats — only Warren and Sanders have fully embraced the urgency of the scientific warnings — everyone still in the race would represent an 180-degree reversal from the cynical denialism of Trump. If the party wants to win in November, it’s time to wave that banner higher, shout a little louder, and make sure that Tuesday night was America’s last State of the Union address to pretend that climate  change is not real.

Posted: February 9, 2020 - 1:37 PM

Will Bunch | @will_bunch | wbunch@inquirer.com

The most horrifying thing about Trump’s State of the Union? The 2 words he never said | Will Bunch

February 9, 2020

By Will Bunch 

 

Imagine that it’s January 1941, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt is delivering his annual State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress. The planet is literally on fire from the Big One, World War II. Nazi Germany has overrun France, and Adolf Hitler’s regime has been raining bombs on London for months. Japan has overrun much of Asia.

But FDR begins his speech with a long riff on how great the American economy has done under his presidency— including some gratuitous swipes at his predecessor Herbert Hoover, even though it’s been eight years since Hoover left the Oval Office. There’s a brief, bloodless mention that “our relationship with our European allies has never been stronger," and then he moves on — urging a standing ovation for the oldest living veteran of the Civil War. And when the speech is done, the radio pundits gloss over Roosevelt’s snub of the global conflagration.

 

That’s too crazy to contemplate, so then how insane was it that President Trump rambled on for one hour and 18 minutes (and four seconds) last Tuesday in his reality-show-influenced 2020 State of the Union address and ignored the cataclysmic fires that have engulfed Australia and echoed the flames that are ravaging California year after year, let alone the increasing scientific evidence that we’ve entered a time of rapid sea rise, drought and killer storms?

 

How could the leader of a global superpower give a serious talk on the current state of his nation in 2020 and never once utter the words “climate change”?

And how did so few people even notice? Delivered just hours before his impeachment trial ended in acquittal, Trump’s third State of the Union summoned up a whirlwind of distracting pop-culture headlines — awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to cancer-stricken hatemonger Rush Limbaugh to own the libs! — and a now-predictable blizzard of lies, including a false narrative about a black Philadelphia schoolgirl that was exposed by my Inquirer colleagues.

Amid that 130-decibel assault of political noise, the planet’s actual crisis of climate change became the equivalent of Sherlock Holmes’ most famous clue, the dog that didn’t bark. Centuries from now, when Rush Limbaugh’s hate words have drifted off to space and his name is long forgotten, scholars -- if there still are scholars -- will find that Trump’s stunning denial of science and a raging crisis was this speech’s only historical significance.

The president occasionally tries to deny being a “climate denier,” but Tuesday’s silence was deafening. Especially when Trump did take time to brag that America under his so-called leadership is pouring fossil fuels on the world’s fires. “Thanks to our bold regulatory reduction campaign, the United States has become the No. 1 producer of oil and natural gas anywhere in the world, by far,” he declared to thunderous applause.

That truth — hardly comforting in a time when oil and natural gas are the major sources of greenhouse-gas pollution — was typically followed by Trumpian distortions. If the U.S. is “energy independent,” then why do we continue to import about 10 million barrels of oil every day, much of it from murderous dictatorships? If our interest in fuel production is job creation, why does Team Trump ignore the employment power of clean energy?

But those deceptions pale in comparison to the biggest problem — that the American president is bragging about its oil-and-gas growth when scientists are predicting planetary catastrophe without major cutbacks by 2030 in fossil fuels, and near elimination in the generation after that.

Trump’s ode to climate denial came just before the news that Antarctica — with its massive glaciers that could swamp the low-lying areas where 40 percent of Americans (and billions elsewhere) live — posted its warmest day in history, 65 degrees. This followed a report that one of Antarctica’s largest glaciers, the size of the state of Florida, is melting much faster than earlier predicted, with a potential to sharply increase projections of sea level rise.

But you don’t have to travel to the South Pole to see climate change. I can just look in my back yard here in suburban Philadelphia, where snowdrops and other spring plants are blooming after January was nearly six degrees warmer than normal. Ditto for Europe, which just experienced its hottest January on record.

And yet, of course, President Trump dared not mention any of this, because viewers might question why his administration keeps making it easier to burn coal or drill for oil — both as a sop to his full embrace of oil-and-gas lobbyists and their money, and because undoing all things Obama is catnip to his base. (Although worth noting is that Obama also hailed rising oil-and-gas production, and history will also not remember that kindly, either.)

Team Trump is betting that 2020 voters will only care about low gas prices at the pump. But that’s only true if you talk only to the typical Fox News viewer, a white person over 50. Ask most Americans currently under 35 — a voting bloc that gets bigger by the day — and they’ll say climate change is their No. 1 issue. (And among all Democrats, it ranks No. 2 behind only health care.) Trust me, these voters heard the dog that didn’t bark on Tuesday.

This weekend, Salon’s Amanda Marcotte, reporting from the final frantic days of the New Hampshire primary, found a thirsting among voters — especially, but not exclusively, younger ones — to hear even more from the Democrats about what they will do to roll back four years of devastating climate denial from Trump.

 

Marcotte noted that at an Elizabeth Warren event, her biggest applause moment came from a seemingly arcane question about the Granite State’s endangered moose population, because it teed up a stirring defense of the Green New Deal. She also hung out with a group of mostly under-25 protesters outside Friday’s ABC News debate who are mad there’s been such little discussion of climate. Said 19-year-old Kyle Burzycki: “It’s embarrassing how little they’re talking about it, seeing as it’s the most important issue facing our country.”

 The so-called grown-ups don’t seem to be receiving the message. The one ABC debate question on climate came late, and it came with the how-are-you-going-to-pay-for-it baby boomer skepticism that continues to alienate under-35 voters. The Democratic National Committee — which nixed a plan for a climate-only debate and reversed itself on taking fossil-fuel donations — hasn’t helped, either. The party seems to have learned little from 2016, when young-voter defections to the Green Party’s Jill Stein helped elect Trump.

Many Democratic voters are demoralized right now by Trump’s acquittal, the triumphalism of his base, and the inept chaos of their own party’s Iowa caucus. And while there are significant differences between the Democrats — only Warren and Sanders have fully embraced the urgency of the scientific warnings — everyone still in the race would represent an 180-degree reversal from the cynical denialism of Trump. If the party wants to win in November, it’s time to wave that banner higher, shout a little louder, and make sure that Tuesday night was America’s last State of the Union address to pretend that climate change is not real.

Posted: February 9, 2020 - 1:37 PM

Will Bunch | @will_bunch | wbunch@inquirer.com

Trump, Pelosi, and the Decline of Institutional Roles / Mischiefs of Faction

Trump, Pelosi, and the Decline of Institutional Roles

February 5, 2020

By Matthew Green

Original post on Mischiefs of Faction here.

President Trump’s State of the Union address yesterday was highly partisan and triumphant, filled with more than the usual amount of stagecraft and “reality show” moments. But it was bookmarked by two unprecedented events that overshadowed the speech itself: Trump refusing to shake Speaker Pelosi’s hand, and Pelosi ripping the president's speech in half.

Perhaps both events were calculated, as some have speculated; perhaps they reflected the emotions of the moment. But I would argue that they also signified a recent and distressing trend in American politics: the erosion of respect our political leaders have for each other and for the constitutional roles they play.

Many people have spoken out about the numerous ways that Trump has broken norms of presidential behavior and acts “unpresidential.” Trump has particular contempt for other officers of American government, including the speakership. His failure to return Pelosi’s handshake follows months of insults against the Speaker on Twitter and a remarkably personal and bitter December letter to Pelosi accusing her of “violating your oaths [sic] of office.” Lest one is tempted to chalk this up to mere partisanship, or Trump’s lingering bitterness about impeachment, recall that Trump was willing to attack Speaker Paul Ryan when he perceived him as disloyal, such as on the issue of birthright citizenship.

These actions violate two norms that, according to Julia Azari, help constrain presidential overreach: respect for the independence of other political institutions, and recognition that partisan opposition is valid. It means nothing to Trump that the Speaker, regardless of her party, is a fellow constitutional officer, second in line to the presidency, and duly elected by the House of Representatives. (Not to mention, the Speaker invites the president to give the State of the Union speech in the first place. Talk about treating your host rudely.)

In the past, Pelosi has, at least rhetorically, voiced respect for the Trump’s constitutional office. She has repeatedly touted her reverence for the presidency, if not the president -- a subtle but important distinction. Nonetheless, her dramatic physical rejection of the president’s speech calls that reverence into question. (She also opted to introduce him without expressing her “high privilege and distinct honor,” as is customary.)

I also think that Pelosi’s move underscores a slow but steady change in how modern Speakers have viewed the Chief Executive. Since at least the mid-20th century, Speakers recognized that one of their central roles was to defend the institutional presidency regardless of party, especially in defense and foreign policy matters. In my 2010 book on the House speakership, I documented how Speakers of the House, starting with Sam Rayburn, sometimes exercised legislative leadership on behalf of the president, even if they were of the opposite party and their own partisans disapproved.

That institutional role of the speakership began declining after the Vietnam War, which sharply divided the country. In the 1980s, Speaker Tip O’Neill battled relentlessly against President Reagan’s effort to support the Nicaraguan Contras in their fight against the Sandinista government. The subsequent end of the Cold War removed an existential enemy that gave both parties reason to support the White House on issues of national security and foreign affairs.

Pelosi’s gesture went well beyond a foreign policy disagreement with the White House, of course. Even if it was in retaliation for Trump’s rudeness, or as a response to how he tried turning the State of the Union address into a campaign rally, it marked a sharp break from the norm of institutional deference that even highly partisan Speakers showed opposite-party presidents in public settings.

These developments (while hardly as bad as, say, the violence seen in the antebellum Congress) are nonetheless troubling. Simply put, our political system cannot function if its leaders do not appreciate the constitutional authority of their rivals. As Yuval Levin notes in his most recent book, the roles and duties of institutional actors – not just in political institutions, but other institutions too -- are vital to maintain a democratic civic society.

I don’t expect Trump and Pelosi to change, nor their sharp partisan differences to vanish overnight. But perhaps, after last night’s spectacle, we should consider cancelling the televised State of the Union address and go back to a written one. If bad behavior becomes the new norm, it is unlikely to give people much faith in their national government or those elected to lead it.

For Americans, flu remains a bigger threat than coronavirus

For Americans, flu remains a bigger threat than coronavirus

By Soumya Karlamangla

latimes.com

3 min

View Original

By Staff Writer

12:05 PM

While a new virus that originated in China has prompted Americans to wear masks on the subway and cancel international trips for fear of falling ill, a much deadlier killer already stalking the United States has been largely overshadowed: the flu.
Like the new coronavirus, influenza can spread from person to person through the air and cause a fever and cough. But unlike the coronavirus, which so far hasn’t led to any deaths in the U.S., influenza has killed approximately 10,000 Americans since October, according to federal data released Friday.
“Here in the U.S., this is what is killing us,” said UC Riverside epidemiologist Brandon Brown. “Why should we be afraid of something that has not killed people here in this country?”
To be sure, the coronavirus, known as 2019-nCoV, has alarmed public health officials as they try to avert a worldwide health crisis.

China has quarantined more than 50 million people to contain the outbreak. This week, the World Health Organization deemed the coronavirus a “global health emergency,” and U.S. officials advised Americans not to travel to China, prompting airlines to cancel flights.
And on Friday, health officials ordered a two-week quarantine for 195 Americans who were flown from Wuhan, China, to March Air Reserve Base in Riverside.
But so far, just six people in the United States have been diagnosed with the coronavirus, all cases that were associated with travel to China.
By contrast, in California alone, 211 people have died of influenza, including seven children, since the season began in October, according to state data released Friday. That figure, gathered from death certificates, is widely considered to underestimate since the flu can prompt fatal conditions like heart failure or pneumonia, which are then instead listed as the final cause of death.

But the flu doesn’t captivate the public’s attention in the way a new, emerging virus does. Unknowns generate news, anxiety and sometimes panic.
Waiting in a downtown Los Angeles subway station Thursday, Josh Aguilera wore a white mask strapped over his nose and mouth. He had begun using the mask a few days earlier during his subway journeys between work and home to protect himself from the coronavirus, he said.
“I ride the subway every day so I feel like I’m at risk,” said Aguilera, 31.
But a bigger worry for people taking public transportation or in other crowded spaces is the flu, experts say. Nationwide, 19 million people in the United States have had the flu this season, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“This is something I guess we’re used to so we don’t really pay attention to it much,” Brown said. “I think we need to shift our attention back to the flu.”
The CDC is not recommending that people wear face masks to protect against the coronavirus, or any other respiratory illness.
Federal officials continue to recommend, however, that people get immunized against the flu. The flu shot can make people half as likely to get sick as someone who didn’t get the vaccine and the flu season runs through May, according to the CDC.
“Get your flu shot — take measures to prevent getting sick with the many things in this country we have to get sick from,” said Tufts Medical Center infectious disease specialist Dr. Shira Doron. “The likelihood of an American being killed by the flu compared to being killed by the coronavirus is probably approaching infinity.”

So far, 213 people have died worldwide from the coronavirus. Public health officials are still learning who is most likely to die from the coronavirus.
Experts know that the flu tends to be most dangerous for the elderly. However, the strains of flu circulating this year have been hitting young people especially hard. In California, 37 people under the age of 50 have died from influenza this season, according to state data.
“We have to get people vaccinated,” said New York University bioethicist Arthur Caplan.
One upside of the anxiety over coronavirus, experts say, is that it may inadvertently prevent flu cases, since the diseases are transmitted in similar ways.
To protect against the flu — or coronavirus, if that’s your concern — people should wash their hands frequently, sneeze or cough into the crook of their elbow and avoid contact with ill people, said Dartmouth College professor Dr. Elizabeth Talbot.
“There are a lot of things we can do in a very routine way to stay healthier,” Talbot said.

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Bernie Sanders is the logical successor to the Trump presidency

By Julia Azari

January 30, 2020

5 minute read

As the Iowa caucuses approach, there’s been lots of talk on the internet about whether Bernie Sanders can win. He’s gained support in the polls, has a lot of campaign money, and earlier in the season earned some coveted endorsements on the left. He’s also decidedly still a candidate who makes the political and media establishment uncomfortable. But if we learned anything from 2016, it’s that the possibilities for who can win a nomination contest and a general election are many. So it’s worth thinking about what kind of president Sanders would be.

This requires us to confront the presidency as it is, in the wake of Trump and all of the developments leading up to that. This isn’t some bipartisan whiskey fantasy bullshit, or an Aaron Sorkin vision of patriotic speechifying. The question of what kind of president Sanders would be goes beyond his temperament and ideology, two topics that I conservatively estimate account for about half the internet at this point. I would also urge readers not to interpret this as a polemic against or in favor of Sanders (Mischiefs of Faction will not be endorsing any number of candidates.) Rather, I want to offer some ideas about how the practice of government in an expansive and ambiguous office is influenced by a fluid and uncertain selection process and a bitterly partisan political landscape.

Let’s start by thinking about Trump’s nomination and presidency. In 2015, Brendan Nyhan observed that Trump’s success in early primary polls could be partly attributed to his ability to draw on appealing, but inaccurate, public visions of the power of the presidency. Nyhan wrote, “Mr. Trump is the purest Green Lantern candidate we’ve seen in recent years. He cleverly exploits the appeal of presidential omnipotence by contrasting his supposedly decisive style of business leadership as a real estate magnate with the compromises, inertia and policy failures that are inevitable in politics.”

While this was certainly an accurate diagnosis of the broader contrast between politics and the private sector, Trump’s presidency has exposed both the potential and the limits of such a presidency. The presidency does, in fact, have a great deal of unilateral policy-making power. Presidential communication also turns out to be important, albeit not necessarily for persuading Congress to pass bills. In their new book, Unmaking the Presidency, Susan Hennessey and Benjamin Wittes describe Trump’s approach as the “expressive presidency.” They define this primarily as personal self-expression at the expense of civil virtue, but if we combine the idea of an expressive presidency with the existing concepts of a permanent campaign and a partisan presidency, we come up with a powerful description of the office that is not entirely limited to Trump. It’s not impossible to imagine a variety of situations in which a president – one who has been especially successful at building a devoted following based on rhetoric and ideas – could continue these kinds of communications in office. Such a president could establish, over and over again, a specific vision of the country and who should lead it, and the ability of a new president to serve as the voice for the underrepresented. This type of communication is better suited to some appeals than others, but it is remarkably adaptable to different ideologies.

It would be a mistake to see this turn in the presidency as merely rhetorical, however. Unilateral action has accompanied some of the top rhetorical priorities. For Trump, these priorities include both conventional Republican items like rolling back regulations, and those specific to Trumpism like immigration restrictions. Legislative accomplishments, even with Republican majorities in Congress, have been more elusive.

It’s not that difficult to envision a Sanders presidency unfolding in a similar fashion. Obviously, the priorities and the messages would be very different. And this isn’t necessarily to criticize Sanders’ weaknesses but rather to assess the way his strengths fit into the office as it exists now. Sanders clearly gives a hell of a rally speech, inspires his followers, and offers a way of thinking and talking about politics that’s clear and consistent. Those things just don’t seem likely, based on the available evidence, to fully unite party factions or build up a durable national policy majority. To be clear, I think the evidence suggests that if nominated, Sanders could pull together the necessary coalition to win; the strength of partisanship means that nearly any competent politician could. But the tactics at which he most excels - and the ones encouraged by our nomination system - are not conducive to the style of legislative governing that dominated the twentieth century. Instead, the presidency offers some tools to make policy change, without needing to cobble together enough support to get Congress to pass a bill.

One major question is whether elite Democrats would warm to Sanders as a candidate and a president the way that Republicans have embraced Trump. If you buy the asymmetry thesis and think the Democrats are a party of groups, it might be a tougher sell, with distinct factions remaining unconvinced that Sanders represents their interests. If the argument that the Democratic Party organizes itself around egalitarian ideology is correct, or if negative partisanship inspired by Trump overrides everything else, then it’s possible that a factional candidate Sanders could create the shallow party unity that Trump has enjoyed. And such unity has been able to do a lot – as we are seeing now with impeachment – but it’s important to keep in mind that what it couldn’t do was produce Congressional majorities to pass sweeping legislative change. It’s an expressively united party under an expressive presidency.

It’s almost certain that the current nomination system allows factional candidates to succeed. What's more, current party conditions also have the potential to turn any and all of the candidates into factional candidates. A long season with lots of debates has exposed the weaknesses and flaws of the candidates. Biden has the most endorsements, but still claims a shaky front-runner status and has failed, in the words of FiveThirtyEight’s Perry Bacon, to really inspire political elites in Iowa and New Hampshire. Biden’s detractors worry about his age, his record on many issues, and his representation of a return to “normal” that wasn’t that great for everyone. Elizabeth Warren might be able to bridge the gap between the establishment and the emerging left, but, like Pete Buttigieg, she struggles to win support among voters of color and voters without a college degree. Any of the remaining contenders could fit into this model of the presidency, offering appealing messages to their core supporters and conducting most policy out of the executive branch. Most of the discussion of what’s wrong with the nomination system has focused on producing electable candidates or qualified presidents. But it’s possible to have a president who is perfectly qualified and yet unequipped, politically speaking, to build coalitions and govern across branches. The result could be a presidency that is primarily rhetorical and unilateral, alternating with each election between distinct governing visions, producing the exact kind of instability in government that the presidency was designed to avoid.