OscarGuy wrote:
I have a nurse friend who is harping on the "just wash your hands" defense, which seems particularly ill-informed since it's spread by exposure to droplets from sneezes and such, not from touching hands.
It's not ill-informed. These droplets get on the hands and can be spread through contact. It's not an airborne virus.
That's why they tell you to never touch your face, which I probably did three times as I wrote this.
Have a sister-in-law who is a retired psychiatric nurse and nursing teacher who has been advocating for vigorous hand-washing for as long as I've known her.
The problem is that the coronavirus is that it spreads like the common cold. It's not just sneezing and coughing into the air that puts people at risk, nor is it just the touching of hands. Germs can be found on door knobs, railings, elevator buttons and a myriad of things that we touch and then rub our eyes, scratch an itch or whatever. However, we can't reasonably run to the nearest bathroom every time we touch something.
Chances are more of us have or will have this thing than we realize. Fortunately, most of us won't get sick and those that do, won't get violently sick, but people with underlying medical problems are at risk.
Living in a town in the middle of the country with fewer than 170,000 people (our metro area is something in the million range, though), the Coronvirus hasn't instilled panic yet. I think that's mostly because we're insulated and there's a lot of Trump supporters here, so I suspect that's also part of the problem.
I have a nurse friend who is harping on the "just wash your hands" defense, which seems particularly ill-informed since it's spread by exposure to droplets from sneezes and such, not from touching hands. Either way, because we're so far away from everything, I don't think it will strike people in this area as important until there are more than a couple of cases in this area.
We have a lot of Asian students at our local state university, there are a lot of Asian-American families in this area who migrated here generations ago who might still have connections to their relatives overseas, and we have a lot of major corporations doing business here that result in a lot of professional traveling (we have a GM plant, Assemblies of God national headquarters, ANPAC Insurance company, Bass Pro Shops/Cabela's national headquarters, O'Reilly Automotive, Jack Henry & Associates, and others). Then there's the tourist traps like the National Fishing & Hunting Museum, Branson (with all its summer travelers), and more. I think we forget how global our little city can be and that might make things just a bit worse in this area.
Wesley Lovell
"Any society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
No panic from anyone I know on the east coast, although people are stocking up on supplies in case they have to shelter at home for some period of time.
Unfortunately, I know a few people who believe Trump's bullshit that the virus will magically go away when the season changes and are making fun of those who are concerned.
mlrg wrote
Has Coronavirus been an issue during the primaries? Have any rallies been canceled? Are people talking about it? In Europe is getting out of control.
I live in Los Angeles. So, in my experience, everyone is pretty terrified. But everyone else in my social media feeds are pretty terrified as well.
Based on no data whatsoever: I think very quietly the Coronavirus has shifted the priorities of Democratic voters away from lofty goals like single-payer healthcare towards competency. Regardless of what happens with the virus itself, Trump's handling of the Coronavirus has been pretty lazy. Since day one, Trump's approach to government has been lunatic cronyism as well as leaving swaths seats unfilled in the government. Putting Mike Pence in charge of the response inspired confidence in nobody. And just today he blamed Obama for it, despite the fact that it was the Trump administration that wiped out the National Security Council’s global health security unit created to counter pandemics, as well as its counterpart within the Department of Homeland Security.
Also without any data to back this up, my hunch is that Joe Biden inspires more confidence in Democratic voters to handle the virus as opposed to Sanders and Warren because of Obama's swift response to ebola.
It's worth remembering that in 2014, Donald Trump tweeted "President Obama has a personal responsibility to visit & embrace all people in the US who contract Ebola!"
Mister Tee wrote
I don't want to poke Sabin too hard for his excessively vernal hopes of Sanders winning ever single primary -- there were numbers out there showing such a possibility. But, again, they were founded on the belief that the non-Sanders candidates would remain many and evenly divided. Sanders was strictly a niche candidate -- unable to get to 40%, let alone 50, and relying on the opposition remaining splintered.
I'll take my lumps.
Yesterday, felt good. I don't say that as someone who voted for Joe Biden or was considering it. But the party felt unified and that's fun to see even if you don't like half the people who are running. To be honest: yesterday felt like the first day of the end of the Trump Presidency. I know! Don't jinx it. The idea that Joe Biden can give voters a time machine back to the Obama Presidency is foolish. But... yesterday gave a glimpse of what it looked like: an unified Democratic establishment, moderate suburban Democrats and African-Americans consolidating their lanes of voting, youth voter turnout lower than all expectations (anti-choice Henry Cuellar beat AOC-backed Jessica Cisneros in Texas)... it felt like the Democratic Party shifted away from being the party of big ideas to being the party of common sense. Which is to say the Obama-Biden voting coalition feels revitalized. And it's probably a viable one. If it wasn't before Trump, it will be now.
To put it bluntly: I was wrong. I had thought Bernie Sanders was the front-runner to win the nomination based on two factors: 1) his organization, grassroots, and block of voters put him at an advantage that no other candidate could match, 2) far too many other people would run and cut into each others' votes. And you know what? I would still make that bet today because the less than two week reversal from Nevada to Super Tuesday of the establishment coalescing around Joe Biden demonstrated more organization than I thought this mess of a primary was capable of. Others have written about it. I don't need to repeat. It transpired around two other events that created a perfect shit-storm for Bernie Sanders: 1) Warren's attack on Bloomberg brought her back and she coalesced enough of her voters around the idea of her viability, sucking up a good portion of votes that might have gone to Bernie Sanders (more on that in a moment), and 2) Sanders' two weeks as media-acknowledged front-runner was a worse moment in the sun than I thought possible (same).
1) I'm not very interested in the "spoiler" narrative because Bloomberg stole a ton of votes from Joe Biden as well, and also because I don't believe voters choose who to vote for in a vacuum. These things exist as one in a chain of events. If Joe Biden barely eked out a victory over Bernie Sanders, maybe Warren would've done a lot better. They're also largely personality contests, and something tells me if you look at the race before Super Tuesday and you vote for Elizabeth Warren, you may like Elizabeth Warren but you're also looking for reasons not to vote for Bernie Sanders. And that's a Bernie Sanders problem. He's become toxic to too many people.
QUICK PIVOT: Chris Matthews is gone, which is probably okay. His last two months on the air were remarkable. He did us a favor to serving as a window into the mind of a certain type of voter or insider. I'm not sure if it's better to categorize Matthews as one or the other. He said fantastically unprofessional things about Bernie Sanders and said more than a few quiet parts loud, like wondering out loud if elected Democrat would rather have four more years of Trump than a Sanders presidency. Again, he's gone now. But when I ask myself what happened behind the scenes, it probably *FELT* like listening to Chris Matthews.
As for 2) Sanders wasn't helped by the worst debate I've ever seen but he certainly did himself no favors. He foolishly assumed that he could run as a challenger the whole way. Let's imagine he softened his rhetoric, included a little humor, listened to concerns... 46% of Super Tuesday voters were undecided until a few days before Super Tuesday. Can you blame them? And can you blame them for saying "I don't know about this guy?" when I myself don't? There may be a clear anti-media bias against him (last night, Jake Tapper referred to a stupid comment by Marianne Williamson on Twitter as coming "from a Sanders surrogate."), but Campaigns reveal who people are. In his moment in the sun, Sanders showed the world who he was and they were right to be unnerved. Mister Tee's comparisons to Obama's handling of Jeremiah Wright are so on-point. Obama took a crisis and turned it into a win. If Obama waited until being asked about it by Jake Tapper at a town hall and turned it into a mess of a sixty second answer, I think Hillary Clinton would be four years into retirement after eight years as President right now.
Anyway, that's the good news.
The bad news is the fallout. Bernie's supporters. At first they were going to protest if he got a plurality but wasn't the nominee. Now they're going to protest... what, exactly? And then what? Just not vote? Can history not repeat OR rhyme this time?
EDIT: the strongest defense now against Bernie Sanders's agenda is that he couldn't even rally his own supporters. His lofty vision of a revolution and rallying millions of people (young people, non-voters) into the streets demanding change can't possible happen because he couldn't even mass-organize the youth vote.
Last edited by Sabin on Wed Mar 04, 2020 7:26 pm, edited 2 times in total.
So, I'm going to do the dick-ish thing, and remind everyone of what I posted two weeks ago, when everyone was full-on "Sanders is running away with it":
"Though you’d never know it from TV, we’ve still had only a few small, VERY UNREPRESENTATIVE groups voting — African-Americans made up apparently 10% of the Nevada vote, more than the previous contests, but nowhere near the 30-40% of upcoming primaries. Can we at least wait till the core of the party has been allowed to vote before we call the race? Things could look very different very soon."
OK, I wasn't expecting it to be THIS different THIS soon, but...
The fact was, even in winning or getting close in IA/NH/NV, Sanders was doing either way worse than '16 (the first two) or about the same (NV). His placement at or near the top was solely based on the opposition remaining very divided.
(And those were, in 2016, his BEST states -- once we got to SC, Hillary essentially crushed him in delegates. The press gave him all sorts of high-fives for eking out a 1-point win in MI, but, in delegate terms, that was meaningless, compared to Hillary wiping him out in multiple states. As David Plouffe explained last night, a blowout win in a small state yields better net delegate results than a small win in a huge state.)
I don't want to poke Sabin too hard for his excessively vernal hopes of Sanders winning ever single primary -- there were numbers out there showing such a possibility. But, again, they were founded on the belief that the non-Sanders candidates would remain many and evenly divided. Sanders was strictly a niche candidate -- unable to get to 40%, let alone 50, and relying on the opposition remaining splintered.
Biden, it must be noted, had some lucky breaks that brought him to his triumph last night. Buttigieg eked past Sanders in IA, and the muddled long-count prevented anybody getting a full poll bounce. Then Klobuchar's five-day post-debate media swoon gave her just enough support in NH to prevent Buttigieg winning outright -- Pete's close second revealed Sanders' weakness, but didn't give near the boost an IA/NH tandem would have. And that, in turn, may have cost him a bit in NV, enabling Biden to achieve clear second-place...if Buttigieg had done a few points better, and Biden a few points worse, I'm not sure Joe would have been as well set up for SC.
While this was going on, especially post-Nevada, the press was full-on "Sanders can't be stopped," which certainly concentrated the minds of those who were wary of his candidacy. And, it has to be said, Sanders did himself no favors during this period. His 60 Minutes interview was a double-disaster -- first because he still had not the slightest plan for how he was going to get his Medicare for all passed (four years on, he should have had at least a vague outline to show -- but all he had was, still, "we're going to make them do it"); and then the Castro quote, which was damaging/parody-able on its own, but, worse, when he was challenged, he did nothing but double-down on it. Allow me an analogy: I'd guess Obama thought, back in '08, that the media was caricaturing some of Rev. Wright's positions, and he could have argued that the man was right about some things -- but Obama, being a sentient politician, realized it was not a hill to die on, and cut the Reverend clean. (Politics isn't always a kind business.) As someone said, Sanders was displaying what he was said of a character on The West Wing: "He wants us all to say he's right, more than he wants to win."
He also sent out a tweet that, to many of us, indicated he viewed the "democratic establishment" (apparently all of us who aren't voting for him) as just as much his opponent as the GOP. Which did nothing to endear him to people who've put their hearts and effort into building the party for much of their lives.
Anyway, all that happened, followed by Jim Clyburn (whose picture, someone opined late last night, should now appear on the Wikipedia page for "Political endorsements, value of"). Maybe it all mattered -- or maybe it was just that Biden always had the love of the black community, and once they started being significant parts of the electorate, Biden was going to break through. In any case, SC was a huge blowout -- bigger than Obama's over Hillary in '08 -- and dominoes started falling fast (Pete, Amy, Beto). I didn't post between SC and last night, because I was afraid I was letting myself get carried away -- but it turned out I was being if anything too restrained: I would never have predicted the New England, Minnesota or Oklahoma wins (I did have the idea Texas might go Biden's way). The Super Tuesday states seemed so lined up for Sanders that people had been saying, once it was past, he'd likely have an almost unbreakable delegate lead. Instead, Biden will have won more delegates no matter what the ultimate CA numbers are. (And we may have next Tuesday's results before we have final CA ones.)
As to CA: part of the reason for the "Sanders will be uncatchable" forecast was the premise that he would finish first (still likely to happen), but that the other candidates would all fall just short of the 15% viability line, enabling him to win something like 80% of CA's huge delegate total. This now won't happen -- Biden is already at 24%, and, given the number of late-arriving ballots (based on all other states, likely to be way more Biden-leaning), that number will likely grow; Bloomberg might also stay above 15%, splintering delegates further. But think how close we came to near-disaster: Biden/Bloomberg/Buttigieg/Warren could have totalled over 50% among them, but, if none of them made it to the 15% line, Sanders with his 30-35% could have gained an insuperable delegate lead. This would be a terribly unrepresentative outcome for any candidate, but, I'd argue, for Sanders an especially awful one. His candidacy is close to a hostile takeover of the party, but, were he to win it fair and square -- by taking, at some point, majorities of the vote -- the party powers would have no choice but to deal with him. But if they felt he won on technicalities like this, it'd be very hard to get the party united behind him. (To be historical: Goldwater and McGovern both won their nominations in much that way -- sneaking through on delegates without winning over the party -- and we know how disastrous their campaigns were. Whereas Reagan -- just as much ideologically feared as Goldwater -- won convincingly, and in the end got the party support he needed.) I know CA has sometimes felt it's come too late in the primary calendar to have influence, but here, but for the rapid post-SC coalescing, it might have scheduled itself too early, given its outsized power.
Question for another day (because this is already too long): what if Sanders hadn't run, and Elizabeth Warren -- just as ideological as Sanders but a loyal party member -- had been the progressive choice? Might things have gone way differently?
Anyway, though one is of course hesitant to say it's over, given the bad luck befalling those who've said it before...it's hard to see how it gets any better for Sanders. This was, as I said, his best turf -- succeeding weeks are in states more disposed to Biden. Given how significantly the non-Sanders vote flipped to him in the same-day (as opposed to early) voting, and figuring in the absence of Bloomberg as competition, it seems clear Biden is rolling toward a first-ballot nomination. I haven't changed my overall view of Biden as Dem standard-bearer -- I still think a younger, more vibrant candidate would have done us better (hearing Beto speak the other night reminded me how motivating good political oratory can be). But I see Biden as the figurehead of a movement that will highlight a much younger generation -- the folks who were at that Monday rally, plus Kamala, Stacey Abrams, Andrew Gillum, on and on. Meantime, Trump is loathed and impeached, showing his venality and incompetence every day re: the coronavirus, and facing potential recession from the virus' economic impact. I like where Democrats stand today.
I've said all along that I don't just want the Dems to win this year, but I want them to bury Trump.
It's beginning to look like this year could be the greatest Democratic rout since Johnson won over Goldwater in 1964. Biden is now in position to not only become the first Democratic VP since Johnson to become president, but to do so with the greatest percentage of electoral votes of a Democrat since Johnson.
Okri wrote:... Did Biden just confuse his wife and his sister?
Christ, he's going to get eaten alive in the general.
No, they switched places on him.
I thought it came off endearing. I really think people underestimate the likability factor Biden has working for him.
I haven't commented since before SC, because so much was happening I didn't want to get ahead of myself. But this night is the stuff of Joe Biden's dreams. Not only getting thumping wins in places he seemed favored, but upsetting in supposed Sanders' states (OK, MA, MN, maybe ME) -- and, according to Dave Wasserman just a moment ago, likely to win TX. CA is still to come (and is barely a part of this batch of states, given that the arcane delegate distribution means we won't have an accurate count for days if not weeks), but, unless its vote breaks in ways utterly unlike everywhere else in the country, it's not going to be anything like what Sanders people were looking at five days ago. I'm not sure Hillary Clinton ever had as good a night in 2016.
ON EDIT: The late-deciding vote is a landslide for Biden across the board. If there'd been no early vote, and if Bloomberg weren't on ballots, Biden might be pitching a coast-to-coast shutout (barring VT).
Oh, and turnout is spectacular everywhere. Trump beware.
