Journal of the Plague Years

March 4, 2020

     The story of the last 72 hours has been the Lazarus-like resurrection of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, courtesy of African American voters.  Once Jim Clyburn’s endorsement anointed him, Biden trounced the competition with 48.4% of the vote and 64% of the Black vote, (Source:  “Biden dominates, Sanders slips and other takeaways from the South Carolina primary,” by Rebecca Morin and William Cummings, USA Today, 2/29/20).  After his win, the dominoes fell quickly, with one billionaire and the two moderates dropping out within 24 hours.  Beto, Buttigieg and Klobuchar endorsed Biden on the eve of Super Tuesday and he went on to win in ten states, although Bernie Sanders is on track to win delegate-rich California.

There will be a rush of hot takes from these results, all of them premature, and many of them wrong. We should approach our analysis with humility and patience, two things in short supply in an election year where we are desperate to rid ourselves of the pathogen of Trumpism that is laying waste to our democracy from the inside out.

       That said, the most obvious wrong takes should be called out.  The first, mostly from armchair activists on Twitter, is that Biden’s dominance with African-American voters is a function of them being “low information” voters.  The “low information” canard is simply proof that some on the left can be just as racist as their counterparts on the right. More than any other voter in this country, Black southerners know precisely what unconstrained white racists are capable of, since the violence of Jim Crow is part of their lived experience.  They also know that given the choice between justice and higher taxes on the one hand and lower taxes and repression of the marginalized on the other, many voters will pick lower taxes every time. Elie Mystal details the pragmatism of Black southerners with brutal candor here.

The race is far from over. California’s votes haven’t been fully counted and only one third of all potential delegates have been awarded. Upcoming contests next week in Michigan, Missouri, and other states may shift the dynamic in Bernie’s favor, but his campaign should be alarmed by the paucity of youth turnout yesterday. Only one in eight voters on Super Tuesday was between the ages of 18 and 29, (Source: “Five Takeaways From Super Tuesday,” by Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, 3/4/20). The lack of turnout may have been a function of the deliberate closing of polling places in Black and Brown communities, which tend to skew younger, leading to long lines in Texas and California, (Source: “California and Texas voters faced hours-long lines in California and Texas,” by Oliver Laughland and Sam Levine, TheGuardian.com, 3/4/20). Perhaps, rather than rail against the Democratic Party establishment, Bernie might consider spending some rhetorical firepower and campaign cash on fighting voter suppression and making sure his supporters can vote. By way of example, despite massive voter purges engineered by the gleefully racist, Brian Kemp, Stacey Abrams is registering voters faster than Georgia can purge them, (Source: “Rise of young and diverse voters may influence 2020 elections,” by Mark Niesse, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 2/11/20).

   Given her dismal showing last night and Bloomberg’s decision to drop out and endorse Biden, the pressure is on Elizabeth Warren to drop out and endorse Bernie.  Those pressuring her to do so assume that all of her supporters would go to Bernie, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Some Warren supporters may be more moderate.  Others may legitimately believe that Biden will have better coattails, enabling us to keep the House and gain the control of the Senate we need to actually enact progressive change.  The truth is that nobody knows.

The fact that yet another accomplished woman has failed to get traction and the Democratic race has come down to two septuagenarian white men with problematic histories on race and gender is disappointing, but it should not be surprising. How could the broader society be unaffected by a four year assault on the very idea of racial or gender equality? The only silver lining is that neither Biden nor Bernie can win without us. Vote for the candidate who shows you they know that.

February 26, 2020

      Last night we watched six Democratic presidential candidates, in a desperate effort to boost their anemic poll numbers, attack Bernie Sanders as an extreme leftist.  Spooked by Sanders’ decisive win in the Nevada caucuses, on the heels of his victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, the other candidates clearly saw the debate as their last chance to blunt his momentum heading into South Carolina and Super Tuesday. The criticism ranged from fair-  Biden’s critique of Bernie’s five previous votes against gun control legislation- to ridiculous – Buttigieg’s derisive accusation that Bernie was nostalgic for the “revolutionary politics of the sixties,” conveniently overlooked the fact that the sixties gave us the Voting Rights Act and the Stonewall Rebellion! Continue reading “The Great Debaters”

February 16, 2020

     Over the past several days, we  have learned that the political manipulation of the Justice Department goes far beyond the ham-handed interference with Roger Stone’s sentence and extends into any case involving Trump’s political allies… or enemies, (Source:  “William Barr Moves to Take the Reins of Politically Charged Cases,” by Charlie Savage and Adam Goldman, The New York Times, 2/14/20).  Barr’s complaint that Trump’s tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job” was less an assertion of independence than a recognition that Trump had thrust Barr’s machinations into an uncomfortable spotlight.

      As Rachel Maddow pointed out, for Trump, the public announcement of his use of the Justice Department as a personal tool for retribution is precisely the point. Trump’s actions have already had the desired chilling effect. Federal prosecutors have already admitted that they are wary of bringing politically sensitive cases, (Source:  “After Stone Case, Prosecutors Say They Fear Pressure From Trump,” by Katie Brenner, Charlie Savage, Sharon LaFreniere and Ben Protess, The New York Times, 2/12/20). Continue reading “The Price (and who pays it)”

February 12, 2020

      As children, we all began our school days reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.  We mindlessly mouthed the oath, pledging our fealty “to the flag and the republic for which it stands.”  A republic is defined as “a government in which supreme power resides in a body of citizens entitled to vote and is exercised by elected officers responsible to them and governing according to law,” (Source;  Merriam-Webster, emphasis added).

     By that definition, we ceased to be a republic some time ago.  After all, widespread voter suppression ensures that a significant percentage of Americans are not entitled to vote.  Certainly, though, when a majority of Republican senators voted to acquit Trump after a sham trial without witnesses, defying the wishes of 75% of the American people, it is arguable that we ceased to be a republic. Continue reading “Allegiance”

February 4, 2020

     The epic disaster of Iowa’s “non-results” in yesterday’s caucuses cannot be exaggerated. The first contest of what is the most important election in American history was so badly bungled that results were still unavailable as of 8:00 a.m. this morning (Source:  “2020 Iowa Caucus Updates: Delayed Results Lead to Confusion,” by The New York Times, 2/4/20).   Continue reading “Iowa “clusterf—k””

January 30, 2020

     Since Sunday night, when The New York Times revealed the “explosive” revelations contained in the book by former National Security Advisor, John Bolton, the news media has been blanketed with wall to wall coverage of the “Bolton bombshell.”  The manuscript details a conversation between Trump and Bolton in August in which Trump admitted that he planned to withhold military aid to Ukraine until they announced investigations of the Bidens, (Source:  “Trump Tied Ukraine Aid to Inquiries He Sought, Bolton Book Says,” by Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt, The New York Times, 1/26/20).

    The manuscript also implicates Attorney General William Barr, Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and Acting Chief of Staff, Mick Mulvaney.  Although Bolton’s book doesn’t break any new ground, pundits have speculated that, since Bolton is the highest ranking former administration official to implicate Trump, it will ratchet up the pressure on Republican senators to allow witnesses.  From Alan Dershowitz’s tortured, ahistorical argument that Trump’s conduct does not constitute an impeachable offense,  to the concerned murmurs of Romney and Collins,  to McConnell’s strategic admission that he lacks the votes to block witnesses, we have been reading the tea leaves in the hope that the “trial” will bear a passing resemblance to a procedure designed to reveal the truth, rather than cover it up. Continue reading “21st Century Apartheid”

January 23, 2020

   As we watched the opening of what was only the third impeachment trial in our nation’s history, it was painfully clear that those who are ignorant of their history are doomed to repeat it.   Again and again, the echoes that reverberated most strongly were not from 1992, but from 1868, (Source: “Brenda Wineapple On What We Can Learn From the First Impeachment,” by Just the Right Book, Lithub.com, 8/15/19).

      Then, as now, the country was bitterly divided between those dedicated to forging a path forward towards true democracy with the full participation of Black Americans, and those raging at the prospect of sharing power with those they thought of as less than human.  Then, Andrew Johnson did nothing to quell the white supremacist militias attempting to nullify Emancipation through violence.  Now, we have a “president” who tweets his support for a mob of white supremacist “gun rights” enthusiasts rallying at the former capitol of the Confederacy on Martin Luther King Day, (Source:  “Thousands of armed protestors turn out for Trump supported gun rally,” by Ivan Pereira, ABCnews.com, 1/20/20). Continue reading “Past is prologue”

January 15, 2020

     Today, for only the third time in American history, the House of Representatives delivered Articles of Impeachment to the Senate, precipitating a trial of the president of the United States.  We will need to watch the process unfold with a jaundiced eye, dissecting the biases of those reporting the facts and not losing sight of the bigger picture. As an example, on Monday, the press reported as breaking news that it was unlikely that McConnell would gavel the Senate into session and simply hold a vote on a motion to dismiss the articles, (Source:  “McConnell unlikely to pursue dismissal vote on impeachment articles,” by Leigh Ann Caldwell and Garrett Haake, NBCNews.com, 1/14/20).  The stated rationale for McConnell’s reluctance– his desire to avoid forcing vulnerable Republican senators to take tough votes– is precisely the reason it was never under serious consideration to begin with. Continue reading “Profiles in courage?”

January 11, 2020

     We all breathed a temporary sigh of relief when Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javan Zarif, announced that the missile attacks on the Iraqi bases would constitute the full extent of its retaliation for Soleimani,stating that “Iran took and concluded proportionate measures in self-defense….We do not seek escalation or war,” (Source:  “Iran Attacks U.S. Forces, Then Both Sides Stand Down,” by Robin Wright, The New Yorker, 1/8/20).  The next morning, Trump followed with an address clearly intended to reassure Americans that his mindless brinkmanship would not lead us into war.

       Far from being reassuring, Trump’s speech was cause for concern.  Late night comedians had a field day with his awkward opening statement and his garbled delivery. Trump’s promise that Iran would never have a nuclear weapon as long as he was president rang hollow in light of the fact that every action he has taken has made that possibility more likely not less.  From ripping up the Iran deal, to imposing crippling sanctions; to killing their highest ranking military official, to imposing more sanctions on Iran, Trump’s punishing instincts are hardly likely to lead to peace. Continue reading “Our best hope”

     We have all been de-stabilized by the alarming news that Trump ordered the assasination of top Iranian military leader, Major General Qasem Soleimani on Thursday. The issue is not whether Soleimani was a truly bad person responsible for many Americans deaths (he was); but whether he posed such an imminent threat that it merited utter disregard for the law, (both domestic and international), the inevitable retaliation and the unforeseeable consequences of such a rash escalation.

      We all know the answer.  Trump ordered this assassination because he was desperate to shift the focus from his looming impeachment trial and the revelations that continue to emerge from this massive criminal conspiracy masquerading as a presidential administration.  In the last two weeks, while we were busily celebrating Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa, more damning evidence against Trump has been uncovered. Continue reading “Out of luck”