Friday, April 03, 2020

Race for the White House Update: Reality endorses Bernie, Blue MAGATs hide Biden



Tom Perez, CNN, and MSNBC have fashioned an alternate reality, however.

Let's start here.

The Democratic National Committee on Thursday, April 2 opted to push back the start of the national convention in Milwaukee from July 13 to August 17 amid increasing time constraints, not to mention public health issues, on the party over the coronavirus pandemic.

Now the Democratic convention will begin just a week before the Republican National Convention in Charlotte. That reverts the convention timing to the model that has been in place since the 2008 cycle.  2020 was to be a break in that one-week-apart model and a return to the month-apart model for national convention timing that had dominated the post-reform era. However, the coronavirus has changed those plans.

The five-week delay in the convention is consistent with the movement of primaries that has occurred on the state level in the wake of the outbreak. Among the states that have shifted delegate selection events back, they have moved on average almost 38 days, a little more than five weeks. The nearly equivalent move by the national convention will allow those states and others stuck between a rock and a hard place in completing their delegate selection in a timely and efficient manner ahead of the new convention's commencement.

What this leaves unanswered is how the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will handle states that have moved beyond the June 9 deadline by which states are to have held their primaries and caucuses under DNC rules. The rules call for a 50 percent reduction in a state's delegation as a penalty. But the convention move signals even more that the party is more likely than not to grant some latitude to state parties on this front.

The Texas Democratic Party had previously said it would hold its state convention virtually.  Also prior to the DNC's announcement, New York's governor moved his state's primary to June 23rd, understanding the risk of loss of delegates.

Two things worth mentioning about the Empire State:

-- The polling is pretty stale.

-- "Loss of delegates" does not seem to apply to superdelegates.

With regard to next week's Wisconsin primary:

Ten of the 11 states with primary elections scheduled in April have postponed them. Wisconsin is going forward with its April 7 primary election after a federal judge declined to postpone it, saying it is not the “job of a federal district judge to act as a super health department for the state.” U.S. District Judge William Conley scolded attorneys representing the Republican-controlled General Assembly that it should have postponed the elections, saying that would have avoided what may be “a bad decision from the perspective of public health, and it could be excruciatingly bad.”

The Cheese Staters going to the polls next Tuesday is what Joe Biden wants; he's building a big lead in the late polling, just as he did exactly a month ago following the Great Obama Intervention and Centrist Consolidation.

You might recall he and his campaign made this same request of Floridians, who are now among the worst sufferers of the contagion.


Yes, the Republican governor of the Sunshine State might be a bigger idiot than Greg Abbott, refusing to close the beaches and having dawdled about a stay-at-home order.  There was no good reason for Biden to join him, just as there isn't one for him to stand with Wisconsin Republicans gaming the system and screwing over their electorate.

How bad is Wisconsin's vote going to be?  This bad.

Wisconsin is planning to hold an election next Tuesday, April 7, which will include the state’s Democratic presidential primary race and an election for a seat on the state Supreme Court. It plans to hold this election despite the fact that (Gov. Tony) Evers, a Democrat, issued a stay-at-home order a week ago to help slow the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

The state anticipated a huge shortage of poll workers prior to Evers’s decision to call up the National Guard. In Milwaukee, which typically has 180 polling places open on an election day, city officials expected that they would only have enough workers to keep 10 to 12 sites open. More than 100 of the state’s municipalities reported that they lacked enough regular poll workers to staff even one polling place.

Even with the National Guard working the polls, the state’s attorney general’s office predicts that “the assistance of the National Guard will not satisfy all of the current staffing needs.”

So what's clear is that Team Biden is hoping to throw a knockout punch to Bernie Sanders with the tally next week, whatever it may be.

CNN, MSNBC, and the NYT have been very helpful in this effort.




If all you do is watch teevee news, you wouldn't know any #MeToo controversy even exists.  You would know that the Cuomo brothers have their own reality show, and it apparently is a huge ratings hit.  Just like Trump's daily press briefings pep rallies.

(I haven't watched either one.  I just read the reviews.)


But we do know that Joe has promised women a couple of things -- black women specifically there in that second one -- and Jim Clyburn, widely regarded as Biden's lifesaver, could hold him to it.  We know that he has consulted Obama about his VP pick, and that he might "reportedly soon embrace key planks" of a progressive agenda.  This after Nancy Letourneau's solemn declaration that Biden is already much more progressive than 'one' would think.

I call malarkey.

I can agree that Biden's choice of running mate is very likely to follow him into the Oval Office sooner than later, and I believe he owes Black voters too much to not pick a Stacy Abrams or a Kamala Harris.  (Harris can probably name her price: veep or Justice.)  But he doesn't want to box himself in, which is why you see Amy Klobuchar and Gretchen Whitmer being floated.

The two Midwesterners shore up a geographically weak spot.  But they don't do shit for the South, which means that Sen. Doug Jones of Alabama is DOA.  And a white woman with a bad prosecutor's record might scratch open a scab with Af-Am voters.

Whoever he chooses, Biden is still going to lack the money, the voter enthusiasm, and the Bernie Caucus to defeat Trump.




And in spite of media false narratives, manufactured consent, and just plain obnoxious behavior by agents provocateur like Whoopi Goldberg and Alyssa Milano, Bernie has even more rationale to remain in the hunt in this Brave New COVID-19 World than he did BC.


While Biden went into seclusion for a week, and upon emerging stated that his home had finally been wired for high-speed Internet, Bernie was hosting teleconferences and raising money for coronavirus charities.  The feeble old lecher -- that's being gracious; to tell the truth Biden is both senile and a rapist -- still doesn't support Medicare for All after 10 million Americans have lost their jobs in the past week.  Which means they have no insurance coverage in the midst of a contagion.  And won't be able to afford COBRA, since many of them were living paycheck to paycheck anyway.  And since the stimulus checks are still weeks away, and completely inadequate to boot ...

The crisis is laying bare the brutality of an economy organized around production for the sake of profit and not human need. The logic that the free market knows best can be seen in the prioritization of affordability in health care as millions careen toward economic ruin. It is seen in the ways that states have been thrown into frantic competition with one another for personal protective equipment and ventilators -- the equipment goes to whichever state can pay the most. It can be seen in the still criminally slow and inefficient and inconsistent testing for the virus. It is found in the multi-billion-dollar bailout of the airline industry, alongside nickel-and-dime means tests to determine which people might be eligible to receive ridiculously inadequate public assistance.

The argument for resuming a viable social-welfare state is about not only attending to the immediate needs of tens of millions of people but also reëstablishing social connectivity, collective responsibility, and a sense of common purpose, if not common wealth. In an unrelenting and unemotional way, COVID-19 is demonstrating the vastness of our human connection and mutuality.

Our collectivity must be borne out in public policies that repair the friable welfare infrastructure that threatens to collapse beneath our social weight. A society that allows hundreds of thousands of home health-care workers to labor without health insurance, that keeps school buildings open so that black and brown children can eat and be sheltered, that allows millionaires to stow their wealth in empty apartments while homeless families navigate the streets, that threatens eviction and loan defaults while hundreds of millions are mandated to stay inside to suppress the virus, is bewildering in its incoherence and inhumanity.


-- Mike Bloomberg docked the final paychecks of the people he fired for the taxes he paid on the iPhones and Apple Macs he gave them.

That dude is a class act.

Posts in the works about election security (inspired by the HBO doc Kill Chain) and also the media meltdown as a result of COVID19, a topic Brad Friedman has beaten me to.
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Monday, March 30, 2020

The Weekly Extinction Event Wrangle

With this week's round-up of the best of the Lone Star left from the past seven days, the Texas Progressive Alliance was thinking all this time we had ten years or so before we died gradually from climate chaos.  (Stephen King's The Stand' used to be one of my favorite books, too.)


Greg Abbott's COVID-19 presser yesterday declared war on Louisiana travelers.


Gotta love the rolled-up sleeves.  He's hard at work, getting his hands dirty, clearing brush dressed casually, not in his usual suit and tie.

Abbott said he was dramatically expanding a previous executive order that requires a 14-day self-quarantine for anyone flying into Texas from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut or New Orleans. Now, the state is also mandating a 14-day self-quarantine for anyone driving into Texas from anywhere in Louisiana and for those flying in from Miami, Atlanta, Detroit and Chicago, as well as anywhere in California and Washington.

Enforcement of this directive falls to the DPS, but I have lots of unanswered questions.  Update:


To be fair, I'm of the opinion -- authoritarian concerns remaining -- that this measure might actually be a good idea after reading this story.

Moving on, the governor also pre-empted any plans of releasing people from incarceration in order for them to avoid contracting the virus.

"Releasing dangerous criminals from jails into the streets is not the right solution and doing so is now prohibited by law by this declaration," Abbott said at a Sunday afternoon briefing, hours after officials announced that a 39-year-old man had tested positive for the coronavirus. The order said such a release “would also hinder efforts to cope with the COVID-19 disaster.”

Orwellian, that last sentence is (in my best Yoda voice).


The newly appointed monitor over Harris County’s misdemeanor bail protocol, Duke law professor Brandon Garrett, said the decree violated “many state and federal constitutional provisions.”

Alec Karakatsanis, a civil rights attorney who represents thousands of indigent defendants awaiting trial at the lockup on felony charges, called the governor’s stance illegal and perilous.

“The edict is dangerous, unprecedented, chaotic, and a flagrantly unconstitutional attempt to infringe fundamental constitutional rights,” he said. “If enforced it would have catastrophic public health consequences.”

This diktat is more in line with Herr Abbott's (and General Paxton's) catering to the TXGOP primary voting base.  'Three hots and a cot, bust rocks, no a/c for you'.

Before we go any further down the path of conflating Darwinism and eugenics, perhaps we ought to read Ross Ramsey's latest.

Political people have noticed the dissonance on Gov. Greg Abbott’s support for local control in the face of the new coronavirus and his disdain for it in recent battles over property taxes, rideshare regulations, paid sick leave, and other local policies.

But the range of local reactions to the coronavirus, ranging from stay-home orders of various strengths to business-as-usual responses elsewhere, have the governor hesitating to impose statewide directives.

Over here are Dallas County and the city of Austin, telling residents to stay inside. Some Austin leaders have even told residents not to walk on the popular trail around Lady Bird Lake for exercise, for fear they’ll come within six feet of one another.

And over there are places like Midland and Palestine, where restaurant dining rooms are closed but many stores are bustling with customers.

From Ramsey last week:

Those local differences help explain why (Abbott) has been so reluctant to issue statewide stay-at-home orders. Metropolitan areas are aggressively putting social distancing rules in place, while less populated parts of Texas are more reticent.

Kuff also noted the different attitudes toward stay-at-home orders in some parts of the state, and pointed out that coronavirus doesn't care about anyone's attitude or ideals.

While this may be about geography or political affiliation, I think both Kuffner and Ramsey buried their ledes.  Let's start with Abbott: he's at least smart enough to filter his every twitch through a Lone Star uber-conservative cheesecloth.  Operation Jade Helm was one of our early clues.  And everybody should understand that if you can't get to that thought process, you'll never understand his (and by extension, their) motivations.

Here's today's example.


If you laughed when you saw Fox News hosts calling the coronavirus a charade a couple of weeks ago before turning on a dime, then laughed again when Fox fired Trish Regan because she called the pandemic a plot against Trump, then you possess the required acumen to discern why rural Texans just think they're smarter than us city slickers.  Oh, and why conservatives think liberalism is a mental disorder.  (It kinda is, FWIW, which is why liberals -- you are aware I prefer 'neoliberals' -- keep trying to call themselves 'progressive'.)

I'll leave the rest of this theorizing to you.  Let's extend last week's mockery of Dan Patrick's self-selection as a human sacrifice to Wall Street, courtesy Alice Embree at the Rag Blog.

Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, coughing. 
Photo graphic by James Retherford / The Rag Blog

Some Texas retirees and grandparents have a response to the Lt. Governor and hope it will go viral, so to speak. The Texas Alliance of Retired Americans (TARA) is launching a Virtual Cough-In Campaign for the week leading up to the Lt. Governor’s 70th birthday on April 4.

Retirees are not going to intentionally or accidentally spread contagion. They are urging everyone to phone or e-mail the Lt. Governor about his stupid, dangerous false dichotomy between health and the economy.

Below are TARA’s suggested scripts, timed for a message machine. The scripts are for grandparents and grandchildren, retirees and workers at essential jobs, and for those parents staying home with children trying to keep a virulent microbe from overwhelming our hospitals.

Pick up your phone. Dial one of these two numbers:

The Texas Lt. Governor Message Line: (512) 463-5342
The Texas Lt. Governor Office Line: (512) 463-0001

Cough or clear your throat and choose the script that suits you:

Version 1:
As a senior I am horrified that you would offer up my life for the sake of the stock market and the 1%. We are valuable, productive, and vital to our families and communities, and not the only ones at risk from Covid 19 as nearly 50% of those affected are in their 20s and 30s. If you choose not to represent, serve, and safeguard the health and well-being of all your constituents, you should resign.
Version 2:
As a [son, daughter, grandchild, fill in the blank as best suits you], I am horrified that you would offer up the lives of senior members of our families and communities for the sake of the stock market and the 1%. Ignoring scientific evidence and advice is reckless. Advising the general population to do so goes against your duties to represent, serve, and safeguard the health and well-being of all your constituents. It’s time for you to resign.

If you don’t want to let Dan Patrick get away with murder, make a call. Do it from a safe distance so that you don’t become another ICU patient needing a ventilator. Do it so that you don’t spread a virus you may not know you have. Do it for your grandchildren.

New scripts are being written for each day and will be posted on the TARA Facebook page.


Nonsequiteuse, in similar fashion, minced no words with Patrick.  And Stephen Young at the Dallas Observer had an early look at the worst Texas reactions to the coronavirus.



Update:



David Collins, candidate for US Senate from Texas:

Capitalism is canceled, henceforth and forthwith. It. Doesn't. Work. For. Us.

[...]

I've recently heard the US economy described as a "house of cards," and it seems like an apt description. But I have a quibble with it, because there's the economy on one hand, and there's the "economy" on the other. The latter is what the media means by the word: Stock market indices and the facts and figures that emanate from Executive Branch agencies. The former is what is actually happening at street level. Millions of underpaid, overworked American citizens and immigrants are holding the real economy together, and they're doing a damn good job of it.

Our nation, our society, and our government cannot solve this by throwing money at corporations who do not/cannot guarantee that they will continue compensating their employees at their regular rates. I am convinced that only direct payments from the government to individuals and families will keep them and the macro economy afloat. (EDIT: And, oh yeah, Medicare for All too. I left that part out earlier.)

A smattering of election and voting related-developments:


Mustafa Tameez warned about the need for election protection.


And more about the concerns and impacts of COVID-19.


Patricia Sharpe at Texas Monthly talked to restaurant and bar workers about how they're coping.


Loren Steffy also elaborated on why we didn't really need a crystal ball to know that Texas unemployment claims were going to spike last week.


Meanwhile, in an ironic reversal of fortune, Mexico says it's time to close the g.d. border to those filthy, disease-carrying Americanos.


“It is important that in Mexico, and particularly at this border, we implement restrictive measures because United States residents and citizens are crossing every day to Matamoros to shop, go visit the doctor and their family and that means a greater risk for the families of Matamoros,” said Matamoros Mayor Mario Alberto López Hernández, in a recent news release.

Better Texas Blog says, once again, that everyone needs paid sick leave.



And down-shifting to other state news ...



And we mourn the passing of Texas playwright Terrence McNally.


The lighter items will wrap this edition of the Wrangle.

Brea LaVelle, and her teacher colleagues, really miss their students.



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Sunday, March 29, 2020

Sunday 'Worse Than the Problem Itself' Funnies








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Friday, March 27, 2020

RIP Toy Cannon

Not feeling the politics blogging today.


Wynn was one of my favorites -- one of every Astro Buddy's, no matter their age -- in the mid-and late '60's.  Many of his fans thought his nick was for his bat.

Wynn played 11 of his 15 MLB seasons in Houston and was named an All-Star in 1967.

At 5-9, the diminutive outfielder earned the nickname "Toy Cannon" for his powerful arm. He debuted with the Colt .45s in 1963.

Some great photos at this link.


And a review of some of the best remembrances, via Tweet.  Click on them and you'll find more videos and memories.



The Astrodome in its early configuration was well-known as a pitchers' venue.  Nevertheless, a couple of Astros crushed balls into the remote upper tiers back in the day, and had the seats they hit painted with their nicknames.  Wynn was one; can you name the other (he's pictured here on the left)?




Wynn was traded by the Astros to the LA Dodgers during the 1973 winter meetings for Claude Osteen (and another player), and Wynn made the All-Star team in both of his two seasons in southern California.  In '75 he went from the Dodgers to the Atlanta Braves in a blockbuster trade involving current Astros manager Dusty Baker.


At the time of his passing he served as a community outreach executive for the Astros.

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Tuesday, March 24, 2020

The Weekly Wrangle II, extended pandemic pandemonium edition

Too much to cram into one.

Let's begin as we often do with TXElects, this time with a personal message from publisher Jeff Blaylock: "Like Much of Daily Life, Elections Grind to a Halt".



The ongoing response to contain the severity of the spread of COVID-19 has impacted most aspects of a normal, daily life in the state’s largest counties. ...

Gov. Greg Abbott (R) last week postponed the May 26 runoff elections until July 14, the date he ordered for the SD14 special election, which normally would have (occurred) in conjunction with the May 2 general election. Unable to postpone those elections on his own, Abbott  suspended portions of the Election Code and other codes to enable local governments to hold those elections in November. ...

Campaigns are hamstrung by social distancing, limits on the size of gatherings and the economic pressures so many Texans are facing. Candidates are simply unable to campaign. Door-to-door blockwalking efforts have largely ended. Rallies can’t be held because of social distancing guidelines and prohibitions of events above a certain attendance. “Retail politics” is largely impossible.

They are also unable to raise money. I expect the July semiannual and quarterly reports will show a significant downturn in contributions compared to the same period in prior election cycles.

Fundraising events cannot happen. Economic pressures and uncertainty affecting Texas families will sharply reduce the number of small donors. Candidates will likely be more reliant than ever on large donations or the ability to self-fund their campaigns. We may very well see this come into play in the runoff elections where candidates who have built a broad network of support are suddenly disadvantaged.

I expect campaigns will get created with digital campaigning, including video meet and greets and increased reliance on social media. Fundraising efforts will get creative as well, but they are facing a cascading uncertainty that will likely drive down political contributions. Creativity does not necessarily require money, so I expect we will see some innovative uses of cheap technology in the coming weeks and months.

I also expect the pandemic response will slow voter registrations, although we will not see this data for some time. The next statewide data point does not come until November, which we all hope is well after Texas has returned to business as usual. Depending on when that occurs, registrations may rebound.

In the meantime, there are signs that campaigns are shifting their grassroots efforts to community service from politics. “I will put my campaign’s grassroots team on the job of helping our neighbors across our huge district,” said CD13 Republican runoff candidate Josh Winegarner in a press release. “I want to help people and help Texans help each other.” Several other candidates have released similar statements, as has the Texas Democratic Party, which launched ConnectTexas, an online community where folks can connect with people locally and statewide to communicate their needs, share resources, and create a sense of unity despite the uncertainty.”

-- Lite Guv Dan Patrick saw Greg Abbott, John Cornyn, and Louie Gohmert all getting free publicity for being stupid, discriminatory, or just plain incompetent and hypocritical, and decided he couldn't be left out of that action.


 "No one reached out to me and said, 'As a senior citizen, are you willing to take a chance on your survival in exchange for keeping the America that all America loves for your children and grandchildren?' And if that's the exchange, I'm all in," he said. "And that doesn't make me noble or brave or anything like that.

"I just think there are lots of grandparents out there in this country like me ... that what we all care about and what we all love more than anything are those children," he added. "And I want to, you know, live smart and see through this, but I don't want to see the whole country to be sacrificed, and that's what I see."

Patrick -- as he has unceasingly reminded us -- is pro-life ... but should the Wall Street gods require a human sacrifice, I believe we have our first volunteer.  Personally I'll never be willing to risk myself for a corporation's P&L statement.  YMMV.

-- Speaking of "pro-life", Greg Abbott banned abortion on Sunday.

Gov. Greg Abbott didn't say anything about it last week when he announced his ban on elective medical procedures, but Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made it clear Monday afternoon -- abortion is banned in Texas until, at the earliest, April 3. Before the novel coronavirus pandemic, anyone seeking an abortion in Texas faced a lengthy ordeal.
Now they face utter uncertainty.

“We must work together as Texans to stop the spread of COVID-19 and ensure that our healthcare professionals and facilities have all the resources they need to fight the virus at this time,” Paxton said. “No one is exempt from the governor’s executive order on medically unnecessary surgeries and procedures, including abortion providers. Those who violate the governor’s order will be met with the full force of the law.”

The full force of the law, in this case, is a $1,000 fine and up to 180 days in jail.

Paxton's office says the ban is essential to preserve Texas' stock of personal protective equipment. Texas anti-abortion groups are praising Abbott's order for different reasons.

-- Those centralized voting centers the Harris County Clerk and other election administrators throughout the state were so impressed with themselves about implementing?  Maybe not so much.

-- And postal voting might be a good thing (obviously the TDP wouldn't be paying Chad Dunn, et.al. the money they are if they didn't think so) but it would present a host of new problems.  Such as: where do we store all the paper?

While mail-in ballots seem like an elegant solution as the United States grapples with containing COVID-19, experts say slow-moving state and county governments, inconsistent state rules and limited resources to buy essentials such as envelopes and scanners could make it difficult to ramp up nationally to reach more than 200 million registered voters in the November general election. Among the possible downsides of a quick transition are increased voter fraud, logistical snafus and reduced turnout among voters who move frequently or lack a mailing address.

[...]

“To move from a couple of thousand to a couple of million (printed ballots) requires an entirely different infrastructure,” said Tammy Patrick, a former county election official who is now a senior adviser at the nonprofit Democracy Fund in Washington, D.C. “It’s going to be a different logistical lift for them to even ramp up the printing of the ballots, let alone ordering a million envelopes that are the right size and compatible with” the U.S. Postal Service’s method of sorting mail automatically.

Amber McReynolds is the CEO of Vote at Home, which helps policymakers and election officials improve their vote by mail processes and policies. “The unprecedented public health crisis” calls for localities to “be extraordinarily creative with our solutions,” she said.

Yet there are states, like Texas, where McReynolds thinks it may be very difficult to implement a robust and universal vote by mail system. Texas’ election administration is almost entirely controlled by counties, which each set their own voting processes. Rural counties frequently use machines that produce no paper backup and have no infrastructure to store it, while larger counties have more sophisticated systems that keep a printed record of ballots. The state has little authority to change local election administration decisions.

McReynolds has called for centralizing the printing, mailing and collecting of ballots at the state level, though without legislative action this would not be possible in Texas. Centralization, with appropriate technology to open, sort and scan ballots, would mean fewer people counting votes and less need to recruit thousands of volunteers.

Much, much more at the link above.

-- And courtesy US Senate candidate David Collins, here is your updated Texas Green Party list of state and Congressional nominees, with more likely to come out of the state convention.
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