Month: March 2021

This is so depressing:

The nation has a third weapon to wield against the coronavirus, and this onedoesn’t need to be kept frozen or followed by a booster shot.

Those attributes of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine, which gained regulatory clearance on Saturday, promise to help state and local officials quell the pandemic punishing their communities. First, however, they will need to determine its place in an expanding anti-virus arsenal, where it joins vaccines with sky-high efficacy rates that are still in short supply.

Decisions to send the shots to harder-to-reach communities make practical sense, because Johnson & Johnson’s single-shot vaccine is easier to store and use. But they could drive perceptions of a two-tiered vaccine system, riven along racial or class lines — with marginalized communities getting what they think is an inferior product.

There is so much mistrust already in these underserved communities that this is completely understandable because of the terrible messaging about “effectiveness” which is misleading. All the vaccines are 100% effective against hospitalizations and death, including the Johnson and Johnson one shot. The only difference is that you are very slightly more likely to get a very mild, non-threatening case with the J&J, which isn’t even worth mentioning when we are trying to vaccinate high risk populations that have been in danger of dying in massive numbers for the past year. Why the public health officials and media chose to talk about this in terms of “efficacy” this way I will never understand. It’s confusing to everyone and especially people who are already justifiably leery of being short-changed when it comes to health care.

I will happily — gratefully — take the J&J vaccine. If it would help, I’d volunteer to do it. But I live in a place where it’s easy to store the others at the subzero temperatures necessary and the J&J is so much more practical to be used in places where that’s not available. But if it’s what they have on offer when my name is called I’ll be thrilled to have it. I hope they can find a way to reassure everyone that any shot they are offered will save them.

With his trademark hair helmet a bit less brassy and his bronzer evenly applied, a rested and recharged former president Donald J. Trump made his triumphant return to the main stage at the annual CPAC convention on Sunday and it was like he never left. Delivering a patented 90-minute rally speech that could have been delivered in October of 2020, or October of 2016 for that matter, Trump hit all his low notes from the border wall to China trade to the Muslim ban to the mortal dangers of windmills. The only addition to his greatest hits were a lengthy riff on the Big Lie, a declaration of war against all Republicans who’ve betrayed him and a new attack on the Supreme Court for being “cowards.”

The Big Lie is back. https://t.co/61BFVqk5T0

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) February 28, 2021

In other words, it was the same old, same old, and while the crowd cheered and swayed awkwardly to their favorite decadent 70’s disco tunes “Macho Man” and YMCA,” it was a rather sad little spectacle in a small hotel ballroom that couldn’t hide the fact that any other weekend it would probably be hosting an insurance underwriter conference. While Trump has clearly decided to “tease” his decision about whether he’s running again, hinting broadly that he almost certainly plans to do it, it’s hard to imagine he isn’t going to insist on holding a major rally sometime soon to prove he can still pull a big crowd.

Of course, he won the convention’s annual straw poll, but he only got 55% support which had to be something of a blow. He certainly couldn’t have been happy to see his loyal henchman Florida Governor Ron DeSantis come in second with 21%. (If I were DeSantis, I’d keep my back to the wall for a while.) The rest of the vote was split among a dozen others, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who gave a remarkably churlish speech, Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota, and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who seems to be moonlighting either as a comedian or a barking seal these days.

So it is little surprise that despite the fact that the conference’s theme was “Uncancel America,” Trump went out of his way to cancel a whole lot of Republicans he considers disloyal, promising to do everything in his power to “get rid of ’em all.” He didn’t mince words:

“The RINOs {Republicans In Name Only] that we’re surrounded with will destroy the Republican Party and the American worker and will destroy our country itself”

He called out every single GOP politician who voted for impeachment individually, his voice dripping with venom, ending with the most hated of all his enemies, Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney. I’m only surprised the crowd didn’t erupt in a raucous round of “lock her up” when he mentioned her name. He didn’t spare Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., whom he claimed owed his seat to him, which is utter nonsense, either.

Whether Trump ends up running again or not — and I suspect he will if he is able — he is already making it clear that he will use whatever clout he has to destroy anyone who speaks out against him. In fact, that’s his priority. This is a man, after all, who has said over and over again that the most important thing in life is getting even. As he wrote in his 2009 book called “Think Big”:

I love getting even when I get screwed by someone. … Always get even. When you are in business you need to get even with people who screw you. You need to screw them back 15 times harder. You do it not only to get the person who messed with you but also to show the others who are watching what will happen to them if they mess with you. If someone attacks you, do not hesitate. Go for the jugular.

Trump’s collected a big wad of money from his faithful and he’s got lots of time on his hands. He’s reportedly forming a new Super PAC with his former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski at the helm, which seems to be the likliest vehicle for revenge. Looks like he needs to “settle all the family business” before focusing on his own campaign.

Mark Caputo of Politico wrote a piece last week in which he harkened back to the “lane” theory of 2016 and surmised that there will be three, “Trump Ultra”, “Trump-Lite” and “Trump-zero.” I won’t go into the full analysis —I think it’s obvious from the cute names what he was getting at.

But the upshot is that everyone will be traveling down Trump Interstate Highway, one way or the other. Warming up the crowd for Trump on Sunday, Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan helped make Caputo’s point and made clear where the party is today:

President Trump is the leader of the conservative movement, he’s the leader of the American first movement, he’s the leader of the Republican party . . . and I hope on January 20th, 2025, he is once again the leader of our great country.

So what are all the other 2024 presidential hopefuls to do?

Trump has made it very clear that he won’t stand for any criticism and GOP primary voters are as enthralled as ever. Even if they never say a harsh word against him and continue to publicly kiss his ring, can any Republican even hope to raise money without risking his ire? I wouldn’t think so.

Basically, they are all running exactly the same playbook they ran in 2016: hug Trump as tight as possible in the hopes that when he finally flames out they will inherit his voters who will love them almost as much as they love him. But how did that work out for them last time?

Of course, the bloom could finally come off the rose over the course of the next few years. Maybe his acts of revenge will backfire, the people who crossed him will survive and his power will wane because of it. He’s no spring chicken and he might not be up for another run. There’s also a chance that some of the many legal proceedings against him will somehow make it impossible for him to seek another term. But until something like that happens, Trump has got his golden 757 parked right in the middle of that highway and nobody else is taking off.

Salon

This story just won’t go away. For all its ostensible reverence for constitution and principle, there seems to be no end to the GOP’s efforts to secure antidemocratic rule for itself in violation of both. The GOP’s zeal for restoring confidence in an electoral process it has spent decades undermining requires the sort of contortions customers pay to see in carnival sideshows.

NPR reports this morning:

The Brennan Center, a nonprofit that tracks voting laws, says that 43 states — including key swing states — are considering 253 bills that would raise barriers to voting, for example by reducing early voting days or limiting access to voting by mail. Lawmakers in a different set of 43 states have proposed expanding voter access, but Republicans have prioritized new security requirements and shorter voting periods.

In Georgia, which President Biden won by nearly 12,000 votes, legislators are considering multiple bills to restrict voting. The most significant, House Bill 531, is before a committee chaired by Republican Rep. Barry Fleming. He said Democrat Stacey Abrams campaigned to expand voter access after losing a governor’s race in 2018, and now Republicans want their own changes. The bill is “an attempt to restore the confidence of our public,” he said, because “there has been controversy regarding our election system.”

Again, confidence the GOP worked diligently to undermine by promoting controversy after fake controversy.

That controversy had no basis in fact. Audits and recounts confirmed the accuracy of the vote count in Georgia, and lawsuits there and in other states by the Trump campaign and allies failed to show otherwise. But Trump sought to discredit the vote and even asked Georgia’s secretary of state to change the vote totals. Now Georgia lawmakers are moving to repair a system that was not shown to be broken.

The latest amended version of HB 531 would instruct Georgia counties to hold no more than 17 days of early voting. Populous counties held more days than that in 2020.

Republicans say they want to make voting rules “uniform” across the state’s 159 counties.

“There are some counties that have as many voters as maybe a small neighborhood in Atlanta,” reports Stephen Fowler, who covers elections for Georgia Public Broadcasting. “And this would treat all of them the same, which would tend to make it harder for the bigger, more urban, more Democratic metro counties to account for everyone and get them through the early voting process — especially if vote by mail is restricted by some other measures in the legislature.”

The former president in his CPAC address on Sunday insisted on “an end to no-excuse absentee voting, strong voter ID laws and for the election to take place on one day,” CBS News reports. The Supreme Court, he added, “didn’t have the guts or the courage to make the right decision” on a case brought by his campaign to overturn the election won by Joe Biden.

Republicans including Trump promoted mail-in voting for decades until Democrats turned to it in large numbers in 2020.

Myrna Pérez of the Brennan Center describes “a very discernible and disturbing pattern” to reduce mail-in balloting — for example, by adding requirements to request a ballot or changing the rules for drop boxes. She described the bills as “attacks on methods of participation that had been used by older, white voters for a very, very long time.”

Mail-in balloting is questioned only now, Pérez said, because nonwhite voters have taken advantage of it. “There was very little attempt to hide the racialized nature” of the attacks on mail balloting in 2020, she said, noting that Trump allies constantly claimed corruption in big diverse cities such as Philadelphia, Atlanta and Detroit.

Like its allegiance to principles, the Constitution, and the United States of America itself, the Trump GOP’s allegiance to a particular voting method is only as old as the last election Republicans won using it. In fact, the only law that would satisfy the party of Trump is one that declares Republicans the winners no matter what a majority of voters say.

Even after a violent insurrection, after endless debates over stolen elections, and after disingenuous Republican “election integrity” measures designed to suppress the vote, one may still hear some tone-deaf Democrat joke about voting early and often. Loose talk on the left about letting red states secede is similarly counterproductive. Both should stop. The right should curb its own thirst for a separate white republic.

Casey Michel, author of “American Kleptocracy,” examines secessionist sentiment growing across the country among the disaffected:

And it’s not just a tiny fringe that’s thinking about these concepts anymore. As the Bright Line Watch, a group of researchers from places like Dartmouth University, the University of Rochester, and University of Chicago, noted in a study released earlier in February, one-third of Republicans said they support secession. Disturbingly, half of Republicans across the former Confederacy (plus Kentucky and Oklahoma) are now willing to break off to form a newly independent country.

There are murmurrings of secession from the Pacific Northwest among both ehe left and right, but none more serious as on the right elsewhere.

NEW: The events in Texas this month should highlight just how idiotic state-level secession is—but pro-Trump secessionist rhetoric is only going to grow and grow. https://t.co/qma5suHXlZ

— Casey Michel (@cjcmichel) February 28, 2021

The Texas Republican Party recently supported a referrendum on withdrawing Texas from the union — nicknamed “Texit” after the British vote to leave the European Union. Reportedly, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott dodged questions on whether he supported the effort.

While much of the secessionist rhetoric remains couched in claims about things like fiscal responsibility and burdensome federal regulations, it doesn’t take much to discern the ethno-nationalism driving the push. Just like so much of Trumpian America, secession in places like Texas is rooted in a combination of nativism, xenophobia and white racial grievance. Texas secession Facebook pages are saturated with fantasies of forcing Democrats to leave the state, seizing their property and forcing them to “convert” (to what is unclear). Just like the Confederates before them, this modern secessionist ethos is rooted at least in large part in maintaining white supremacy and authoritarian governance, regardless of the costs.

On their own, the increasing marriage of secessionist chatter and GOP ideology would be cause enough for concern. But this month’s disastrous winter storm in Texas also points to how idiotic such secessionist dreams truly are. Thanks to an electric grid carved out separately from the rest of the country, Texas remained effectively stranded while storms wrought rolling blackouts, boil-water advisories and dozens of deaths thus far. Scenes reminiscent of catastrophes like Hurricane Katrina illustrated what state-level collapse looks like in modern America.

Bright Line Watch finds, “The unwillingness of respondents to reject secession outright is widespread and context-dependent. Republicans express greater support for secession overall than Democrats, but Democrats are more amenable to secession than are Republicans in regions they dominate.”

Yes, but.

“Unless you want violence on the scale of the Partition of India—primarily targeting non-white and immigrant populations—liberals should really, really stop encouraging secession of so-called ‘Red States,'” Michel wrote in a tweet.

One other thing: Unless you want violence on the scale of the Partition of India—primarily targeting non-white and immigrant populations—liberals should really, really stop encouraging secession of so-called "Red States." https://t.co/3S1SBeHEwP pic.twitter.com/w13uIcEZHH

— Casey Michel (@cjcmichel) February 28, 2021

The joke is that it is hard to look away from a slow-motion train wreck. Even harder when you yourself are riding on the train. Harder still when these people are riding in the seat beside you.