Ninety-four percent of U.S. adults now approve of marriages between Black people and White people, up from 87% in the prior reading from 2013. The current figure marks a new high in Gallup’s trend, which spans more than six decades. Just 4% approved when Gallup first asked the question in 1958.
Good to see. I was actually worried about moving back to the Mainland in 2001 but my fears were groundless. Our little wedding party in 1992. Me 2nd from right. pic.twitter.com/yAKJloD14s
I’m old enough to remember “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby.” But that meant something else entirely, not the the sum of perpetually aggrieved white mens’ fears. Then again, maybe it did, too.
Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease doctor, tells Axios, “Right now, we’re still in pandemic mode, because we have 160,000 new infections a day. That’s not even modestly good control … which means it’s a public health threat.” Fauci adds, “In a country of our size, you can’t be hanging around and having 100,000 infections a day. You’ve got to get well below 10,000 before you start feeling comfortable.”
Covid won’t die. But there are signs of life from national Democrats as the Delta variant continues to ravage the country, especially among the unvaccinated.
In a throw-down speech Thursday, President Joe Biden flexed his adminstration’s regulatory muscle and ordered businesses with more than 100 employees to require their workers to be immunized or else test them each week:
Biden also said that he would require most health-care facilities that accept Medicare or Medicaid funding to vaccinate their employees, which the White House believes will cover 50,000 locations.
And the president signed an executive order compelling all federal employees to get vaccinated — without an option for those who prefer to be regularly tested instead — in an effort to create a model he hopes state governments will embrace. He is also ordering all staffers in Head Start programs, along with Defense Department and federally operated schools for Native Americans, to be vaccinated.
President Biden says the U.S. is "in the tough stretch" of the pandemic "and it could last for a while."
He blames the Delta variant, unvaccinated Americans and "elected officials actively working to undermine the fight against COVID-19," which he says is "totally unacceptable" pic.twitter.com/k3uF9IMTDO
Biden adopted a newly antagonistic tone toward the unvaccinated Thursday, underlining his shift from cajoling to coercion as he placed blame on those still refusing to get shots for harming other Americans. “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin,” Biden said. “And your refusal has cost all of us.”
A Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee memo Greg Sargent obtained indicates that Democrats mean to lean into Republicans for perpetuating the country’s pain and suffering, both economic and medical (Washington Post):
“House Republicans have lied about its impact” and “dangerously rejected medical guidance to wear masks and social distance,” the memo says, adding that “extremist Republicans” have “even encouraged Americans to consume horse and cattle dewormer.”
Critically, the memo notes that if Republicans continue impeding our covid response, that will stand in the way of “getting Americans back to work.” And it’s true that the backsliding on covid is showing serious signs of harming the economic recovery.
Republicans are undermining Covid response so they can blame Joe Biden and Democrats for failure to rein in the pandemic, when in fact the GOP is actively sabotaging the country in a way that’s harming the economy and killing Americans. Cynical is too mild a term for it. Villainous does not quite cover it either.
A populous weary of nearly two years of masks, disease and death has, as Biden said, run out of patience with the petulance of self-described patriots who refuse to come to aid their country in a time of crisis. Patriots do not risk their country or their neighbors over political pique.
Partisan redistricting ahead of the 2022 elections is likely to hand control of the House of Representatives back to Republicans. But Dave Wasserman of Cook’s Political Report suggests the mood of the country could be a wild card. Suburban and educated whites could turn against Republicans over their tantrums about masks and vaccines:
“If independent voters begin to see Republicans as interfering with their ability to get back to normal, because they are flirting with things that are contrary to medical expertise,” Wasserman told me, “it makes it easier for Democrats to cast Republicans as a political fringe movement.”
That, Wasserman notes, could speak to voters who believe impeding our covid recovery is keeping us from “getting the economy back to normal,” and enabling them to “get back to their pre-covid lives.”
This debate could also “resonate with the highest propensity voters who are college graduates,” Wasserman said. The Virginia gubernatorial contest is a test: Democrats are aggressively engaging the debate on vaccines and masks, and if they win with good turnout among suburban and educated voters, that could be a “template.”
Dan Pfeiffer notes that while Republicans think they can weaponize masks and mandates for the midterms, they may be misreading the room. Vaccine mandates enjoy widespread support in a Politico/Morning Consult from August: about 55% including a third of Trump 2020 voters.
To capitalize on that Democrats need to do three things, Pfeiffer writes. They need to make Republicans wear their opposition to vaccine and mask mandates like an albatross and “hold them accountable for enabling the unvaccinated minority to put our children in danger.”
Next, Democrats should stop tiptoeing around vaccine mandates. He offers some Navigator Research language that tests 17 points better than Republican messaging:
These types of requirements have been around for decades. Students are typically required to receive the smallpox and polio vaccine, and it only makes sense to require the coronavirus vaccine as well.
Vaccinated adults suffer through the inconveniences of masks and the anxiety of becoming one of the very rare breakthrough cases. But kids under 12 do not have the choice to get vaccinated. Across the country, they are returning to school without masks or any other preventative measures in place. The number of cases is rising and pediatric wards are filling up in several states.
This is “a direct result of Republican leadership” of which voters need relentless reminding.
Odds are against Democrats holding their ground or gaining in 2022. Or at least they would be in normal times. Promising voters a return to normal may just be the message that works for them. Plus a whole lot of worn shoe leather.
AG Merrick Garland announced that the DOJ is filing a lawsuit against the state of Texas for their unconstitutional law banning abortion after 6 weeks and empowering bounty hunters to sue people for aiding any woman who attempts to get one after that. You can read all about the suit here.
I’ll just point out that I wrote this the other day about the Texas anti-abortion vigilante law:
This law’s novel approach to enforcement, essentially removing the state and using what amounts to vigilantes and bounty hunters (under the promise of $10,000 for every abortion aider and abettor they bag) is essentially a form of legal secession from the U.S. Constitution.
Attorney General Merrick Garland confirmed my unschooled, non-lawyer observation today:
“This kind of scheme to nullify the Constitution of the United States is one that all Americans, whatever their politics or party, should fear,” said Garland, warning that what he called the “bounty hunter” element of the law may become “a model for action in other areas by other states and with respect to other constitutional rights or judicial precedents.”
You would think that Republicans might have worried about this being used to ban the constitutional rights they value, like gun ownership.I suppose they feel confident that the Trump Court will protect them, which is probably correct. Still, it’s an extremely radical proposal that you’d think the so-called “conservative” party would not have proposed. Of course, they haven’t been conservative for a very long time so that’s no surprise.
Here’s a midterm message for you: Judging by the GOP’s continuing slide into extremist and destructive behavior in the face of a surging covid-19, electing more Republicans to positions of responsibility right now would likely mean more economic malaise, sickness, misery and death.
This is what Democrats come very close to saying in a new memo about the 2022 elections that their House campaign arm is now distributing. The memo is an important marker: It suggests Democrats are finally leaning into prosecuting the case against Republicans for actively impairing the nation’s response to the covid-19 resurgence.
This cannot come soon enough. A confluence of new factors is making it obvious that Democrats need to take on this argument much more forcefully, not just for the good of the party, but for the good of the country.
The memo from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee directly ties GOP extremism on covid to the health of the country — and, importantly, to our prospects for economic recovery and a return to normalcy.
“House Republicans have lied about its impact” and “dangerously rejected medical guidance to wear masks and social distance,” the memo says, adding that “extremist Republicans” have “even encouraged Americans to consume horse and cattle dewormer.”
Critically, the memo notes that if Republicans continue impeding our covid response, that will stand in the way of “getting Americans back to work.” And it’s true that the backsliding on covid is showing serious signs of harming the economic recovery.
Democrats might also point out that GOP governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas are doing all they can to block local officials from implementing mask requirements to protect their communities. They might note the covid surges in their states, as cautionary tales about a return to GOP rule.
Democrats should engage this forcefully not only because the majorities who favor sensible collective action on behalf of public health need to hear officials giving voice to their aspirations for recovery. It’s also because Republicans themselves will make the midterms about covid.
To see how, check out this quote that a GOP operative gave to CNN:“Democrats ran an entire campaign dishonestly promising that they alone could fix a once-in-a-generation pandemic. Now that they’ve completely failed and their poll numbers are tanking, they are desperate to shift blame,” Michael McAdams, National Republican Congressional Committee communications director, said in a statement.
After having gone to great lengths to impair our response to covid at best, and to actively sabotage it at worst, Republicans will claim the covid resurgence is only the fault of President Biden and Democrats.
Sargent notes that Dave Wasserman of the Cook Report has issued an analysis that says this could be a very potent line of attack for Democrats:
The shift of suburban and educated whites to Democrats could make a difference here. As Wasserman notes, Democrats have at least a chance at defying patterns in which the out-of-power party is more engaged, because educated voters also tend to turn out in midterms.
In an interview, Wasserman said engaging on covid might help activate those voters. As Wasserman told me: “It’s probably one of Democrats’ best issues.”
[…]
“If independent voters begin to see Republicans as interfering with their ability to get back to normal, because they are flirting with things that are contrary to medical expertise,” Wasserman told me, “it makes it easier for Democrats to cast Republicans as a political fringe movement.”
That, Wasserman notes, could speak to voters who believe impeding our covid recovery is keeping us from “getting the economy back to normal,” and enabling them to “get back to their pre-covid lives.”
Yes, I think it could. It’s certainly a factor here in California over the recall. The anger people feel over those who refuse to get vaccinated and are prolonging this crisis is starting to boil over. I think plenty of people will remember it.
Good for the Democrats for going after this. It shows they are at least contemplating playing hardball to get their base out in 2022. If the recall is any example it appears that the Democratic base is still engaged and will be engaged as long as these miscreants re trying to kill people.
Buzzfeed got access to the Capitol Police internal memoranda in advance of the January 6th protests. It’s not good:
The chief of the Capitol Police and its top intelligence officer personally approved permits for six demonstrations to be held on Jan. 6, 2021, despite signs that one of the applications was filed for an organization that didn’t exist and that five of them were a proxy for a group staging large, violent protests across the country.
Capitol Police documented concerns that organizers had attempted to conceal their affiliation with Ali Alexander, the right-wing activist behind the group Stop the Steal, in a secret effort to coordinate their protests against the results of the 2020 presidential election. Despite those concerns, and COVID-19 policies that capped demonstrations at 50 people each, the Capitol Police force’s intelligence assessment said there were “no plans for participants to enter the buildings” and noted “no adverse intelligence related to the upcoming event.” It assessed “the Level of Probability of acts of civil disobedience/arrests to occur” during the demonstration “as Highly Improbable.”
I think we know why they weren’t concerned, don’t we? These were Real Americans. You know, the “good people” who don’t commit violence like the you-know-whats.
It’s always been obvious to me that the reason nobody thought there would be violence on that day is because of their bias that white Trump supporters are just good patriotic Americans when in fact, there were many warnings that there is a very violence extremist element among them. In fact, the worst terrorist act in American history before 9/11 was committed by one of them.
And frankly, I don’t see a lot of evidence that January 6th changed that.
About 4:30 in, a guy who had covid last fall and spent a week in a hospital receiving Regeneron monoclonal antibodies says he won’t take the vaccine because “they” “shafted my president” by not giving Trump the vaccine “because they knew damn well he’d be re-elected.”
This is what we’re dealing with — total irrationality.
That was then. 650,000 deaths later, this is where we are:
“An Authoritarian.”
“Rotting bag of oatmeal … tyrant.”
“Very frail and very weak.”
Those are only a handful of the vile attacks directed at President Biden on Fox News Thursday night following his address to the nation announcing sweeping new vaccine mandates. Biden’s move has prompted an all-out declaration of war in right-wing media. While he is getting a fair amount of praise from mainstream sources, with some analysts even saying he still did not go far enough, the reality is entirely different in the media consumed by the individuals Biden actually needs (and has tried) to persuade.
It is difficult to overstate the degree to which right-wing commentators are slinging venom at Biden, the White House, and public health officials following the speech. I pay close attention to these corners of the media ecosystem and it is as bad as I have ever seen it.
“BIDEN IS AN AUTHORITARIAN,” a banner on Fox declared. “BIDEN DECLARES WAR ON MILLIONS OF AMERICANS,” yet another Fox banner read. “FULL TOTALITARIAN,” Breitbart’s homepage splash screamed. The far-right, but mass consumed, Gateway Pundit ripped the “Biden regime” for its “tyrannical mandates.” The Federalist described it as a “fascist move.” On and on it went…
This can’t be ignored
I know there is a temptation to just ignore these talkers. To tune them out. To pretend they don’t exist. But their language – which essentially characterizes Biden and public health officials as evil tyrants — is key to understanding why so many Americans are not protecting themselves with a vaccine.
Huge communities of Americans are being lied to and misinformed by bad-faith media personalities and politicians who seek profit and power. And when you understand the nastiness of the rhetoric being spewed to these communities, you also understand that nothing Biden or Dr. Anthony Fauci or any public health official can say will win them over. Nothing.
Which I imagine is the conclusion Biden and his administration have drawn. As Biden said in his speech, “We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin, and your refusal [to get vaccinated] has cost all of us.” Steve Schmidtput it this way on MSNBC: “We live in an age of misinformation and an age of insanity — and enough is enough is enough. Reality is reality and it is time to end the B.S.”
The bad faith
Bad faith nonsense has saturated right-wing media and the GOP. One key argument I’ve seen put forward is that Biden should not mandate vaccines, but simply articulate why they are needed so that people can come to the decision on their own. Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw, a right-wing media star and proponent of this strategy, summed it up like this, “The right path is built upon explaining, educating, and *building* trust, including explaining the risks/benefits/pros/cons in an honest way so a person can make their own decision.”
But that has proven not to be a viable option when Republican politicians and the media sources trusted by conservatives poison the waters. It is as if politicians and pundits like Crenshaw are living in an alternate world in which the top-rated cable hosts are not peddling anti-vaccine rhetoric.
>> Speaking of bad faith: I was struck at how shameless Sean Hannity was on his show Thursday night, saying about the Biden admin, “They created Covid hesitancy. They did this!” Uh, really Sean?
Feelings, not facts
Brian Stelter writes:
“Reading Darcy’s recap of Thursday’s coverage, two things come to mind. First: The crazed reactions to Biden are about feelings, not facts. The most popular links on the right-wing web aren’t to news stories, they’re to opinion pieces. Second, I’m reminded of what Nicco Melewrote earlier this week. His ‘Rule 1’ is that ‘it will get crazier.’ If the Biden era seems calm to you, ‘rest assured,’ he says, ‘it will get crazier.’ One of the reasons why: ‘There are two media eco-systems in this country, standing side-by-side.’ Thus, rule 1 remains in effect…”
From the Reliable Sources newsletter, 9/9/2021
This isn’t about feelings, it’s about politics. But in this case the instinctive right wing freakout was the wrong move. The majority of the public is sick and tired of this bullshit — it hits them in their personal lives, where they work, their kids schools and across their communities. It’s not abstract, it’s very real.
In August, we tested a concept similar to the vaccine proposal that @JoeBiden unveiled today in the five states that flipped from Trump to Biden. Given how closely divided those five states are, this is about as much consensus as you will ever find.
We also tested separately the mandate on federal employees, and it was close to identical (not surprisingly)
President Biden: "I am so disappointed that, particularly some of the Republican governors, have been so cavalier with the health of these kids. So cavalier with the health of their communities. We're playing for real here. This isn't a game." pic.twitter.com/RMxzC46FuU
The GOP has been captured by their extremist base, egged on by Fox News. And it’s killing people. Our only hope is that it also kills their chance to govern this country.
Yet another downside of federalism: you must depend on states for the necessary date to track the pandemic. And some are just not doing it:
Colorful maps on the new online Health Equity Tracker reveal how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected different races and age groups across the United States, but you can tell something is not quite right.
A handful of states are grayed out, and that’s not because they’ve escaped the pandemic.
“There’s no data coming out of Texas,” points out software engineer Josh Zarrabi of Atlanta’s Morehouse School of Medicine, which recently rolled out the tracking portal. “A lot of Americans should be unhappy about that. And they should say, like, ‘Wow, like, we need the data, right, because we’re missing a huge piece of the puzzle here.’ “
And it’s not just a search for jigsaw pieces from Texas.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tallied over 39 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S., but if you want to know more detailed information, such as where patients live, whether patients were hospitalized or died, demographic details like race, gender and age, that information is gathered separately.
In that more detailed CDC data set, about 1 in 5 known cases — or 7 million people — are completely missing, an NPR analysis found. On top of that, about two-thirds of the data present aren’t usable, as health care providers marked fields as “Unknown” or simply left them blank.
Most states have voluntarily sent up whatever records they have, but a handful have not. Texas, Missouri, Louisiana, West Virginia and Wyoming have each submitted less than one-tenth of their total cases. Another handful of states, including Florida, Michigan and Kentucky, have smaller but still significant gaps in their data, each completely missing over 30% of their known cases.
It’s one thing for states to have difficulty collecting the information or having spotty compliance by health care institutions. It’s quite another to just be uncooperative which is the most likely explanation for why at least some of those states aren’t bothering to collect and/or submit the date.
The US is once again coming face to face with the very dubious decision they made in the beginning to go with the federalist system. I realize they didn’t have much choice considering the slave holders’ insistence on their “sovereignty.” But it was still a big mistake.
CNN reports that all the Senate Committee chairs have been assiduously kissing his ass for the last several months, “keeping him informed” and assessing whether he will allow them to pass legislation with his blessing. He’s apparently given them a list of his demands which basically amounts to forgetting about climate change legislation and forgetting about any hope for improving the health and education for the American people.
It’s one of the most sickening pieces I’ve read about just how insane our system is in an age of almost total polarization, particularly archaic rules like the filibuster which basically puts all power in the hands of this one egomaniac who was elected by a tiny constituency. If this is democracy I’m afraid it’s overrated.
Josh Marshall wrote about “what makes Manchin” tick today and it’s well done:
It’s sort of a parlor game to try to make sense of the motives of people you disagree with or frustrate you. Maybe it’s not that complicated? Maybe the reason they keep doing X is because they want to do X. The fact that you don’t like X doesn’t make it that hard to understand.
Yet there’s something a bit more to it with Manchin. His notional arguments for the ‘strategic pause’ on the President’s agenda doesn’t really add up. He says we need to worry about ‘runaway inflation’ when inflation is lower than it was in the 80s after Paul Volcker had tamed it. He says we need to keep our powder dry in case COVID gets worse and we need more massive relief packages. But actually what’s being discussed is spending over ten years. If COVID turns out to be catastrophically different in a year we could just change the plan. Even diehard inflation hawks like Larry Summers don’t think the spending over a decade is an issue on this front. And none of these things are really different than 6 or 7 weeks ago when Manchin gave all signs that he was at least broadly on board, subject to some hacks and shaves, with the $3.5 trillion package.
It’s a bit reminiscent of what we saw this Spring. Kate brought up that at the beginning Manchin said that his one priority was ensuring Biden had a successful presidency. Now he’s decided it would be a good idea to light Biden’s whole presidency on fire. Manchin was dead set against ending or reforming the filibuster. Then he started saying we’d made the filibuster too easy. And since it’s been abused for being too easy we needed to make it harder. Then he went back to saying the filibuster was awesome. And here we are.
So we have all these theories: Manchin is a crypto-Republican; he’s doing the work of his funders; he and Biden have a secret understanding and it’s all going to work out. My own theory is a bit different. It’s not even my theory. Someone mentioned it to me several months ago. But I can’t remember who. The theory is this: all of Manchin’s actions hold together and make sense if you imagine he got up on a particular day, absorbed the CW of the moment and said the first or second thing that came into his head.
This is admittedly a somewhat diminishing read. But Manchin clearly likes the limelight and he doesn’t pretend to be an ideologue. If you use this framework all the various shifts and turns start to make sense. Manchin is the quintessential Washington player, very much a creature of Washington insider culture with all its shibboleths and conventional wisdoms.
All of which brings me to this “exclusive” poll published this morning by Axios. The poll was commissioned by No Labels, the pro-‘centrist’ outfit which actually functions as the family PAC of Mark Penn, onetime Clinton pollsters and general TPM nemesis. No Labels was founded and run by Penn’s wife, Nancy Jacobson, and works to support Penn proteges like Josh Gottheimer. The poll is comically leading. It asked whether we “need large-scale social welfare spending now” or “favor a strategic pause to understand the implications of spending $3.5 trillion.”
I tried to capture some of the inanity here …
Even for axios this is quite something. Look at the wording of this ‘exclusive’ poll released by the Mark Penn Family PAC, sometimes known as No Labels.
(There was also an issue with, if you’ll notice, the pro-Manchin bars being dramatically bigger than the pro-Biden ones, even when the numbers were reversed. But that seems to have been a technical glitch.)
This basically amounts to ‘do you favor spending a shitload of money’ or ‘taking a moment to figure out what you’re spending it on’. No pollster trying to gauge opinion words a poll that way. It generated 60% support for Manchin’s ‘strategic pause’. But that’s what pressure groups do: generate leading polls. Here though it ran on Axios as basically straight news.
Marshall then draws the line between the interest groups, Manchin, and establishment journalism that leads to this kind of result. As depressing as that is, he may be right.
Still, I maintain that it’s possible this is a kabuki dance in which the numbers being thrown around are not real and they are doing this to coddle Sinemanchin so they’ll be able to strut around and take credit for keeping the libs in line when the real numbers emerge. Let’s hope so because otherwise we have a problem. The progressives aren’t going to be happy if they really cut all these programs and there are a lot more of them than there used to be. They cannot be taken for granted. On the other hand with a one vote margin in the Senate Manchin or Sinema can decide to jump to the GOP and the whole game changes overnight. Their power is immense.
It’s kind of amazing that the Dems are going to try to pass this massive change with the slender margins they have in both houses. However, they probably remember that back in 2009 they had a huge majority in the House and 60 votes in the Senate and it wasn’t any easier. You just have to plow ahead and use the power when you have it. Let’s hope they have learned something about managing their Divas and have planned accordingly.
This would be unremarkable in any civilized nation. Unfortunately, we are not a civilized nation so this common sense decision is shockingly unusual:
Los Angeles is poised to become the first major school district in the United States to mandate coronavirus vaccines for students 12 and older who are attending class in person.
The district’s elected Board of Education will meet Thursday afternoon to vote on the measure, which is expected to pass with broad support. The Los Angeles Unified School District is the second largest in the nation, serving over 600,000 students, and the mandate could set an important national precedent.
Students would need their first vaccine dose by Nov. 21 and their second by Dec. 19 to begin the next semester fully inoculated. Those who turn 12 after those dates will have 30 days after their birthday to receive their first shot.
Students participating in in-person extracurricular activities will need both shots by the end of October. The resolution mentions “qualified and approved exemptions,” but does not offer details.
The district offers online independent study for those who opt out of in-person learning this year, but so far, only a tiny percentage of students have chosen it.
The months before the mandate takes effect will allow the district to conduct outreach and educational programs for families. According to the Los Angeles County Department of Health, 58 percent of the district’s 12-to-18-year-olds have already received at least one vaccine dose.
Los Angeles Unified has been operating vaccine clinics in schools, and has the nation’s broadest school testing program, screening all students and staff members weekly. Masks are required for every individual on campus, indoors and outdoors, and staff members must be vaccinated, with limited exceptions for serious medical conditions and sincerely held religious beliefs.
“Our goal is to keep kids and teachers as safe as possible and in the classroom,” said Nick Melvoin, a Los Angeles school board member, in a written statement expressing support for the resolution. “A medical and scientific consensus has emerged that the best way to protect everyone in our schools and communities is for all those who are eligible to get vaccinated.”
Yes it has. And they are running vax clinics in the school to make it easy for the kids to get them so no one can complain that they can’t get to the vaccines.
But get ready — the backlash will be severe. We have plenty of looney wingnuts in LA who will have a total meltdown at this news.
