The Commentariat -- March 16, 2020
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Trump Faces the Facts (At Least for Now). Nolan McCaskill & Joanne Kenen of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Monday acknowledged the gravity of the coronavirus pandemic, releasing strict new guidelines to limit people's interactions in an increasingly urgent bid to slow the virus in the next two weeks before U.S. hospitals are overwhelmed. 'It's bad. It's bad,' the president said at a news conference after releasing guidelines that called for people to avoid gathering in groups of more than 10 people and to steer clear of eating and drinking at bars, restaurants and food courts. The guidelines -- including a strict recommendation that anyone with even minor symptoms stay home -- are not mandatory. But they were issued with a sense of alarm and a frankness that Trump has not previously displayed.... No country, including the United States, has it under control, he said." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. McCrabbie: Just yesterday Trump said the coronavirus was something "we have tremendous control of." He also said he would give himself a "10" on a scale of one-to-ten for his response to the virus, which he claimed no one saw coming a month ago. So, ya know, not he hasn't totally faced reality. Trump said, too, that he was tested "very strongly" for the virus & the test was negative. What does that mean? Did he get a super-test? Did the technician stab him really hard? I just hope if I'm tested, it won't be done "very weakly."
Fred Imbert of CNBC: "Stocks fell sharply Monday -- with the Dow suffering its worst day since the 'Black Monday' market crash in 1987 and its third-worst day ever -- even after the Federal Reserve embarked on a massive monetary stimulus campaign to curb slower economic growth amid the coronavirus outbreak. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 2,997.10 points lower, or 12.9%, at 20,188.52. The 30-stock Dow was briefly down more than 3,000 points in the final minutes of trading. The S&P 500 dropped 12% to 2,386.13 -- hitting its lowest level since December 2018 -- while the Nasdaq Composite closed 12.3% lower at 6,904.59 in its worst day ever. The major averages fell to their lows into the close after ... Donald Trump said the worst of the outbreak could last until August. He also told reporters the U.S. 'may be' heading into a recession." This is an update of a story linked previously.
John Wagner & Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine (R) said that no in-person voting will take place in the state's primary Tuesday, noting that proceeding as usual would not be in accordance with the CDC guidelines against gatherings of 50 people or more.... He said a lawsuit will be filed to enact the change.... Election officials in the three other states voting Tuesday -- Arizona, Florida and Illinois -- have said they will proceed with their primaries, though Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) questioned the wisdom of that during a post-debate interview Sunday."
Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "President Trump told a group of governors on Monday morning that they should not wait for the federal government to fill the growing demand for respirators needed to treat people with coronavirus. '"Respirators, ventilators, all of the equipment -- try getting it yourselves,' Mr. Trump told the governors during the conference call, a recording of which was shared with The New York Times. 'We will be backing you, but try getting it yourselves. Point of sales, much better, much more direct if you can get it yourself.' The suggestion surprised some of the governors, who have been scrambling to contain the outbreak and are increasingly looking to the federal government for help with equipment, personnel and financial aid. Last Wednesday, Mr. Trump directed his labor secretary to increase the availability of respirators, and he has generally played down fears of shortages."
Ryan Lucas of NPR: "Federal courthouses across the United States are taking steps large and small -- including postponing trials and moving courtroom hearings to video conferences -- as officials scramble to curtail public gatherings and limit the spread of the coronavirus.... The most dramatic effect so far on the federal judiciary was the Supreme Court's decision Monday to postpone oral arguments scheduled through April 1.... But there is no blanket decision that covers all district and circuit courts. Instead, each is crafting its own response in coordination with state and local health officials."
Jared Holt of Right Wing Watch: "Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David A. Clarke melted down in a profanity-laced Twitter rant on Sunday in which he encouraged the public to defy the government's precautionary warnings meant to curb the spread of the coronavirus disease, alleging that liberal billionaire George Soros was somehow involved in the 'FLU panic.' 'GO INTO THE STREETS FOLKS. Visit bars, restaurants, shopping malls, CHURCHES and demand that your schools re-open. NOW! If government doesn't stop this foolishness ... STAY IN THE STREETS. END GOVERNEMNT CONTROL OVER OUR LIVES. IF NOT NOW, WHEN? THIS IS AN EXPLOITATION OF A CRISIS,' Clarke posted on his Twitter account, where he has nearly one million followers. In another tweet, Clarke called the United States' response to the COVID-19 coronavirus the byproduct of 'several decades of liberal wussification.'... In one since-removed tweet, Clarke claimed that the ordered closures of bars and restaurants were part of 'orchestrated attempt to destroy CAPITALISM.' Clarke urged businesses to 'defy the order.'" Ginni Thomas (Clarence's wife) previously recommended that the White House hire Clarke for "a homeland security role."
Mariel Padilla> & Zach Montague of the New York Times: "Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican, on Sunday encouraged healthy people to dine out at restaurants, contradicting public health advisories that strongly encouraged social distancing and discouraged Americans from attending mass gatherings.... 'There's a lot of concerns with the economy here because people are scared to go out,' he said. 'But I will just say, one of the things you can do is, if you're healthy, you and your family, it's a great time to just go out, go to a local restaurant. Likely you can get in easily. Let's not hurt the working people in this country that are relying on wages and tips to keep their small business going.'"
Al Lewis of CNBC: "Goldman Sachs' economists declared the U.S. economy all but recession-proof at the dawning of 2020, but now it appears a coronavirus-induced recession may have begun just a few months later. The analysis didn't account for a 'Black Swan,' a term for an improbable and unforeseen event.... 'We are going into a global recession,' warns chief economic advisor at Allianz Mohamed El-Erian, who correctly called the bear market as it approached. 'The economic damage is going to last.'" --s
Swamp. Mike Spies & Jake Pearson of ProPublica: "The Republican National Committee has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to contractors closely connected to the organization's chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel. One contract went to her husband's insurance company. Two others went to businesses whose executives recently donated to Ronna for Chair, a largely inactive political action committee that McDaniel controls.... The companies won the contracts soon after McDaniel became the party's top official. She was picked for the position by President Donald Trump after the 2016 election." --s
The Grifters. Jordan Libowitz of CREW: "On March 7, less than two weeks after President Trump returned from an official visit to India, the business he still owns and profits from made an announcement: it would now ship Trump-branded products to India. This appears to be a clear violation of the Trump family's pledge of no new foreign business during the Trump presidency, and an invitation for corruption. This decision will allow foreign nationals to funnel money into President Trump's pocket in a way that is unfortunately both secret and legal. India is joined on the announcement by Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Scotland (which we must note is still technically part of the United Kingdom) and Germany." --s
Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, via RawStory: "A teenager's website tracking coronavirus has become one of the most vital resources for people seeking accurate and updated numbers on the pandemic. The URL is nCoV2019.live. We speak with 17-year-old Avi Schiffmann, a high school junior from Mercer Island outside Seattle, who started the site in late December, when coronavirus had not yet been detected outside of China. Now the site has been visited by tens of millions from every country on Earth." --s
Robert Faturechi of ProPublica (March 10): "House members and staffers of both parties are increasingly dodging ethics investigators. The last decade showed a sharp drop in cooperation starting in mid-2016. Before that, in 74% of distinct cases subjects cooperated fully, providing interviews and documents as requested, according to a ProPublica review of every case in which OCE found a potential violation. Since then, full cooperation has plummeted to just 33% of cases. Today, it's common for lawmakers from both parties to refuse not just some requests for interviews and documents from OCE, but all of them. In the last four years, subjects in 11 of 18 distinct cases refused any cooperation whatsoever. In the six years before that, there were just three such cases out of 43." --s
Jonathan Chait on Trump's attempt "to pay a German biopharmaceutical company to develop a coronavirus vaccine in the United States, with the proviso that the product would be 'only for the United States.'... First, it shows his inability to grasp positive sum outcomes, especially between countries. A vaccine is a reductio ad absurdum of his dog-eat-dog worldview. While production capacity is somewhat finite, a vaccine is not a scarce good. Successful vaccines are always shared around the world because the entire world has a shared interest in eradicating diseases. Trump is the only world leader who is trying a beggar-thy-neighbor strategy for pandemic response. Second, it reveals his cynical assumption that everybody else shares his own amorality.... And third, we have Trump's inability to grasp the larger picture.... Would other countries be happy about this, or angry? Would they react in ways that might harm us when we might need their cooperation?"
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The New York Times' live updates of coronavirus developments is here. "Countries closed borders, cities from New York and Los Angeles to Paris and Madrid closed bars and restaurants, schools closed more classrooms and hundreds of millions of people closed their doors on one another as the authorities took ever more drastic steps to slow the spread of the new coronavirus. The consequences of China's harsh measures to halt the virus -- restricting the movement of about 700 million people at one point -- became apparent on Monday when the government released economic data showing industrial output falling to its lowest level in decades and unemployment rising at its highest rate ever in February.... There is a scramble across the [European] Continent to step up production of ventilators, with leaders calling for the kind of effort seen in wartime to produce munitions." The Washington Post's live updates are here. Both papers' coronavirus updates are free for nonsubscribers.
Zachary Basu of Axios: "Several state governments -- Michigan, Illinois, Massachusetts, California & Washington -- on Sunday called for the closure of bars and restaurants, a drastic step to enforce 'social distancing' that follows similar measures in Europe, where the coronavirus outbreak has put tremendous strain on health resources.... Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, made a plea on the Sunday morning talk shows for young people to stop flooding bars and restaurants."
Heather Long of the Washington Post: "The Federal Reserve announced on Sunday it would drop interest rates to zero and buy at least $700 billion in government and mortgage-related bonds as part of a wide-ranging emergency action to protect the economy from the impact of the coronavirus outbreak. The moves, the most dramatic by the U.S. central bank since the 2008 financial crisis, are aimed at keeping financial markets stable and making borrowing costs as low as possible as businesses around the country close and the U.S. economy hurtles toward recession. The Fed, led by Chair Jerome H. Powell, effectively cut its benchmark by a full percentage point to zero. The benchmark U.S. interest rate is now in a range of 0 to 0.25 percent, down from a range of 1 to 1.25 percent. In addition to rate cuts, the Fed announced it is restarting the crisis-era program of bond purchases known as 'quantitative easing,' in which the central bank buys hundreds of billions of dollars in bonds to further push down rates and keep markets flowing freely. The Fed is also giving more-generous loans to banks around the country so they can turn around and offer loans to small businesses and families in need of lifeline." Politico's story is here. ~~~
~~~ Fred Imbert of CNBC: "Stocks fell sharply on Monday even after the Federal Reserve embarked on a massive monetary stimulus campaign to curb slower economic growth amid the coronavirus outbreak. The S&P 500 dropped 11.4% while the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 2,700 points, or 11.7%. The Nasdaq Composite traded 11.2% lower. Before the open, futures contracts tied to the major averages hit their 'limit down' levels, meaning they could not trade below that threshold. Those limits are imposed by the CME Group to maintain orderly market behavior." This is an update of a story linked earlier this morning.
Mrs. McCrabbie: I don't know what to make of this, but there it is in a real newspaper, and apparently confirmed by a German minister: ~~~
~~~ Philip Oltermann of the Guardian: "The Trump administration has offered a German medical company 'large sums of money' for exclusive access to a Covid-19 vaccine, German media have reported. The German government is trying to fight off what it sees as an aggressive takeover bid by the US, the broadsheet Die Welt reports, citing German government circles. The US president had offered the Tübingen-based biopharmaceutical company CureVac 'large sums of money' to gain exclusive access to their work, wrote Die Welt. According to an anonymous source quoted in the newspaper, Trump was doing everything to secure a vaccine against the coronavirus for the US, 'but for the US only'. The German government was reportedly offering its own financial incentives for the vaccine to stay in the country. The German health minister Jens Spahn said that a takeover of the CureVac company by the Trump administration was 'off the table'. CureVac would only develop vaccine 'for the whole world', Spahn said, 'not for individual countries'." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ This US News report is more detailed & less sensational. It seems to back up the essence of the story, but it isn't clear from this report that Trump's aim was to secure the CureVac vaccine "for the U.S. only." Mrs. McC: If that is Trump's plan, it's analogous to a war crime. (Also linked yesterday.) A Reuters story, which I think was the first-published English-language report, is here. ~~~
~~~ Zeke Miller of the AP: "The first participant in a clinical trial for a vaccine to protect against the new coronavirus will receive an experimental dose on Monday, according to a government official. The National Institutes of Health is funding the trial, which is taking place at the Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle.... Public health officials say it will take a year to 18 months to fully validate any potential vaccine. Testing will begin with 45 young, healthy volunteers with different doses of shots co-developed by NIH and Moderna Inc. There's no chance participants could get infected from the shots, because they don't contain the virus itself. The goal is purely to check that the vaccines show no worrisome side effects, setting the stage for larger tests. Dozens of research groups around the world are racing to create a vaccine as COVID-19 cases continue to grow."
Some highlights from Sunday's NYT coronavirus updates: "New York's mayor announced on Sunday night that he would order all bars and restaurants to close. Restaurants would be limited to takeout and food delivery, officials said.... The [CDC] recommended Sunday that no gatherings with 50 people or more -- including weddings, festivals, parades, concerts, sporting events or conferences -- be held in the United States for the next eight weeks in one of the federal government's most sweeping efforts to slow the spread of the coronavirus.... California called for all people 65 and older to shelter in their homes. Massachusetts moved to ban dining in bars and restaurants beginning Tuesday, effectively closing Boston's bars for St. Patrick's Day. And Puerto Rico set some of the strictest measures in the United States, imposing a 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew and closing nonessential businesses.... By Sunday morning, known cases of coronavirus in the United States exceeded 2,700, spread across 49 states, prompting the mass cancellation of events and the reordering of American public life. Just one week ago, fewer than 500 cases of the illness had been diagnosed in the country..... Two American emergency-room doctors -- one in Washington State and one in New Jersey -- were in critical condition with Covid-19." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ See also in yesterday's Comments, Anonymous's account of a very early Sunday morning grocery-shopping outing.
The Travel Ban Fiasco
Matt Stieb of New York: "In an error-laden speech on Wednesday night, President Trump surprised the airline industry by announcing a travel ban on citizens from 26 European countries in an attempt to quell the spread of the coronavirus. On Saturday, the first day that the restrictions and 'enhanced entry screenings' were put into effect, Customs lines at major U.S. airports were inundated with passengers, resulting in reported waits of up to seven hours. Like many Trump administration responses to the pandemic, the implementation of the rules may have increased the likelihood of COVID-19 transmission, rather than their intended effect.... With the travel ban extending to Ireland and the United Kingdom on Monday at midnight, it's unlikely that the chaos at the airports, and the increased potential for COVID-19 exposure caused by the lines, will subside -- and all for a containment effort that public-health experts are confident will not work. University College London epidemiologist Francois Balloux told NPR that 'From a public-health perspective, it's completely pointless.'"
Derek Hawkins, et al., of the Washington Post: "Airports around the country were thrown into chaos Saturday night as workers scrambled to roll out the Trump administration's hastily arranged health screenings for travelers returning from Europe. Scores of anxious passengers said they encountered jam-packed terminals, long lines and hours of delays as they waited to be questioned by health authorities at some of the busiest travel hubs in the United States." Mrs. McC: The accompanying photo of the U.S. Customs waiting area at Dallas-Fort Worth International is not exactly a picture of "social distancing," even though many of the people in the photo are coming from areas with high coronavirus incidences. It's a "What's Wrong with This Picture?" moment. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Cheryl Benard in a Washington Post op-ed: "Arriving at Dulles International Airport via London, I encountered a case study in how to spread a pandemic.... Dulles had been identified by the [Trump] administration as one of the handful of U.S. airports equipped to test arriving passengers and admit or quarantine them accordingly.... Upon landing, I spent three hours in a jammed immigration hall trying to decide which analogy fit better: the ignorant Middle Ages during the plague years or the most chaotic airport in the least developed country.... There was no attempt to enable social distancing; we were packed closely together. Two giant queues of people -- one for U.S. citizens and green-card holders and one for foreign nationals -- wound their way through the cavernous hall. I counted and came up with approximately 450 people in each section, for a total of just under a thousand. Many were coughing, sneezing and looking unwell." Read on. It gets worse.
Jacob Rosenberg of Mother Jones: "On Saturday night, as images of huge crowds stuck at customs at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport went viral, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker [D] tweeted his frustration -- tagging ... Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence. 'These crowds are waiting to get through customs,' he said, 'which is under federal jurisdiction....you need to do something NOW.' Pritzker's message was clear: 'The federal government needs to get its s@#t together.'... On Sunday morning, Pritzker said on Meet the Press that he did hear from the White House late Saturday night. Except it wasn't to offer support or help at one of the nation's biggest airports -- rather, it was to yell at him for tweeting about it in the first place."
Taylor Dolven of the Miami Herald: "Despite the positive test for COVID-19 from a passenger who had disembarked days earlier, thousands of people were allowed to leave a cruise ship in Miami on Sunday without undergoing medical screening. The former passenger got off the MSC Meraviglia in Miami on March 8 after an eight-day Caribbean cruise, leaving 103 passengers and the ship's crew aboard for the next voyage. Four days later, after the ship had sailed with thousands of additional new passengers aboard, the Public Health Agency of Canada informed Broward-based MSC Cruises that the former passenger had tested positive. Once it received the result, the company said it isolated in individual cabins seven crew members who had been in close contact with the passenger. But instead of holding the ship off the Florida coast and testing people on board for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, MSC said U.S. health authorities cleared it to dock Sunday and disembark passengers as normal."
** Ariana Cha of the Washington Post: "In the Chinese city of Wuhan..., doctors made life-or-death decisions last month when 1,000 people needed ventilators to support their breathing, but only 600 were available. In Iran, where numerous high-level officials have been infected, doctors sought unsuccessfully to get the international community to lift sanctions so they could purchase more lifesaving machines. And in northern Italy, doctors took the painful step last week of issuing guidelines for rationing ventilators and other essential medical equipment, prioritizing treatment for the young and others with the best chance of survival. Such tough choices could well be ahead for the United States, a nation with limited hospital capacity and grim epidemiological projections estimating that as many as 40 to 60 percent of the country's population of 327 million could eventually become infected." ~~~
~~~ Mrs. MCrabbie: If you're looking for reassurances from the Dear Leader, here's what you get: "We're in the process, and in some cases have already done it, ordered a large number of respirators just in case. We hope we don't need them but we've ordered a large number." (March 14) WTF does that even mean? Trump of course will get whatever medical equipment he needs; as he struggles for breath, his doctor isn't going to tell him a procurement clerk in the process of ordering a new respirator for him, but nobody knows if the paperwork has gone through, and if even the manufacturer gets the order, gets around to filling & sending it, what government storehouse it might go to & how & when it might be routed to Walter Reed. And his doctor won't have a momentary twinge of conscience and say, "But I'm lying about all this, Sir. There are no respirators on order, much less ventilators. You're going to die, Sir. Right quick."
Quack, Quack. Sarah Jones of New York: "... for some people, a pandemic is a business opportunity.... In response to the pandemic, some consumers are turning to homeopathy, essential oils, and other forms of alternative medicine and home cures to either prevent COVID-19, or to treat it. Others are raking in profit off the anxieties of the public. The problem has become so significant that the World Health Organization now addresses a few choice urban legends on its official website for COVID-19.... Even without the looming threat of pandemic, pseudoscientific cures can pose a real threat to the public. No scientific evidence supports the claim that homeopathy has curative properties, for example, and relying on unproven treatments without the assistance of conventional medicine can put a person's health at risk." Jones names a number of famous-ish people selling snake oil, including televangelist Jim Bakker & actor Gwyneth Paltrow.
Summer Concepcion of TPM: "President Trump attempted to quell the panic that has ensued amid the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. during a White House press briefing Sunday afternoon. After shouting out to his meeting with executives from Target, Campbell's and Costco, Trump advised against panic-buying in response to the outbreak. 'You don't have to buy so much,' Trump said. 'Take it easy, just relax. People are going in and buying more. I remember -- I guess during the conversation Doug of Walmart said -- that they're buying more than they buy at Christmas. Relax. We're doing great. It all will pass.' Trump later added that the executives he met with earlier Sunday 'have asked me to say, "Could you buy a little bit less please?"' which he thought he 'would never hear that from a retailer.'" More on Trump's Sunday press briefing in the story by the NYT's Karni & Goldman linked below.~~~
~~~ I Really Don't Care. Do U? David Leonhardt of the New York Times: "I've reviewed all of [Trump's] public statements and actions on coronavirus over the last two months, and they show a president who put almost no priority on public health. Trump's priorities were different: Making the virus sound like a minor nuisance. Exaggerating his administration's response. Blaming foreigners and, anachronistically, the Obama administration. Claiming incorrectly that the situation was improving. Trying to cheer up stock market investors.... Now that the severity of the virus is undeniable, Trump is already trying to present an alternate history of the last two months. Below are the facts -- a timeline of what the president was saying, alongside statements from public-health experts as well as data on the virus."
Charles Blow of the New York Times: "The virus was never a hoax or a media creation or a flash in the pan that would affect few and miraculously vanish. But Trump, the supposed leader of the country, wasted precious time -- weeks and weeks -- telling the American public just that, while not taking the drastic measures that the government is now, belatedly, taking. That puts lives in danger, and surely, in the end, will have cost lives.... Even when cooler heads and bigger brains prevailed, and Trump stopped trying to wish the virus away and started the work of driving it away, he was hapless, dishonest and dissembling."
Justine Coleman of the Hill: "President Trump said Sunday that he is 'strongly considering' a full pardon for his former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 'So now it is reported that, after destroying his life & the life of his wonderful family (and many others also), the FBI, working in conjunction with the Justice Department, has "lost" the records of General Michael Flynn,' he tweeted. 'How convenient. I am strongly considering a Full Pardon!' he added." (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ "It Is Reported"?? Martin Pengelly & Oliver Laughland of the Guardian: "Although Trump did not cite specific reports, [Flynn's lawyer Sidney] Powell had tweeted hours earlier an unsubstantiated claim that '#FBI still hiding evidence of #Flynn's innocence'." Mrs. McC: Oh. The "reports" are in the right-wing fantasy loop. So (1) make up a story about some miscarriage of justice; (2) pardon the guy based on the invented story. (Also linked yesterday.) ~~~
~~~ Annie Karni & Adam Goldman of the New York Times: "Mr. Trump, who appeared to spend the day stewing at the White House, also lashed out at a familiar group of perceived Democratic enemies: Hillary Clinton, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York. The president brought up Mrs. Clinton's use of a private email server, accused Mr. Schumer of threatening his two appointees to the Supreme Court and falsely blamed the Obama administration of responding slowly to the swine flu outbreak in 2009. In the evening, Mr. Trump made an appearance in the White House briefing room.... He left Vice President Mike Pence to address the escalating anxiety across the country and the availability of testing.... During the news conference, Mr. Trump again attacked the news media, after he falsely claimed last week that Google had 1,700 engineers at work on a coronavirus website that would help people evaluate their symptoms and locate a drive-by testing site. 'The Fake and Corrupt News never called Google,' Mr. Trump tweeted earlier in the day, inaccurately, in his latest attempt to sow mistrust of the news media. 'Even in times such as these, they are not truthful. Watch for their apology, it won't happen.'"
Presidential Race
America, go to the YouTube right now. -- Bernie Sanders, Sunday debate, on Joe Biden's claim that he didn't make repeated attempts to cut Social Security ~~~
~~~ First Runner-up in the Democratic Prezstakes Will Be a Woman. Alexander Burns & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Senator Bernie Sanders called for vastly more aggressive government action to battle the coronavirus but split over some of the details along familiar ideological lines on Sunday night.... In their first one-on-one encounter of the primary race, Mr. Sanders ... demanded sweeping economic reform and the creation of a single-payer health care system to address crises like the virus. Mr. Biden said he would call up the military to help and enact 'a multi-multi-billion dollar program' of disease containment and economic rescue, and said that there were more issues at hand that could not wait on reinventing the health care system. Mr. Biden also used the debate to explicitly pledge to name a woman as his running mate, a vow that prompted Mr. Sanders to say he would 'in all likelihood' do the same. The specter of the disease pervaded their encounter from their first moments onstage: Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders declined to shake hands at the start and stood six feet apart from each other at a television studio in Washington, following the guidelines for social distancing prescribed by public health authorities.... The debate took place without a live audience." ~~~
~~~ Christopher Cadelago & Elena Schneider of Politico describe "key moments" in the debate. NBC News reporters list some key exchanges here. ~~~
~~~ Joe Biden knows the way to the Situation Room.
Superfluous "News": Karen Heller of the Washington Post believes she has compiled "The Definitive Guide to Bernie Sanders' Hand Gestures." (Also linked yesterday.)
Beyond the Beltway
Florida. Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "Andrew Gillum, the former Tallahassee mayor who was the Democratic nominee for governor of Florida in 2018, announced on Sunday night that he is going into rehab. Mr. Gillum, who narrowly lost the governor's race and went on to become a prominent television commentator, said in a statement that he would seek treatment for alcoholism. Mr. Gillum was found in a Miami Beach hotel room last week when paramedics were called in to help another man who was suffering from a possible drug overdose."
Way Beyond
Israel. Uh, Wow? David Halbfinger of the New York Times: "Benny Gantz, the centrist former army chief battling to depose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, on Sunday won the endorsements of a narrow majority of lawmakers, earning him a fresh chance to form a government and break Israel's yearlong political deadlock. The surprise majority for Mr. Gantz, 60, who earned the backing both of Arab lawmakers often accused of sympathizing with terrorists and from ultranationalist lawmakers often called rabidly anti-Arab, puts him in a stronger-than-expected position to try to pry loose Mr. Netanyahu's 11-year grip on power. Israel' president, Reuven Rivlin, said he would formally assign Mr. Gantz, of the Blue and White party, the mandate to form a government at midday on Monday."
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