...And then there were two.
An elegy for Warren's campaign. Plus: a coronavirus update from Seattle.
Real quick: Hi! If this is the first time you’re reading this, my name is Raf, and this is The Miscellanies — a biweekly newsletter where I write about all kinds of different things, from sports to science to style. Welcome, and if you want to sign up, you can do that by mashing that orange-lookin’ button below. Thank you! And now on to today’s newsletter…
We’re a worse, poorer country - and party - this morning. That’s because yesterday afternoon, Elizabeth Warren suspended her Presidential campaign, meaning that the contest for the Democratic nomination comes down to two white men in their late seventies.
This is not a good thing.
Despite my strong ideological preference for one of those men (Bernie Sanders, the other being Joe Biden), it is an utterly damning indictment of the Democratic Party that a candidate field that started out as the most diverse ever (six women, four Black candidates, two AAPI candidates, one Latino candidate, and one LGBTQ candidate) was winnowed down to this. But that’s not the biggest reason we’re worse off politically this morning.
We’re worse off politically because if you were to design the ideal candidate to be the first woman elected President, you would probably come up with someone like Elizabeth Ann Warren, the senior senator from Massachusetts. She was by far the most talented candidate in terms of policy in a field of nearly 30 people running. Her understanding of how to achieve a given result through a specific policy process was unparalleled.
On top of that: in nearly 30 years of working in Presidential campaigns, I have seldom seen a candidate connect with voters at a profound, human level the way Warren did. She didn’t see voters as votes to be earned, or interests to be placated; she saw them as people. Do you know how rare that is in candidates, let alone Presidential candidates? I’m a disabled combat veteran, and much of my involvement in politics is mediated through that. The next time a candidate doesn’t assume that I’m only a veteran, interested in only “veterans” issues will be the second.
That’s because Warren was the first candidate who didn’t do that, and I appreciated the hell out of that. Most candidates would just thank me for my service (something I’m not comfortable with, actually), and use that as a way to control the conversation and avoid discussing other issues.
And the fucked up part…the fucked up part is that it didn’t matter.
Her expertise didn’t matter. Her talent as a candidate didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was the one thing she could do nothing about, and that is fucked.
Look, I’m not saying she was flawless, or that her campaign didn’t make mistakes. Her inability to simply say she made a mistake in claiming Native American ancestry and apologize for that mistake was a persistent problem. Her campaign’s irresolution on how to present her (was she a “fighter”? an all-knowing Wonk Supreme? a party-unifying figure?) didn’t do her any favors.
I am not discounting these things. They absolutely matter. But if you’re saying Warren’s mistaken ancestry claim is disqualifying, or if you’re saying that her support of Medicare for All was disqualifying — and then glossing over the fact that Joe Biden straight-up confabulated about being a South African political prisoner two weeks ago, or promises to cure cancer and diabetes without offering any details — well, then: that’s a hell of a double standard you’ve got there.
Let’s call it what it is: sexist.
If you’re the kind of guy who, four years ago, and then again now, said you’d vote for a woman but not this woman - and name-checked Warren in doing that - guess what: that’s sexist. At some point, words have to become action, otherwise they’re just bullshit. And there’s way too many men on the left who are content to just say words, and only have them translate to action when it’s comfortable for them.
No: if our politics of liberation and equality mean anything, then they have to mean we men sacrifice power, money, and attention, and lift up those who haven’t had any.
Our politics are so steeped in sexism and racism - particularly after Donald Trump’s election - and Democratic voters are so panicked about losing to Trump a second time that they’ve stampeded themselves into a corner. Not just any corner, either: the candidate they’ve flocked toward, Biden, has run probably the worst campaign of any of the “top-tier” candidates. Biden’s organization was essentially broke after the Nevada caucuses, and it was so disorganized that it literally had no logistical presence at all in several of the states he won on Tuesday.
I haven’t even discussed Biden’s extraordinary flaws as a candidate, which gave Democratic leaders such pause that they waited until this past Monday to finally line up behind him. You can palpably feel the dread, the lack of enthusiasm in their hesitation. You almost get the sense that if Bernie Sanders had made the merest move towards accommodation with them, the same people that sang Biden’s praises with such wan abandon would’ve backed him instead.
And yet: such is the leaden tug of misogyny that voters dismissed these failings when considering any of the women running. Here’s Buzzfeed’s Molly Hensley-Clancy on what we all euphemistically - and to our discredit - referred to as “electability”:
The drive to beat Donald Trump was all-consuming in the 2020 primary. From the beginning, it also led many voters to simply count women candidates out.
Across early states, voters said they found the women candidates too angry or too unlikable or too inexperienced. Their dislike of the women candidates’ policies or ideologies mixed frequently with their feelings about their gender.
“She’s a firecracker, but she doesn’t have all that experience that Biden does,” Mary, a voter in tiny Blue Grass, Iowa, said of Warren in January. Then, almost as an aside, she added: “And I don’t think she can win, because she’s a woman, dang it, and they don’t like women presidents, I guess.”
Mostly, voters said, they saw women candidates as too risky — especially in the wake of the 2016 election, when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump.
Peggy Hendrix, a Memphis resident who voted early for Michael Bloomberg in Tennessee, was unflinching last week about her belief that Klobuchar and Warren should drop out.
“I think the two women in the race should jump out — because America would never elect a woman president. They didn't elect Hillary, who has been senator, first lady, been in government all her life,” Hendrix said.
“I know these other women don't have a chance. I think they should get out.”
Well, they’re out.
America won’t elect a woman President until it does. But we have to commit ourselves to making that happen. It is especially painful, and especially damning, that on the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment’s ratification - the one that removed the barriers to women voting - we will nominate another superannuated man to contend for the Presidency. And though my ideological commitments led me to support another candidate this year, I include myself in that damnation, and I will work to make that right.
Some related reading material: the problem isn’t just sexism and racism; it’s also that we’re a gerontocracy. Derek Thompson takes this subject head-on in The Atlantic:
The U.S. government is a creaky machine whose most crucial cogs could be generously described as “vintage.” The average age in Congress is near an all-time high. The House speaker, House majority leader, House majority whip, and Senate majority leader are all over 75.
To be clear, this phenomenon is bigger than politics. Across business, science, and finance, power is concentrated among the elderly. In the past 40 years, the average age of Nobel Prize laureates has increased in almost every discipline, including physics, chemistry, medicine, and literature. Among S&P 500 companies, the average age of incoming CEOs has increased by 14 years in the past 14 years. Americans 55 and older account for less than one-third of the population, but they own two-thirds of the nation’s wealth—the highest level of wealth concentration on record.
The prevalence of old power is undoubtedly related to the prevalence of old age. Higher-income Americans are living longer than ever and working longer, too. Leading the country is tiring work (at least in theory) but it’s not taxing in the way that factory work or construction is. As the economy shifts to white-collar labor, septuagenarians are staying at work. The share of Americans over 75 who are attached to the labor force has increased by 85 percent in the past 20 years.
Jessica Valenti explains why women are so rightfully upset about Warren’s campaign ending:
It’s enough to make me feel, well, despairing: that we had the candidate of a lifetime — someone with the energy, vision, and follow-through to lead the country out of our nightmarish era — and that the media and voters basically outright erased and ignored her.
Pundits will all have their theories; fears over “electability” will likely be their #1 explanation. Don’t tell me this isn’t about sexism. I’ve been around too long for that.
Finally, Elizabeth Warren’s remarks to her staff on ending her campaign are remarkable, and a testimony to the kind of President we could’ve had, had it not been for us:
You know, I used to hate goodbyes. Whenever I taught my last class or when we moved to a new city, those final goodbyes used to wrench my heart. But then I realized that there is no goodbye for much of what we do.
When I left one place, I took everything I’d learned before and all the good ideas that were tucked into my brain and all the good friends that were tucked in my heart, and I brought it all forward with me — and it became part of what I did next. This campaign is no different. I may not be in the race for president in 2020, but this fight — our fight — is not over. And our place in this fight has not ended.
Seattle is our plague canary
COVID-19 (the actual disease caused by the coronavirus) is here in America. Seattle was the first major city to report cases. I have friends there, and one of them shared this update, which should make you take grave pause and be extremely skeptical of anything the Trump regime says:
This is a cry for help. (Update: If you want to share this, you're going to have to cut and paste it.)
Here in Seattle, we are Ground Zero of an emerging epidemic. As of this morning, there are 18 cases of Covid-19 in our hospitals. Six people (update: nine) have died. 48 schools are closed. Employers are scrambling to create plans to keep people working from home, and keep them off airplanes. Our best scientists tell us that there are probably 2000 undiagnosed cases wandering our streets, a number they expect will double every six days.
Shit here has gotten very, very real.
But here's what's most disturbing: I don't think any of y'all even know this is happening. I'm mentioning all of this in my FB wanderings, and am being met with a surprising level of skepticism. I'm finally coming to realize nobody outside of the PNW is being told any of this. The national news apparently isn't covering it at all. Google searches aren't returning the info (though the Seattle Times is covering all of this very aggressively). It's like we're here, struggling at the leading edge of something that's about to roll across the rest of you in the weeks ahead -- and yet it's happening in total silence, outside the view of the rest of the nation.
When I describe it to people, they're uncomprehending. When a Google search fails to turn up anything that corroborates me, they think I'm making it up. People are feeding me info that's many days old, not realizing that what they think they know has been rendered obsolete by the speed with which this is moving on the ground here.
What I'm asking for: If you want to know what's really happening with this epidemic, keep your eyes on Seattle. (Google will not make this easy, so look at the Seattle Times, Crosscut, and the site below.) Because what we're going through now is what the rest of you are going to be facing in two weeks, a month, maybe by Easter, maybe as late as May. If you think you have time to prepare -- you don't. If you think that this is still a problem in Italy or Korea -- it's not. It's here, it's real, people are dying, our lives are being upended (I will not be leaving my home for the foreseeable future), and apparently nobody in our fractured media is conveying this to anyone outside our borders.
So it's up to us know. If we want to be truly informed about this, we'll have to do it ourselves.
https://publichealthinsider.com
Update: Some people are quibbling with my claim of 2000 undiagnosed cases. This is based on a claim of 1500 made by Dr. Trevor Bedford of Fred Hutchison Cancer Center, who is tracking the genetics of this virus. He said that four days ago. At a doubling rate of six days, 2000 cases now is a conservative guess. (Other sources say the doubling could be as little as 3.5 days, in which case it's more like 3000 cases now.) (emphasis added)
This is absolutely jaw-dropping. Chris Hayes made the following point last night, and there’s no reason to doubt it:
This reminds me of nothing so much as Chernobyl: downplay the incipient disaster, regardless of the cost in lives and literal death toll, in order to maintain political power and minimize political cost. It is morally repulsive, and the people involved in doing this have innocent blood on their hands. We should add this to the list of crimes perpetrated by this regime.
You’re asking now: how bad can things get, though? I covered some of this in Monday’s Miscellanies, but I’ll leave it to Dr. Juliana Grant, MPH, to explain the scenarios:
Right now, there’s a fairly wide range of plausible scenarios. We know COVID-19 is not going to fizzle out like MERS or SARS did, and we know it isn’t going to end civilization. This is serious, but it isn’t the zombie apocalypse. What happens over the next year will probably fall somewhere between two scenarios:
Best likely scenario: a typical flu year
The best likely outcome is that COVID-19 is like a typical flu season:
10% of the world gets infected
0.05% of infected people die
Globally, about 400,000 people die
Most deaths occur among people over 65 and/or especially susceptible to respiratory infections
Social and economic impacts are fairly minor
Worst likely scenario: the 1918 flu pandemic
The worst likely scenario is that COVID-19 is roughly comparable to the 1918 flu pandemic:
50% of the world gets infected
2% of infected people die
Globally, about 80,000,000 people die
Most deaths occur among people over 40 and/or especially susceptible to respiratory infections
Children and young adults are likely to be much less severely affected
Substantial social impacts including extensive voluntary and government-mandated closures
Substantial economic impacts including a global recession
Catastrophic impact on travel, hospitality, and food service sectors
The acute phase of the pandemic lasts for 3 - 18 months
COVID-19 recurs annually, just like the flu and the common cold
We want to put the worst-case scenario in perspective. You should take this very seriously: it is entirely plausible that more people will die in 2020 than have ever died in any single year, and several people you know will die. But even in the worst case, it is likely that you and your immediate family will experience nothing worse than a bad cold. Governments will function normally, the lights will stay on, and your supermarket will remain fully stocked with food. Take this seriously, but do not panic: this is not the zombie apocalypse.
We can avoid the worst case scenario, but the government has to treat this seriously. It is not; and so, if Seattle is any sign, we are in for the worst case scenario. Prepare yourselves. State governments can only do so much.
Like most weeks this year, this has been a week. But the weekend’s here. Let’s do what we can to rest, recover, and care for one another. Know that I love you all; I am here for you, just as you’re here for me. If you’re reading this, and you were a Warren staffer, drop me a line and hit reply: I want to treat you to drinks, coffee, dessert. If you want to talk about anything, yell at me, ask me questions: just hit reply.
Take care of yourselves. The only thing that will get us through this is love and kindness and compassion; let’s have that for ourselves, and for each other.