No introduction. No time, and none needed.
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Some scattered links this week:
Eileen Appelbaum/Andrew Park/Rosemary Batt: How private equity firms will profit from Covid-19. Starts with the recent bankruptcy of PE-owned J. Crew, which is less about how PE firms will profit and more about how they already have profited -- by looting companies while driving them into the ground. Mentions some proposed laws unlikely to draw Republican Support: one is the Stop Wall Street Looting Act; another is the Pandemic Anti-Monopoly Act. [PS: JC Penney also filed for bankruptcy. Although it is publicly traded, its management had run up debt much like bankrupt private equity-owned retailers.]
Kate Aronoff: America is not as resilient as it thinks it is. Well, we survived Nixon. We survived Reagan. A friend opined that "if we can survive one George Bush, we can survive another." I know too many who didn't, but by and large, sure. Chances are most of us will survive Trump too, but it's getting tougher, and the wear and tear is showing. The fact is that bad policy often takes decades to wear down and break catastrophically. Aronoff isn't making this explicit of a political argument here, but it's easier to visualize infrastructure flaws as the result of partisan acts aimed at undermining public service. Rather, she starts with the forecast for this year's Atlantic hurricane season (see A new model is predicting "one of the most active Atlantic hurricane seasons on record"), which is likely to strain disaster relief. She has other examples, like the "silver tsunami" of aging population, and so forth. Still, all these examples look political to me.
Dean Baker: Building an economy that works again.
Lenny Bernstein/Josh Dawsey/Yasmeen Abutaleb: Growing friction between White House, CDC hobbles pandemic response.
Jamelle Bouie: Elizabeth Warren knows what Joe Biden needs in a Vice President. I'm not interested enough in the VP stakes to care much one way or the other, but I can see several advantages to Warren way beyond making a token gesture to "the left." Some other VP pieces:
Jacob S Hacker: Elizabeth Warren has a plan for Joe Biden.
Will Wilkinson: The one Democrat Joe Biden would be clueless without: "It's Elizabeth Warren."
Alexander Burns: Seeking: Big Democratic ideas that make everything better. In some kind of ideal situation, the political response to the pandemic and its consequent economic depression would transcend party lines, as both sides recognized the need for similar, well-established fixes to common problems, and worked together to move quickly and surely. To some extent, that happened back in March, when lockdown was the only available approach to slow the spread, and Republicans in power were so desperate for economic relief they allowed Democrats to make the bills fairer and broader than they would have liked. Since then, the issues have become more polarized, and the November elections will largely turn on which party offers the most sensible promise of managing and moving beyond the crisis. This is one of a cluster of articles as Republicans and Democrats sharpen their political stances, so I'll collect a few here:
Alexander Burns/Maggie Haberman/Jonathan Martin/Nick Corasaniti: A sitting president, riling the nation during a crisis: "By smearing his opponents, championing conspiracy theories and pursuing vendettas, President Trump has reverted to his darkest political tactics in spite of a pandemic hurting millions of Americans." I think it's clear from here on out that Trump's sole focus is his political campaign.
Katie Glueck/Astead W Herndon: In bid for party unity, Biden moves beyond restoring the pre-Trump era.
Katie Glueck/Lisa Lerer/Shane Goldmacher/Alexander Burns: Biden has an edge on trump. So Why are Democrats worried?
Glenn Thrush: Biden camp finds selling point in ailing economy: His work on 2009 recovery: Yeah, but hopefully he's also learned a few things from the experience. Like not hiring Tim Geithner and Larry Summers. And not trusting the Republicans in Congress to lift a finger to help him out.
Katelyn Burns/Ian Millhiser: Sen. Richard Burr and the coronavirus insider trading scandal, explained. Also note:
Jane Coaston: The private militias providing "security" for anti-lockdown protests, explained.
David Cole: Why we need postal democracy: He means voting by mail.
Gabriel Debenedetti: Biden is planning an FDR-size presidency: "He thinks he'll survive Tara Reade's accusation. But he knows he can't be an average-Joe Democrat anymore."
Erik Edstrom: The betrayal of the American soldier: Author is a former Army Ranger, has a new book on his experiences, especially in Afghanistan: Un-American: A Soldier's Reckoning of Our Longest War.
James K Galbraith: We need a radically different model to tackle the Covid-19 crisis.
Atul Gawande: Amid the coronavirus crisis, a regimen for reëntry: "Health-care workers have been on the job throughout the pandemic. What can they teach us about the safest way to lift a lockdown?"
Josh Gerstein: Appeals court greenlights emoluments suit against Trump.
Jacob S Hacker: The progressive pursuit of a bolder Biden. Pull-quote here is a point I've made before: "Neither FDR nor LBJ looked like progressive champions when they ran for or ascended to the presidency." They moved left because that's where they had to in order to be effective, to solve real pressing problems. However, now that you mention LBJ, one should also point out that in foreign policy he even more reflexively into the conventional anti-communist paradigm, leading him deep into the quagmire of war in Vietnam, ultimately destroying his legacy and giving Republicans an opening they eventually parlayed into Donald Trump. Biden's recent "tough talk" on China, Russia, Cuba, and Iran promises to suck him into a similar trap. As McGeorge Bundy put it, the difference between JFK and LBJ was that the former wanted to be smart, while the latter wanted to appear tough. I fear much the same can be said for Obama and Biden. Hacker, by the way, has a new book coming out with Paul Pierson: Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality.
If the pandemic has had any salutary effects beyond making Trump's defeat more likely, it is that it has highlighted the bonds that unite all Americans. These bonds will be tested by Trump and his allies in the weeks ahead. Already, they have tried to activate anti-urban sentiment and racism to repeat the polarizing path to victory of 2016. Yet Biden -- second-in-command under the nation's first black president and the candidate with the greatest symbolic affiliation with the white working class -- is better poised than almost anyone to turn these strategies back on the president. To do so, he'll need his two greatest assets: an ability to connect and empathize with Americans from every walk of life, and an understanding that government isn't a swamp but a source of solidarity and prosperity. Yet he'll also need something that comes much less naturally: a vision not just of how to win an election, but of how to remake a broken system.
Derek Hawkins: Eric Trump claims coronavirus is Democratic hoax, will 'magically' vanish after 2020 election: Is there some sort of contest inside the Trump family to see who is the dumbest? Or the most self-centered? Isn't that what you'd call someone who who thinks are so powerful and ubiquitous and callous to fake 300,000 deaths worldwide just to make one moron look bad? And, for that matter, if they really are so powerful and malevolent, what makes you think Donald Trump is the leader you want to take them on? (Piss them off, maybe.) On the other hand, Eric has spent his entire life so completely under his father's thumb he may not realize that there is a world beyond.
Paul Heideman: Stop trying to shame socialists into voting for Joe Biden. It's not going to work. Amen. They're just exposing themselves as assholes, and revealing an anti-left prejudice so profound one doubts they will ever show the reciprocal support they demand. There are, of course, good reasons why socialists should vote for Biden, but there's still plenty of time to make that case before November, and we're likely to be more receptive once the sting of defeat has dulled. Especially if Biden actually offers something more substantial than simply being the not-Trump candidate.
Sarah Jones:
I have no desire to board a floating death trap: "A travel agency reports a spike in cruise bookings, but cruises were already bad pre-pandemic. They're worse now."
Jen Kirby:
"Obamagate": Trump's latest conspiracy theory, explained. More:
Alex Shephard: Obamagate is the ultimate Republican non-scandal.
The Justice Department's move to drop Michael Flynn's case is on hold: "The judge in the case has appointed a retired federal judge to argue against the DOJ's move."
Hannah Knowles/Candace Buckner: Alaska lawmaker says Hitler was not white supremacist after comparing coronavirus measures to Nazi rule. Well, just goes to show how confused conservatives can get when they understand they're supposed to denounce Nazis are bad, but find for the most part they're just misunderstood conservatives.
Eric Levitz: The GOP is the problem. Is 'human identity politics' the solution?
Martin Longman:
PBS finds no support for Tara Reade's accusations: "More than 70 former Biden staffers found nothing that would collaborate her story." Also on Reade:
Killing Obamacare during a pandemic is not a good reelection strategy. Also note:
Julie Rovner: How Trump could take away Obamacare with a second term.
Nesrine Malik: It's no accident Britain and America are the world's biggest coronavirus losers: "Even before the pandemic hit, both nations had been stripped of the people and systems required to respond effectively."
Andrea Mazzarino: Why we need redundancy in more than the military. Writes about the effects of Covid-19 on military families. Author is editor, with Catherine Lutz, of War and Health: The Medical Consequences of the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Meridith McGraw/Nahal Toosi: Trump ousts State Department watchdog: After State Department Inspector General Steve Linick opened up an investigation into Secretary Mike Pompeo. For more, see: Hannah Knowles: Top Democrats launch investigation into late-night firing of State Department inspector general.
Bill McKibben: Thanks to climate divestment, Big Oil finally runs out of gas.
Ian Millhiser:
Philip Mirowski: Why the neoliberals won't let this crisis go to waste: Interview with the author of a 2013 book: Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown. I read his book when it came out, and found it pretty frustrating. My takeaway was that nothing much changed because the neoliberals were so quick and effective at preventing any alternative viewpoints. They recognized that change requires imagination, and if you can squelch that, you can survive conditions that were objectively disillusioning. This title is clearer about who's trying to take advantage of the crisis. However, it may not be so easy this time. Still, when you look at how completely Mike Bloomberg upended the Democratic primaries, and how Andrew Cuomo is conspiring to privatize post-pandemic social life under the control of tech billionaires, it's not just the Koch types one needs to worry about.
Ella Nilsen: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are building new, policy-focused task forces.
Anna North: The police shooting of Breonna Taylor, a black woman who was killed in her apartment, explained.
Rachel Esplin Odell/Stephen Wertheim: Can the Democrats avoid Trump's China trap?: "The president wants a new cold war to deflect attention from his failures."
Gunar Olsen: The "Good War" in Afghanistan was never good.
Joseph O'Neill: Brand new Dems? A speculative piece on partisan positioning, presented mostly as brand management. One example is the recent ad flurry where both Trump and Biden tried to out-hawk one another on China.
Biden, to the extent that he is visible at all, is terrible at campaign messaging. He doesn't connect well with his supporters, many of whom minimize their exposure to him for fear of demoralization. Nor does he connect well with persuadable independents. With more than 60,000 American pandemic deaths to date and nearly 30 million jobs lost or furloughed, Biden could frame the election around the critical concerns of ordinary Americans. Nope. In April he devoted two of his biggest ads to defending himself against Trump's accusations that he is dangerously soft on China and its role in the pandemic. Republican strategists, terrified of substantive electioneering, have decided that Trump's best bet is precisely to lure Biden into an esoteric, anachronistic, and xenophobic fight about who will stand up to China. Biden has taken the bait. Even by the standards of easily rattled Democratic politicians, his is a remarkably rapid surrender of rhetorical ground.
Trump was able to spook Biden in part because of the second kind of messaging -- party branding. . . . Biden was afraid to look weak on China because Americans have a built-in view of the GOP as the party that does a better job of handling national security. This perception -- a six-point advantage in recent polls -- makes a significant difference when elections are decided by one or two points. It's not only Trump who will invoke the Yellow Peril. In a messaging memo that recently came to light, Republican Senate candidates are forcefully advised to "attack China" in relation to the coronavirus crisis. These candidates, too, are exploiting a partisan brand advantage on "national security" -- a concept with powerful connotations of strength, patriotism, and fear of the other.
Cameron Peters: Ousted whistleblower warns US is heading toward "darkest winter in modern history".
Derek Robertson: What liberals don't get about Trump supporters and pop culture: "The seemingly bizarre pop culture takes emanating from MAGA world are just reflections of its core philosophy."
Aaron Rupar:
Trump seems to think there'd be no coronavirus if there was no testing. It doesn't work like that.
Trump's latest Fox Business interview was an elaborate distraction campaign.
Trump's Twitter meltdown is on its third day and has escalated to baseless murder allegations.
It took one question for a reporter to expose Trump's latest baseless Obama conspiracy theory.
Trump's latest Twitter meltdown features QAnon, accidental self-owns, and a lot of "OBAMAGATE": "In any previous era, the tweets would be a major national scandal. In Trump's America, it was Sunday."
Robert Scheer: Big banks got the sweetest deal from the Covid-19 bailouts: Well, don't they always? Interview with Nomi Prins, who was the first to report that banks raked in much more from the Fed than they did from their $700 billion TARP bailout.
Brittany Scott: To fight Covid-19, we need to build worker power and worker safety: I can see an argument that workers shouldn't always be allowed to strike over economic demands -- one might come up with a fair arbitration system to resolve such disputes, although my preferred solution is co-determination, where workers have seats on boards and management committees. But one case where workers should absolutely have the right to refuse to work is when doing so presents a safety problem. Indeed, I think we should guarantee workers union representation for just such cases, regardless of whether a worker is part of a regular union. Indeed, while one approach to job safety would be to strengthen OSHA rules and enforcement, it would be more flexible and ultimately more effective to let workers enforce their own safety concerns, through a process which ultimately includes a guaranteed right to strike.
Dylan Scott: Germany and South Korea excelled at Covid-19 containment. It still came back.
Michael D Shear/Maggie Haberman: White House races to contain virus in its ranks: 'It is scary to go to work'.
David Siders: Trump is getting trounced among a crucial constituency: The haters: "In 2016, Donald Trump cleaned up among voters who disliked him and Hillary Clinton. This year, Biden is winning big among the comparable group." That's one constituency that's always going to break against the incumbent.
Danny Sjursen: What on Earth is the US doing by bombing Somalia? For more: Nick Turse: US airstrikes hit all-time high as coronavirus spreads in Somalia.
Paul Starr: How the right went far-right: Review of Andrew Marantz: Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of American Conservatism.
Emily Stewart: The American unemployment system is broken by design.
Matt Taibbi:
Zephyr Teachout/Pat Garofalo: Cuomo is letting billionaires plan New York's future. It doesn't have to be this way. Refers to Naomi Klein's Screen New Deal piece, on how capitalism profits from disaster.
Alex Ward:
How "truth decay" is harming America's coronavirus recovery. Interview with Jennifer Kavanagh, from Rand Corporation, who co-wrote the book on Truth Decay.
Mexico is severely -- and maybe purposely -- undercounting its coronavirus deaths.
South Korea's new coronavirus cases show the perils of reopening.
The "ridiculous" failed coup attempt in Venezuela, explained.
Libby Watson: Jared Kushner is a national disaster.
Matthew Yglesias:
The results of a Spanish study on Covid-19 immunity have a scary takeaway.
Trump's plan to limit the pandemic's death toll: Undercount the numbers.
Get ready for a second wave of economic pain: "If Congress doesn't act, state budget crises and unemployment insurance cuts will hammer the economy."
Experts' 7 best ideas on how to beat Covid-19 and save the economy.