Heather Cox Richardson

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March 2, 2020 (Monday)

America now has 6 COVID-19 fatalities, and today, a spokesperson for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) abruptly canceled a press briefing about the coronavirus. A White House spokesperson later said the CDC would brief Vice President Mike Pence on the coronavirus response. Today information about how many people in the U.S. had been tested for the virus was taken down from the CDC website, presumably because it is such a scandal that we have tested so few people when other countries have tested widely. The website now lists only the number of confirmed cases (43, as of this afternoon).

Trump met with the leaders of ten pharmaceutical companies today to see how they could speed up production of a vaccine. Unfortunately, the tests needed to make sure vaccines work and are safe cannot be rushed, and experts say we’re still 12-18 months away from one (which is actually remarkably fast—usually they take at least two years). Trump’s understanding of vaccines seems shaky: he asked the attendees if the flu vaccine would work on the novel coronavirus.

In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, both Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, and Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar have dropped out and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. While tempers are running high over the contest, this sort of jockeying before a nomination is entirely normal, and is usually quite a good way for voters to test out candidates and for candidates to test out new ideas for their party. The way to look at this current struggle is as a contest between candidates perceived to be moderate—Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar-- and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is perceived to be radical and who is not, after all, a Democrat, as Biden is.

Buttigieg is young—only 38-- and now well-positioned for a job in a Biden administration where he can get more experience; Klobuchar is already a powerful senator. It made sense for them to drop out and endorse Biden, who falls closer to their political leanings than Sanders. The delegates already pledged to them at the convention are generally bound to vote for them in the first ballot, but are then released. They might switch to Biden, as their candidate asks, but they are not obligated to.

Businessman and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren remain in the race.

What will happen tomorrow, on Super Tuesday, will give us a better sense of how the nomination will take shape. For all the attention the early states get, Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada offer only about 4% of the delegates at stake, so performing well in them is more about momentum than about final delegate tallies. Fourteen states vote in Super Tuesday, and most of those states are far more diverse than Iowa and New Hampshire, so they look more like the actual demographic that represents the Democratic Party and might hand in very different results than earlier contests.

By the end of the day, about a third of the delegate total will be allocated. Bloomberg has poured money into ads for Super Tuesday; they might pay off. Warren got a huge bump from her debate performance against Bloomberg just before the Nevada caucuses. Biden and Sanders both have strengths and weaknesses. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

Will any of this matter? Intelligence officers from Special Counsel Robert Mueller to Russia expert Fiona Hill have warned us that Russia would disrupt this election, and we know they are already disrupting the Democratic presidential nomination process, trying to affect the way voters perceive the Democratic candidates.

This attack seems likely to go unchallenged by the administration. Trump has installed as our acting Director of National Intelligence the current Ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who has made clear he does not believe Russia interfered in our 2016 election or that it is attacking us in 2020, either. Trump’s recent nomination of Representative John Ratcliffe (R-TX), one of the key defenders of the president during the impeachment hearings, seems designed to guarantee an end to any investigation of Russian attacks. Ratcliffe’s previous run at the office stalled because senators of both parties thought he was unqualified. But if they refuse to confirm him now, Trump gets to keep Grenell, who is even more unqualified, and more in the president’s corner. Since Ratcliffe has endorsed the conspiracy theory that the Russia investigation was the project of “a secret society” in the Justice Department and the FBI determined to prevent Trump’s election, Trump has a friend at the head of Intelligence no matter whether he gets Ratcliffe or keeps Grenell, and it seems likely there will be little effort to keep foreign governments out of our election.

Indeed, Republican leaders are actively doing their part to sway the way voters think about candidates, just as they did with their constant drumbeat about Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016. Trump’s reluctance to run against Biden was at the heart of the Ukraine Scandal, and yesterday, Senate Republican Ron Johnson (R-WI), the chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, took up the cause. He told his colleagues that he is planning to force a vote on subpoenaing the first witness in his investigation of Joe Biden and his son Hunter Biden for wrongdoing with regard to the Ukrainian natural gas company Burisma. The investigation had gone quiet as Biden’s candidacy appeared to sink, but after his strong showing in South Carolina on Saturday, the investigation heated up again.

For his part, Trump simply tweeted: “They are staging a coup against Bernie!”

Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

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March 3, 2020 (Tuesday)

The novel coronavirus continues to roil the country as the administration continues to sow doubts about its ability to handle the crisis. Very late last night, we learned that Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper last week asked military commanders overseas to check in with him before making any decisions about protecting the soldiers under their command from the virus in order to avoid surprising the White House or contradicting Trump’s messages about it. An American soldier stationed in South Korea tested positive for the virus last week.

Cameras and audio were not allowed at today’s press briefing on the novel coronavirus. The White House permitted still photos only.

Concern about the virus continues to grow. Companies are cancelling conferences and events out of concern about transmission of the virus. This weekend, for example, more than 22,000 body builders, martial artists, and medieval fighters, along with 200,000 spectators, were expected to show up at the 32nd annual Arnold Sports Festival in Columbus, Ohio. But today, officials called off all but the final competition, limited to 4000 people who had already bought tickets. The festival was expected to bring about $53 million into Columbus.

This economic hit comes in addition to the economic hit of disruptions to the supply chain, which a reader at TalkingPointsMemo described as “bewildering.” He says manufacturers can’t get information from their suppliers, and air freight from Asia is chaotic. All they can do is to try to hold on while everyone figures things out.

This economic stress has shown in a falling stock market, which rallied yesterday only briefly. Today, under pressure from Trump to lower interest rates, the Federal Reserve did so. It lowered rates a half a percent, for the first time since December 2008. Trump immediately complained that the cut wasn’t higher, but while the stock market jumped briefly at the news, the cut has appeared to backfire. The market ultimately fell today with investors apparently interpreting the surprise rate cut as a sign that things are worse than they thought. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (which is only one way to measure the stock market, by the way) fell 786 points.

Meanwhile, the Bank Policy Institute, which lobbies for some of the nation’s biggest banks, has asked the government to ease banking regulations to enable banks to respond to any economic crisis posed by COVID-19. It has backed this easing for a long time without success, but apparently sees this crisis as an opportunity to argue that they need more flexibility. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), ranking member of the Banking Committee, said that we need to make sure that our health agencies “have the resources they need to keep Americans safe. It’s not the time to reduce financial system protections to bolster the bottom lines for Wall Street.”

That the impulse of the bank lobby in this moment of crisis was to ask for more deregulation makes it sadly ironic that today’s Democratic Super Tuesday vote did not go well for Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was the initiator of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau designed to protect consumers in the financial transactions with banks, credit unions, debt servicing operations and so on. Once Congress created the CFBP, Warren became Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to set up the new agency. President Barack Obama removed her name from consideration as the Bureau’s first director when it became apparent Republicans would never confirm her appointment. Trump has worked to gut the CFPB, and the Supreme Court is currently reviewing its legality: oral arguments in the case began today.

March 3, 2020, has been a crappy day twice over for Senator Warren.

It was far better for former Vice President Joe Biden. Today voters in fourteen states and one territory went to the polls and decided how about a third of the delegates to the Democratic National Convention this summer would be divided up. As I noted last night, for all its coverage, the voting in Iowa and New Hampshire is not necessarily indicative of how the race ultimately will go. Super Tuesday is much more important, but even it does not dictate who will get the nomination. Former Vice President Joe Biden did very well today, picking up a number of states by significant margins and proving that he is popular with African American voters, who are Democrats’ key demographic.

Still, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who has pledged to run as a Democrat, is still very much in the running. Sanders picked up Colorado and possibly California (as I write it is too early to tell). It is significant, though, that his numbers were not as strong as expected while Biden’s were stronger than expected. Momentum seems to be moving toward Biden.

But there are four long months between tonight and the Democratic National Convention in mid-July, and we are in the midst of both a health issue and a shaky economy, with a president who seems more unstable by the day (today he told reporters after a phone conversation with the cofounder of the Taliban that the two men had a “very good relationship”). I think it is a mistake to see the Democratic contest as separate from the crises in the nation at large, since those crises will certainly affect how the Democrats campaign, and whom Democratic voters see as their best choice as a presidential candidate.

As for the mechanics of the nomination, it is entirely possible that there will not be a clear front-runner at the convention. This situation used to be quite common, and actually has a lot going for it because it enables delegates to cement support for a candidate in a contested struggle. Senator Warren has said she will not leave the race, likely in expectation of a brokered convention when frustrated delegations could easily turn to her.

After spending millions on the race, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg also underperformed today. It is unclear what he will do.

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Parenthetical remark needs a /s tag :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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March 4, 2020 (Wednesday)

There is a lot of news about both the novel coronavirus and politics tonight, but I’m going to let it rest so I can address the concern that has been popping up in my email and messages all day. People are concerned that there has been some sort of a corrupt bargain between the “Democratic establishment”—possibly even including former President Barack Obama-- and retiring presidential candidates Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar to throw the Democratic nomination to former Vice President Joe Biden in order to thwart the popular will to nominate Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.

First of all, the nomination process is not over, and there is not currently a winner. Second, the nomination has not been rigged. This is a deeply problematic construction at a time when our actual elections really ARE in danger; it is also an argument pushed by Russian disinformation to undermine faith in democracy.

Here’s how the Democratic nomination process currently works. (I am not going to talk here about the Republican system—I’ve talked about it before—but it permits less input from voters than the Democratic system.)

First of all, neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party, nor any other party, is a government institution. While they have to abide by our laws, they make their own rules, and a LOT of jockeying goes into the writing of those rules. (FWIW, Sanders is the only candidate running who had a hand in writing the current Democratic National Committee rules. Three of his top advisors were on the commission that wrote the current rules, and he chose four others.)

The process is crazy-complicated, but it makes more sense if you know some of the history behind it. Democratic presidential candidates used to be chosen by party leaders, behind closed doors. That exploded in 1968, when Vice President Hubert Humphrey won the nomination without winning any primaries as a solo act— he had been running as President Lyndon Johnson’s vice president when Johnson abruptly withdrew from the race too late for Humphrey to enter the primaries. Humphrey was associated with the ”establishment” and the war in Vietnam (although he was eager to end it), at a time when leaders were increasingly suspect and 80% of voters in the Democratic primaries had voted for anti-war candidates (including Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who was making a strong play for the nomination when he was murdered). So when he won the nomination over anti-war candidates, demonstrators began to protest and the police counter-rioted. The convention turned into violent chaos. And, of course, Humphrey lost the election to Richard M. Nixon, who dramatically escalated the war in Vietnam, (among other things!).

After the 1968 debacle, DNC leaders commissioned a 28-person panel overseen first by South Dakota Senator George McGovern and then, when he resigned to run for president himself, Minnesota Representative Donald M. Fraser, to figure out how to get more people involved in the nomination process. The result was the state primary, which has now replaced caucuses in all but three states (and three territories), by my count. In primaries, voters cast ballots for their choice for the nomination, who then gets allotted delegates to the convention. With luck, there will be a clear winner, but if not, the convention delegates will wheel and deal to decide who should win the nomination. The commission also reduced the roles of party leaders in the nominating process, and required better representation for minorities, women, and young people.

These rules governed the 1972 convention, which gave the presidential nomination to McGovern himself, who was enormously popular with young people and those opposed to Nixon’s escalation of the Vietnam War, but much less so with the traditional Democrats (especially workers) who had lost representation at the convention under the new rules.

McGovern lost to Nixon in a landslide—the Electoral Count was 520 to 17, and McGovern didn’t even carry his home state. Then Democratic President Jimmy Carter lost his reelection bid by a similar landslide (the Electoral College split was 489 to 49). At that point, Democratic leaders decided the nomination process had swung too far away from professional politicians. They thought that primary voters, who tend to be much more extreme than those in the general election, were choosing unelectable candidates.

Another commission, this one of 70 people, met in 1981 and 1982, and added back into the nomination process the voices of state party chairs, the Democratic governors and members of Congress, former presidents and vice presidents, and certain DNC leaders. These are the so-called superdelegates, and they are not pledged to any candidate. The idea is that, having won or run elections, these people will have a sense of who can win at the national level and will provide a counterweight if primary voters choose someone unelectable. Originally, the superdelegates made up about 15% of the delegate count, but before the 2016 election they had crept up to about 20%.

Before the 2016 election, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Sanders tussled to win the nomination, the DNC overwhelmingly voted to change the rules to compromise between the two camps. Under those rules, a new commission of 21 people, including 9 nominated by Clinton and 7 by Sanders, met in 2017. They reduced the percentage of superdelegates to about 15% again, and refused to let them vote on a first ballot, bringing them in only if the nomination is contested.

So back to the question of rigging. The Sanders camp wanted to get rid of the superdelegates altogether, believing it would help him win the 2020 nomination. But they had to compromise on keeping the superdelegates from voting on the first ballot, expecting that he could win quickly with a majority if the superdelegates stayed out of it. But now that it looks like he will likely not win outright, he will likely be sunk when the superdelegates are in play on a second ballot. So now he wants the nomination to go to someone with a plurality of delegates—that is, not a clear majority, but more than anyone else—on the first ballot. This would be highly unusual: brokered conventions used to be the norm, and they are a good way to unite the party behind a candidate.

But do members of the Democratic establishment—those who could be superdelegates—want Sanders as the nominee? Almost certainly not. They do not think he is electable. He is not popular with African American voters, who are a key part of the Democratic Party’s base, and he has a history that will play badly with moderate voters.

Are they right that he is unelectable? Before Tuesday, I was not at all certain of that. But Sanders’s big play for the nomination has been that he could bring new voters into the party by attracting young people. He certainly is popular with younger folks, but they did not turn up to vote for him on Tuesday, suggesting his key strength is not as strong as it seemed. Still, political prognostications at this stage of the game are a fool’s game. My opinion and $3 will get you a cup of coffee.

Did Buttigieg or Klobuchar cut a deal with Biden before endorsing him? Almost certainly. But that is not a corrupt deal; it’s how politics works. If they followed the norm, they will have gotten him to promise to make a priority in his administration (if he is elected) something they and their supporters care about. This is key to the other part of the nomination process that is going on now: hashing out the issues (they’re known as “planks”) that will be in the party’s platform, indicating its priorities. The jockeying going on now between voters and candidates and the party’s eventual leader is key to that construction.

This is why we go through this process, and why the president and the platform matters. We often forget that when we show up at the polls every four years to pick a president, we are not simply electing a charismatic leader, we are electing someone who can get legislation we care about passed by nailing together coalitions that will move the country in a direction we like. That is incredibly important, and it’s why working with experienced politicians matters.

But it is also important to put pressure on those leaders to move in directions we want. If your favorite candidate has left the race or looks to be pushed aside, it is more important than ever to continue to advocate for the causes (and people) you believe in, to keep those things front and center. That, too, is part of the political process.

Most famously, in 1890, an upstart reform party took America by storm. It organized as the People’s Party in 1891 and demanded a slew of changes to take American finance and politics out of the hands of the very wealthy. The party largely fizzled out when the Democrats absorbed their ideas in 1896. Within twenty years, though, most of their reforms had become law.

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March 5, 2020 (Thursday)

I hate to do this on a day when so much happened—more COVID-19 and concerns over our apparent lack of testing, the stock market falling significantly again, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren suspending her campaign but refusing to endorse another candidate, and Federal Judge Reggie Walton deciding that he will review the unredacted Mueller Report on Russian interference in the 2016 election because he believes Attorney General William Barr misrepresented what was in it—but I am out of bandwidth and don’t trust my ability to write fairly or coherently as tired as I am.

It is Spring Break at Boston College, where I teach, and my partner and I have spent the last several days sightseeing and hiking in the Southwest, trying to catch a little bit of a breather before the new book drops in a couple weeks. Neither of us has been here before, and it’s been absolutely amazing. But between the early morning hikes and the late night writing, I’ve finally burned the candle too long at either end.

Very sorry to do this, and will be back tomorrow… er, today… after I catch up on some sleep.

Heather

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I hope she will allow herself breaks as necessary.

I’d hate to lose her perspective to burnout.

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Yes! Good to see her finally take a break from doing this 7 freaking days a week (which is how a lot of academics work anyway, but still).

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I’m working right now! :grin:

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my only issue with her write up is her lack of mentioning the issues with drawing out working age voters on a tuesday, and especially in areas where republicans have control of the legislature as in texas.

long lines - hours long lines - kept people from voting. who would they have voted for? we don’t know. what we do know is that it’s a preview of the upcoming general.

people will want to vote, and working age voters of color will be affectively discouraged from casting a ballot.

maybe that does mean - logistically - biden has a better chance than sanders. but in terms of how the republicans are able to influence the democrats primaries… it seems to merit a mention

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March 6, 2020 (Friday)

When politicians want to hide a news story, they dump it on Friday night, after five o’clock, when it’s too late to make it onto the evening news. With luck, it will be forgotten by Monday, and will never get the attention it deserves. Tonight’s news dump was that Trump is replacing acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney with retiring North Carolina Representative Mark Meadows, a key Trump loyalist.

This move has been in the works since at least mid-December when Meadows announced he would not run for reelection. Mulvaney was the Director of the Office of Management and Budget as well as the acting Chief of Staff, making him key to the withholding of the money from Ukraine that was at the heart of the Ukraine Scandal. He was also apparently the one who put together the “Three Amigos”–Energy Secretary Rick Perry, U.S. Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland, and Kurt Volker, special envoy to Ukraine—to pressure Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation of Hunter Biden to weaken Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden. Mulvaney angered Trump in October when he admitted that the administration had withheld the Ukraine aid in exchange for the announcement. “We do that all the time with foreign policy,” he told reporters. “And I have news for everybody: Get over it. There’s going to be political influence in foreign policy.”

Trump’s advisors convinced him not to dump Mulvaney in the midst of the impeachment crisis, but the axe has dropped now as Trump is calling his most avid defenders to his side. Chiefs of staff tend to burn out quickly, but naming his fourth chief of staff in three years, and changing the guard at a time when his administration badly needs to give off the image of stability, suggests that Trump is aware his administration is in trouble. This means that his reelection is in trouble.

The novel coronavirus is not going away, and the administration’s handling of it is confusing and frustrating. As of Friday night, the U.S. has more than 300 cases of Covid-19 and at least 17 deaths. Trump has repeatedly downplayed concerns about Covid-19 and contradicted the statements of doctors and epidemiologists, saying, for example, that there would be a vaccine for the virus available in a few months, when experts say we’re looking at 12 to 18 months.

Trump toured the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta today. The visit had been planned but then was left off his Friday schedule (the president’s daily schedule is released the night before). When asked why the trip had been cancelled, Trump told reporters: “They thought there was a problem at CDC with somebody that had the virus…. It turned out negative so we are seeing if we can do it. They’ve tested the person fully and it was a negative test. So I may be going. We’re going to see if they can turn it around with Secret Service. We may be going.” But no one had been informed of a suspected coronavirus case, including Vice President Mike Pence, who is coordinating the administration response to the crisis. The White House would not confirm the president’s statement.

So he went, but provided little calm as he boasted of his “natural ability” to understand the science behind the virus, compared the “perfect” coronavirus test to his “perfect” phone call with Ukraine President Volodymr Zelensky that touched off the Ukraine Scandal, and called Democratic Washington Governor Jay Inslee, who is overseeing the epicenter of the U.S. infections, “a snake.”

The coronavirus continues to impact the economy. Leaders in Austin, Texas, have canceled the South by Southwest festival, a ten-day music, technology, film, and conference gathering, after TikTok, Twitter, Apple, Facebook, HBO, Netflix, and intel, had decided to keep their employees home. SXSW was due to start on March 13, and was expected to bring $350 million into Austin. Officials are issuing a local disaster declaration, although there have not been any cases of Covid-19 cases in Austin yet (there are three in Houston).

United Airlines has announced that it’s cutting its April international flights by about 20% and domestic flights by about 10%. Leaders in the travel and hospitality industry are begging people to keep traveling, but with companies and schools cancelling travel, it is likely that this sector of the economy is going to take at least a temporary hit.

The impact of novel coronavirus on the economy is still driving the stock market down. It rallied on Wednesday with the Dow Jones Industrial Average gaining 1,173 points after former Vice President Joe Biden did well on Super Tuesday, but dropped again on Thursday: the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 969 points, or 3.6%. It dropped again today by 253 points, slightly less than 1%. The faltering economy threatens Trump’s reelection since his strongest argument for another term was the strength of the economy. In a “town hall” last night on Fox News Channel, he insisted that the economy was the best it has ever been, and that in a second term, We’re… going to have growth like you’ve never seen before.” But experts say we’re in for a rough ride until we figure out how to counter the novel coronavirus.

Trump is worried how the economic slump will affect his reelection and, meanwhile, the administration has taken two bad hits in courts this week over its election ties to Russia. On Thursday, Judge Reggie Walton, a George W. Bush appointee, wrote that Attorney General William Barr’s efforts to mislead the public over the Mueller Report into Russian interference in the 2016 election “cause the Court to seriously question whether Attorney General Barr made a calculated attempt to influence public discourse about the Mueller Report in favor of President Trump despite certain findings in the redacted version of the Mueller Report to the contrary.” Walton is presiding over a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that asks the court to make the Department of Justice release the unredacted report, which has not yet been made public. Walton says he will read the unredacted report himself to see if the Justice Department’s redactions (that is, blacking out of sections) was reasonable, or simply an attempt to protect the president. “I have never seen an attorney general called out this way before by a judge for making misrepresentations,” Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor, told TalkingPointsMemo.

On Friday, in a different FOIA case, U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered the National Security Agency to let her see a memo of a conversation between Trump and former NSA chief Admiral Mike Rogers, asking Rogers to push back against news reports that the Trump campaign had colluded with Russia. Rogers’s deputy wrote the memo, and Mueller summarized it in his report. Transparency groups want to see it; Trump says it is classified under executive privilege. Kollar-Kotelly says she wants to see it to make a determination.

So Trump is fighting to retain control of the narrative for his reelection. The Trump Campaign has sued the New York Times, the Washington Post, and CNN for “false and defamatory statements” about the campaign’s apparent openness to working with Russia in 2020. The suits seemed designed to gin up the Trump base and to undercut stories of Russian intervention in the upcoming election, which experts say is already actively underway.

A final quick word about the Democratic contest for the presidential nomination. Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren suspended her campaign yesterday after a poor showing on Super Tuesday. She has not endorsed either of her main opponents. The short-term takeaway from this is that it is a problem for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who badly wanted her endorsement to shore up his flagging campaign. But I think there is maybe a longer term takeaway too, and that is the reality that there are so very many issues at play in American politics right now that Warren is wisely taking a step back to see what the next several months bring.

Thanks for being so kind about last night’s hiatus. I needed the ten hours of sleep, but sheesh! I look at today’s news and think it might have been easier just to write…

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March 7, 2020 (Saturday)

Home late tonight, but have a little, anyway, to say. As I hiked this week, I thought about how the Trump administration’s muddled and inadequate response to the novel coronavirus fits in the larger pattern of the historical tensions in American government.

It seems to me that, historically, we have swung between two extremes. When our lack of government oversight of the economy leads to the rise of extremely wealthy people who take over our political system and use it to promote their own interests, a crisis lays bare the misuse of the government for the rich. Americans then rise up and insist on an active government that protects the equality of opportunity on which our democracy depends. Three times before now, we have played out this pattern.

In our history, equality and the protection of property have always struggled. In 1776, the Framers launched the idea of a government based on equality before the law for all white men. But almost as soon as the new nation won independence from England, its inhabitants discovered that there was no guarantee of equality in a land based on property ownership. In the 1790s, in the new frontier region of Kentucky, wealthy slave holders monopolized the best land, dominated the government, and then wrote laws that benefited themselves at the expense of poorer men.

So many of the same men who had framed the Declaration of Independence put the Northwest Ordinance into effect in 1787: by outlawing primogeniture and enslavement in the western lands to the north of the Ohio River, it would, they hoped, prevent the concentration of wealth and subsequent consolidation of power in the hands of a few rich men. Then, in 1788, when they ratified the framework for that body of laws on which this nation would rest—our Constitution—they focused on the protection of property.

The tension between equality and property has dominated our politics ever since.

Three times in our history, we have had to adjust our government when a crisis revealed that the full-throated protection of property at the expense of all else was destroying the equality that underpins democracy.

In the 1850s, Americans had to figure out how to absorb the crisis of westward expansion. When the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo gave the vast American West to the United States, large slave owners tried to monopolize those new lands and plant there the human enslavement that brought extraordinary wealth into their own pockets. The spread of their system would enable them eventually to overawe the free states of the North and make enslavement national. Poor white men would not be able to compete in a land dominated by the very wealthy, but the slaveowners who dominated the government insisted that the government’s only role was to protect property. Wealth moved upward, and democracy was on the ropes.

In response to the crisis sparked by westward expansion, the Republicans under Abraham Lincoln used the government to promote equality of opportunity to poor men on the make. They separated the national finances from the wealthy and rested them instead on ordinary Americans through national taxation—including an income tax—and offered land and an education to men whose fathers could not provide those things. Americans loved the new, active government, and after it won the Civil War, thought the new system was here to stay.

But their very confidence proved to be the undoing of the new system, which fell apart as opponents insisted that an active government stole tax dollars from hardworking white men and redistributed them to those too lazy to work—often people of color.

By the 1890s, the cycle had begun again. The government focused on protection of property alone. The rise of national corporations had concentrated wealth in the hands of a few wealthy men who, in turn, dominated politics. Leaders wrote laws to protect the J. D. Rockefellers and Andrew Carnegies of the nation, while ordinary men fell increasingly behind in a world in which they could not push back against their rich employers. Industrialization seemed to destroy the equality that underpinned democracy.

To adjust to this new crisis on American democracy, voters backed government regulation of business along with government intervention in society to guarantee equality of opportunity to ordinary men and their children. Under Republican Theodore Roosevelt, the government began to regulate the actions of the so-called “Robber Barons,” trying to curb their exploitation of their workers and to get them to contribute to the urban societies in which they thrived. Congress also tried to limit child labor, so children could go to school, and to create an environment in which poor citizens could rise. Roosevelt recognized that, in order for an individual to thrive, government must grow stronger so it could level the playing field between the rich and the hardworking poor.

And, as the Progressive Era began to file down the sharp edges of industrialization to restore the equality that underpinned democracy, Americans once again stopped paying attention, and a backlash unwound the laws of the progressives.

In the 1920s, once again, the cycle began again. Men determined to protect their right to accumulate wealth insisted that the government had no role in regulation or social welfare, and must only protect property. They slashed taxes and regulation. Once again, wealth moved upward and, as rich men dominated the government, democracy was on the ropes.

In the 1930s, Americans had to figure out how to adjust the government to an international world. The Great Crash of 1929 ushered in a worldwide depression and Democratic President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and congressional Democrats used the government to regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure to enable ordinary men to make a living. With the outbreak of World War Two, they used their new active government to defeat fascism and strengthen U.S. democracy.

Their New Deal government was so popular most Americans assumed it was here to stay, and simply stopped thinking about it. And, once again, a backlash spearheaded by those who wanted the government simply to protect property erased much of the newly active government, and set out to erase more. When Republican Ronald Reagan took office in 1981, they began the process of dismantling the active post-WWII government. And, once again, wealth moved upward. As the wealthy gained more and more power, the legislation they backed endangered the equality on which democracy depends.

Now, we are in the midst of another cycle. The rise of multi-national billionaires and international mobsters who are seeking to control western democracies by cyberwarfare illustrates that we are in yet another profound crisis. But our stripped-down government cannot handle this modern world. Trump’s response to the novel coronavirus shows just how unable our government is to answer the great problems of the day.

In the past, similar times of crisis highlighted that the government’s focus on the protection of property alone put the equality that underpins our democracy at risk. When that happened, Americans rose up and demanded a government that regulated the accumulation of wealth and promoted equality of opportunity for all, working for ordinary Americans rather than a small elite.

It sure feels like we are in the midst of a sea change.

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March 8, 2020 (Sunday)

As a political historian, I am accustomed to seeing a lot of political news, even political news that riles other people up, as run-of-the-mill, not worth noticing. I often think of it as the mixture that comes out of cement truck: lots of gray muck flowing fast, but while there are individual granules, there is nothing that stands out. Nothing that stands out, that is, until something does, like a child’s bright plastic dump truck in that mix, or a live cod leaping out of the mud.

In July 2016, in the midst of an angry nomination season, I sat up and took notice of the story that Russia was interfering in that year’s election. In September 2019, the story that the chair of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff had written an angry letter to acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire telling him to turn over the whistleblower’s complaint as the law required—that is, a story about a leading congressman charging a member of the executive branch with breaking the law-- made me sit up and take such notice that I began these Letters From an American.

Today, there was a tweet that has had me on edge all day. Dan Scavino, Trump’s director of social media, tweeted an image of Trump playing a violin, with the meme: “My next piece is called… nothing can stop what’s coming.” That meme—nothing can stop what’s coming-- is common among the QAnon crowd. And then Trump retweeted it with the comment, “Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!”

The image clearly depicted Trump as the murderous Roman emperor Nero, fiddling while Rome burned.

What the [expletive]?

It’s entirely likely that Trump did not understand the reference, and it’s even possible that Scavino didn’t. But whoever made the meme did. Did they mean that Trump would fiddle while the coronavirus burned? News on the coronavirus front has been bad all day, with Italy quarantining millions of people and the U.S. State Department warning older people not to take cruises. The U.S. death toll rose to 21 today and the total number of cases is over 530. Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Arizona Representative Paul Gosar are in self-quarantine after shaking hands with someone who tested positive for the novel coronavirus at CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, last weekend.

As I wondered, I listened tonight to Leslie Stahl’s interview on 60 Minutes with Russia expert Fiona Hill, who served on Trump’s National Security Council and testified in the impeachment hearings about the Trump administration’s plot to get Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky to announce an investigation into Joe and his son Hunter Biden. In her testimony before Congress, Hill warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin was attacking our elections. Tonight, she reiterated that Putin was deliberately pitting the extremes of American society against the great middle to tear us apart and destroy democracy. When asked to speculate on why the Russians are backing both Trump and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, she said, “What the Russians are looking for is the two candidates who are kind of the polar opposites… So that it exacerbates… the polarization in the country.”

But Hill didn’t say much new that would shed light on the weird meme. And then a friend in Ukraine alerted me to the night’s news.

Oil prices have been dropping as the coronavirus has weakened economies and slowed demand. On Friday, OPEC—the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries—which includes Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq, met in Austria and proposed to cut oil production to stabilize prices. Russia, a major oil producer in its own right, told them to pound sand. On Saturday, in retaliation, Saudi Arabia cut its prices by $6-$7 a barrel, and is threatening to increase production by as much as 2 million barrels a day.

This oil war, sparked by Putin, will yank the bottom out of the U.S. oil industry, which is heavily in debt with loans that must be repaid in the next two to four years. As prices fall and credit tightens, many companies will not be able to repay those loans.

Tonight, international oil prices fell more than 30% and U.S. stock futures tumbled. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is expected to drop tomorrow by as much as 1200 points on opening. Asian markets are plunging tonight in anticipation.

The White House has no strategy for stabilizing the economy, and the Trump loyalists in the administration are both unwilling to cross him and jealous of their turf. They will be unable to mount a coherent strategy to counter this oil war.

Maybe “nothing can stop what’s coming” referred to the economic news. It looks as if Putin is deliberately sparking an economic crash that will create chaos before our election. If the oil war continues past the very short term—that is, if Russia and the Saudis are not just playing chicken—our summer and fall will be very messy indeed.

In any case, this oil war is a bright child’s toy in the gray sludge; a cod leaping from a river of cement.

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. . . “All I’ve Ever Cared About Is Meeeeeeeee”

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okay so that’s interesting. nero was a persecutor of christians, considered by some to be the antichrist.

having qanon relatives, who are also a variant of evangelical… “nothing can stop what’s coming”… would to them mean the end times.

accelerating the end times is a big american christian thing.

moving the american embassy to jerusalem apparently is in the book of revelations ( don’t ask me. somehow nostradamus predicted 9/11 as well. people have got some odd beliefs. )

but the other big thing that happens in the end times are plagues. there was talk of it with hiv, but - it didn’t occur to me til now - my relatives are probably both terrified and religiously ecstatic right about now.

nothing is sexier than biblical destruction.

wouldn’t it be bad if 45 were the antichrist, you might ask?

but despite the nero-trump syllogism, it’d still be someone like obama. “you cant stop what’s coming” would be like saying: “told you so.” same as playing “you can’t always get what you want” at his rallies.

i have some deep feels about prepper reactions, especially if government quarantine becomes a thing

/end personal theory

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March 9, 2020 (Monday)

When the stock market opened today at 9:30 am, the fall in oil stocks and bank stocks was so fast that it set off an automatic trading halt, set to trigger at a drop of 7%. The fifteen-minute break was introduced after the stock market crash of October 1987 in order to stop panicked trading and reset the market. When it reopened this morning, the free fall had stopped, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average nonetheless finished the day down 2,013 points, a drop of more than 7%. Oil prices fell 25%, the biggest loss since the 1991 Gulf War. This was the worst drop in the stock market since 2008.

The immediate trigger for the selloff was the oil war between Saudi Arabia and Russia that I wrote about last night, but the long range issue, of course, is the spread of novel coronavirus. Today Italian leaders declared the entire country under quarantine after the country counted more than 9,000 cases and close to 500 deaths. China has announced its dramatic quarantine worked: the number of new cases has declined markedly in the last several days.

Infections continue to spread across America. More than 700 people have tested positive for the virus, and 26 people here have died of Covid-19, the disease the virus causes. Major events continue to be cancelled—Boston’s St. Patrick’s Day parade, scheduled for this weekend and expected to attract more than a million people, is off—and employers are cancelling travel and asking people to work from home. Schools are closing—which badly disrupts communities as parents scramble to figure out childcare and many must stay home-- and universities are moving courses from in-person to on-line instruction. (I did lecture today, but then spent the rest of the day rewriting my courses and learning the programs for distance learning. Trying to see this as an opportunity to try new things….)

In Washington, six congresspeople have self-quarantined after being exposed to the virus. Five of them are Republicans who were exposed to someone with the virus at CPAC (Conservative Political Action Conference) at the end of February, where, ironically, a chief topic of conversation was that the coronavirus was being hyped by Democrats to weaken the president. They are: Doug Collins (R-GA); Paul Gosar (R-AZ); Matt Gaetz (R-FL), who showed up on the floor of Congress in a gas mask the other day to illustrate how silly all the preparations for the virus were; Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX); and Mark Meadows (R-NC), Trump’s incoming chief of staff. Democrat Julia Brownley of California is also self-quarantining after meeting with an individual who tested positive for the virus.

Louie Gohmert (R-TX) was also at CPAC, but has refused to self-quarantine and is simply avoiding personal contact as he continues even to give tours of the Capitol building to constituents.

None of these lawmakers is experiencing any symptoms of Covid-19.

Trump had personal contact with most of the Republicans on this list, but remains unconcerned, shaking hands with supporters today as he headed to a fundraiser in Orlando, Florida. He continues to compare Covid-19 to the flu and blames the Democrats for mounting concerns. “The Fake News Media and their partner, the Democrat Party, is doing everything within its semi-considerable power (it used to be greater!) to inflame the CoronaVirus situation, far beyond what the facts would warrant. Surgeon General, ‘The risk is low to the average American,’” he tweeted this morning. Shortly thereafter, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said: “Make no mistake, this is a very serious health problem. Nobody is trying to minimize that. It is a very serious public health threat to the people of the United States.”

After the stock market slide, Trump announced at an evening news conference that he is discussing a possible economic relief package for the country. On the table are a payroll tax cut, relief to hourly workers, as well as aid for tourist industries—airlines, cruise ship companies, and hotels (all of which are in Trump’s wheelhouse, of course). To my mind, notably absent in his comments was aid for those already in serious trouble from closures, including food-insecure children who are no longer receiving food at school.

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin and National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow will brief Senate Republicans on fiscal stimulus options tomorrow, but it is not clear that the Republicans will get on board for any or all of these measures. As Trump’s economic advisor Larry Kudlow said Friday: “We’re not looking at these massive, federal, throw-money-at-people plans.”

Trump clearly has his reelection in mind as he hopes for economic measures. Minutes after his morning tweet about “The Fake News Media,” he tweeted: “Now the Democrats are trying to smear Bernie with Russia, Russia, Russia. They are driving him Crazy!” and “The Obama/Biden Administration is the most corrupt Administration in the history of our Country!” He told reporters this weekend that he will continue to hold rallies, “tremendous rallies,” which he insists are safe.

His apparent unconcern is affecting popular understanding of the risks of contracting the virus. At CPAC, journalism professor and New Yorker writer Jelani Cobb overheard a person saying “I don’t believe anything the CDC [Centers for Disease Control] says about this virus. It’s full of deep staters who want to use this to create a recession to bring down the president.” On the Fox News Channel tonight, Trish Regan echoed this very argument, saying that Democrats are using the coronavirus “to demonize and destroy the president.” Their criticism was “another attempt to impeach the President,” and the crashing stock market was simply one of the casualties of their hatred.

My overall impression of today was that people are frightened and rudderless because of the confusion and lack of information and professional advice coming from the administration. While I am not a doctor or an epidemiologist, what I read suggests that our main goal as a nation right now is to slow down the spread of Covid-19 so that the number of serious cases stays within the capacity of medical professionals to handle them. To that end, we all owe it to each other to do everything we can to try not to spread the virus.

While not a medical professional, though, I do have chops in the historical profession, and the missteps of the administration in the face of this snowballing crisis reminds me overwhelmingly of the same confusion in the Herbert Hoover administration when faced with the stock market crash of 1929. In response to that vacuum, ordinary Americans began the movement to remake the nation. They looked at what was currently missing in their leadership and articulated what they wanted their government to do to head off the on-going crisis and to make sure such a disaster never happened again.

It seems to me a good time for us to do the same.

For my part, I will start the conversation by saying I want my lawmakers to believe not in a fictional narrative that serves their ideology, but in reality.

Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

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I have the distinct feeling that Gohmert doesn’t need much effort to avoid personal contact, and that it’s not his choice.

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March 10, 2020 (Tuesday)

The trick to the novel coronavirus is that it spreads exponentially. Today we are seeing states—Washington, Colorado, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York-- declare emergencies, based on what, on their face, seem like very few cases: just 76 in New York, for example. But those numbers almost certainly will skyrocket over the next week or two. Private labs in New York began testing for coronavirus on Friday and today Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters that public officials couldn’t keep up. They found 16 new cases between Monday and Tuesday. By declaring emergencies now, and trying to enforce social distancing, governors, business leaders, and universities hope to slow down the spread of the virus. This is important because if we can slow it down, we can help to make sure that hospitals are not overwhelmed all at once with people who need attention.

The comparison people are making these days is between Philadelphia and St. Louis during the 1918 flu epidemic. In Philadelphia, the city’s public health commissioner, a political appointee, did not want to hurt public morale by cancelling public events. On September 28, the city held a big parade to raise money for the Liberty Bonds that were funding WWI, and 200,000 people attended. Two days later, people started to die. On October 3, city leaders closed down the city, but it was too late to stop the spread of the influenza. By the end of the season, 12,000 Philadelphians had died. In St. Louis, in contrast, the public health commissioner shut down the city. Drawing the wrath of local businessmen, he shut down schools, sporting events, bars, and movie theaters. People in St. Louis still got sick, but the infection rate was slow enough that the sick got treatment; the infections did not spike. At the end of the season 1,700 people died of the flu in St. Louis, half the rate in Philadelphia.

The novel coronavirus is spreading in America, but we can still slow it down by social distancing and avoiding crowds. Many of us will still get it, but if we can just keep the numbers spread out, we can make sure the sickest of us can get the treatment they will need. We need to avoid that deadly spike. Today #flattenthecurve is all over Twitter.

The administration has dropped the ball. As the New York Times put it tactfully today: “Faced with a public health emergency on a scale potentially not seen in a century, the United States has not responded nimbly.” No testing kits, a determination to downplay the epidemic to make the president look good, a reluctance to shut down public events, and so on. I won’t belabor it here because there seems little point. Trump is unable to handle this emergency, and his administration’s response is confused and inadequate. He seems concerned primarily with making the situation look better than it is, trying to protect the stock market that he sees as key to his own reelection.

It is past time to stop looking to the administration for true leadership. “It will go away. Just stay calm. It will go away,” Trump’s admonishment today, was not worth much, and the insistence of the president and his supporters that the coronavirus is much like the flu (it is not) is hurting our ability to slow its spread.

Trump is more interested in stabilizing the stock market than dealing with the virus. Yesterday, he announced he would hold a press conference today to roll out his economic proposals—a “major” economic package-- to help mitigate the crisis caused by the coronavirus and the oil war between Saudi Arabia and Russia. In apparent response, the Dow Jones Industrial Average on the stock market rebounded from its plummet yesterday to regain 1,167 points, or more than 4%. But today no plan was forthcoming, although there were murmurs of federal aid for oil and natural gas producers hit by the oil war, and tax relief for airlines, cruise lines, and hotels hit by the coronavirus. The International Air Transport Association says that airlines could lose as much as $113 billion in revenue as people stop traveling out of fear of becoming infected. United Airlines and American Airlines stocks are both down about 40% this year. Stock market futures for Wednesday are down 518 points tonight.

Trump’s laser focus on helping industry and not workers has lost even former Republicans. This morning Bill Kristol, former Republican stalwart, reflected on Trump’s economic plans and tweeted: “Congress: 1. No bailouts for industries. 2. Targeted help for hospitals and the health care sector. 3. General relief directly to workers and families. The owners of capital have had a good decade and can weather a downturn; it’s labor that deserves a strengthened safety net.” (This prompted one wag to respond: “Wait, who are you?”)

In the Democratic primaries held today, former Vice President Joe Biden has won a number of victories over Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. Today he won big in Mississippi, Missouri, and, most tellingly, in Michigan, where Biden got 53% of the vote to 37% for Sanders. Michigan matters because it is a sign of being able to win the Midwest, where Trump won in 2016. Biden won black voters, suburbanites, and rural white voters. At this point, it looks like he is the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination.

So what is going to happen? I have fielded calls and emails all day from people who are frightened and eager to have someone tell them what is going to happen next and what they should do. One of the things cable news and the internet and cell phones has brought to us is the desire to know RIGHT NOW how things are going to turn out. But no one knows what the final death rate for the coronavirus is going to be, or who is going to win the election in 2020, or what this nation will look like in two years. I certainly don’t.

That’s what’s so amazing about history. As grim as things seem right now, the future is ours to shape.

Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

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i also have heard he plans to release his tax returns very very soon. could be any day now. ( he’s got perfect taxes. the best. you’ve never seen anything like it. )

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March 11, 2020 (Wednesday)

Today was the day the seriousness of the novel coronavirus finally sank in at the level of the federal government. On Monday, NBA player for the Utah Jazz Rudy Gobert touched every microphone at a media event, seemingly to show he was not concerned about the coronavirus; tonight he tested positive for it, and the NBA suspended the remainder of the season.

Gobert’s rapid swing from flippancy to involvement looked a lot like that of the administration. We learned today that the National Security Council within the White House has classified all top-level meetings about the novel coronavirus. This is unusual and, of course, meant the numbers of people in the room was small (you needed a security clearance to be there), and the chance of leaks low, so that much of the official discussion of this public emergency remains secret. Nonetheless, the NSC’s spokesman says that “From day one of the response to the coronavirus, NSC has insisted on the principle of radical transparency.”

After weeks of downplaying the dangers of Covid-19, the administration today changed its approach. This morning—a million years ago—Dr. Anthony Fauci, a member of the president’s coronavirus task force, repeatedly told the House that the president was wrong to downplay the virus, and then, abruptly, the hearing ended when the expert witnesses were called to a meeting at the White House. By afternoon, though, it was no longer possible to stifle bad news: a staffer in the office of Washington Senator Maria Cantwell’s Washington, D.C. office tested positive for the virus, and married actors Rita Wilson and Tom Hanks announced that they have contracted Covid-19. (Their son Chet tweeted a video saying they were both doing well.)

The stock market today officially entered a bear market, which means a falling market (a bull market goes up; a bear market goes down-- I always remember which is which by remembering that a bull tosses things up on its horns while a bear claws things down). A bear market is one that has dropped 20% or more from its peak. By the end of the day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had dropped 1,464 points, almost 6%.

At 9:00 tonight, Trump made the second public address of his presidency, this time to announce the measures his administration would take to combat the viral infection the World Health Organization is now calling a pandemic. The speech was more a performance than a set of policies; his people had to correct the misstatements right afterward.

In the speech, in a monotone except for one short moment when he went off script and seemed to come alive, Trump took credit for acting quickly early on to stop flights from China. He went on to announce a ban on flights from Europe for 30 days beginning Friday (the policy is actually quite a bit more limited than he suggested), blaming Europe for “seeding” the virus in America-- his focus still seems to be on containment. He made it sound as if there would be an embargo on cargoes from Europe, too, but that was a misstatement. There was no mention of more testing, which is key to controlling the spread of the coronavirus which is obviously already spreading domestically within the country, except to say that he had arranged for health insurers to drop the co-pays on the tests (that no one can get). There was no mention of testing for uninsured people.

Trump also said that the government would defer tax payments for some businesses, but made no mention of unemployment benefits, food assistance, or paid leave, and he reiterated that the economy is strong.

As soon as he finished speaking, stock futures began to drop. And drop. And drop. By midnight, it looked as if the Dow will open tomorrow with a decline of about 950 points or 4%.

While we are all focused—with excellent reason—on the pandemic, I cannot help but worry about what is happening when our eyes are elsewhere. Trump has always cared primarily about money, and this sudden drop of the market at night, thanks to his words, seems to me terribly opportune. I am 100% willing to accept that I am just too cynical about politics and money, but “follow the money” has always stood me in good stead when trying to figure things out. I do not know what it means that the market took such a tumble thanks to words that pretty clearly were going to make it fall—perhaps Trump just made an embarrassing mistake, not realizing it would tank the markets—but I think it bears watching.

Two days ago, I missed altogether something else that bears watching, and the fact that I missed it suggests it was barely covered—I’m generally all over the news. On March 9, 2020, the Russian Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov met Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin and, according to the press release from the Russians, discussed “implementation of the arrangements reached by Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump during the summits in Helsinki in 2018 and Osaka in 2019.” There was virtually no coverage of this meeting in the United States; the only record I found was a readout from the Treasury Department, saying just that the meeting had happened. The Helsinki meeting is the one where Trump and Putin met for two hours alone with only their interpreters in the room. The Osaka meeting came just after Putin declared western liberalism obsolete.

Perhaps this meeting was nothing. But, coming as it does in the midst of Russia’s oil war with Saudi Arabia, and alluding to the two-hour conference that so irregularly cut all the usual advisors and staff out of the room, it would sure be nice to know a bit more about it.

All this to say that I am skeptical that all the intrigue over money and power that has plagued this administration since its beginning have suddenly ended as the president and his people turn their attention to the coronavirus. It has seemed to me he saw the pandemic as a media crisis rather than a public health crisis, and if so, there is no reason to think his priorities have changed.

As I say, perhaps I’m just too skeptical. But I suspect it’s more likely I’m a realist.

Also available as a free newsletter at heathercoxrichardson.substack.com

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