Daily Archives: April 9, 2020

WASHINGTON A Trump administration request for quick approval of $250 billion in additional loans to help distressed small businesses weather the coronavirus crisis stalled Thursday in the Senate after Republicans and Democrats clashed over what should be included in the latest round of government relief.

The dispute was a prelude to what is likely to be a far more complicated and consequential set of negotiations over a larger infusion of federal aid that lawmakers expect to consider in the coming weeks on the heels of the $2 trillion stimulus law enacted late last month. The White House had asked lawmakers to move in the interim to inject more money into a new loan program intended to keep small businesses afloat and allow them to avoid laying off workers as the pandemic continues to batter the economy.

But Democrats argued that as long as Congress was providing additional aid, it should include more money that was urgently needed for hospitals, states and cities confronting the coronavirus, as well as additional food assistance for Americans coping with its punishing economic toll.

Republicans balked at that effort, saying the time for negotiating such additions was later.

My colleagues must not treat working Americans as political hostages, said Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader. With the Senate not scheduled to return until April 20, he added, lawmakers should have focused discussions on urgent subjects without turning every conversation into a conversation about everything.

During a choreographed exchange on the Senate floor, Mr. McConnell tried to push through the $250 billion in funding for small-business loans during a procedural session, a maneuver that would have required the support of all senators. Democrats objected as promised and proposed doubling that request by adding $100 billion for hospitals and $150 billion for state and local governments, as well as placing conditions on the small-business funds and adding oversight requirements for the administrations coronavirus response.

Yes, we know we need more money for this program, Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, said on the Senate floor. But for goodness sake, lets take the opportunity to make some bipartisan fixes to allow this program to work better for the very people its designed to help.

When Mr. Van Hollen countered with the Democrats proposal, Mr. McConnell blocked it, ensuring that the Senate could not move forward on the issue until another procedural session scheduled for Monday.

Democrats said they had been blindsided by Mr. McConnells announcement this week that he would quickly move to approve the administrations request for additional money for the small-business program, and charged that he was merely looking to score political points by trying to do so without making any effort to reach an agreement with them.

There was no effort made to follow the process that we could to get this done, so it wont get done, said Senator Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, one of the architects of the small-business loan program. He called Mr. McConnells move a political stunt.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, speaking during a news conference call, said that Steven Mnuchin, the Treasury secretary, had called her on Tuesday and asked for a quarter of a trillion dollars in 48 hours with no data.

Although she acknowledged that the offer formed the basis for some negotiation, she reiterated that without the additional aid Democrats were seeking, it could not pass the House. She said that the dispute would not be solved before Easter this Sunday.

I dont have any intention of spending any one second on Sunday trying to convince anybody that it is necessary to address the needs of everybody in our society, Ms. Pelosi told reporters. If they dont share that value, theyre not going to get it on Sunday.

Mr. McConnell, leaving the Senate floor on Thursday, told reporters that lawmakers would have a continuous discussion as to how to move forward.

No one is necessarily against additional assistance, he said. Much of the rest of the money has not gone out yet. So its hard to measure the effect of that and the additional need.

Republicans and administration officials have said that the soaring demand for the small-business loan initiative, called the Paycheck Protection Program, warrants a stand-alone bill, while other demands should wait for negotiations on the broader package that lawmakers have begun referring to as Phase 4 of their coronavirus aid efforts.

With most of the funds from the $2 trillion economic stimulus plan just beginning to trickle out to agencies and taxpayers, they argued that it was premature to allocate billions more dollars this week.

The president has been very clear, Mr. Mnuchin said Thursday in an interview with CNBC. Hes happy to talk about other issues such as hospitals and states in the next bill, but we wanted to go and get money for the small-business program.

The stimulus package enacted last month created the Paycheck Protection Program and provided $350 billion for it. Its rollout has been plagued with problems, even as it has been inundated with requests from companies desperate to avoid collapse.

Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida and a vocal program advocate, said as of 2 p.m. Wednesday, more than 400,000 small businesses had been approved for loans, at a value of more than $100 billion.

The program is going to come to a halt, and theres going to be millions of small businesses locked out, on the outside looking in, Mr. Rubio warned in a video posted on Twitter. It will be because today in the Senate, Senate Democratic leaders decided to take the program hostage, hostage as leverage for unrelated items.

In addition to providing more money, the Democratic proposal would have placed new conditions and disclosure requirements on the administration, according to a summary released on Thursday. There were additional guidelines to streamline the lending process through the Paycheck Protection Program, and to expand its eligibility to include farms.

Some of the new small-business loan funds would also be reserved for small, community-based lenders, disaster grants or loans. Those included $50 billion for the Economic Injury Disaster Loan program, which has typically been used to help companies after natural disasters. The program has run low on funding, and applicants are unclear what aid, if any, they will receive.

There is a disparity in access to capital in our country, Ms. Pelosi said. We do not want this tragedy of coronavirus to exacerbate that disparity.

The Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Emergency Management Agency would have had to report to Congress monthly on the administrations coronavirus testing strategy, as well as on the allocation of testing and supplies.

And the administration would have had to submit a separate report by May 15 on the demographics of patients who had contracted Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and its strategies for reducing health disparities related to it. That proposal came about after data emerged suggesting that the disease was infecting and killing black people in the United States at disproportionately high rates.

Alan Rappeport contributed reporting.

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Small-Business Aid Stalls in Senate as Democrats Demand More Funds - The New York Times

WASHINGTON A showdown is taking shape in Congress over how far Washington should go in expanding voting access to respond to the coronavirus pandemic, with Democrats pressing to add new options for voters and President Trump and Republicans resisting changes they say could harm their election prospects in November.

Democrats are determined to add new voting requirements for Novembers general election to the next stage of coronavirus relief legislation, a move that Mr. Trump and Republican leaders have vowed to oppose. But it is one that Democrats believe is necessary and all the more urgent in light of the confusion and court fights surrounding Wisconsins elections on Tuesday.

With public health officials encouraging social distancing and staying at home to slow the spread of the virus, the prospect of millions of voters congregating at polling places around the country to cast their ballots this fall appears increasingly untenable and dangerous. But the fight over whether the federal government should require states to offer other options by allowing voting by mail, extending early voting and instituting other changes to protect voters and voting rights is emerging as a major sticking point as lawmakers look to pass a fourth emergency aid measure in the next few weeks.

Democrats argue that changes are imperative, and Congress must make them now before it will be too late to put them in place for the November balloting.

We cant allow our democracy to go down the tubes because this administration did not prepare for this pandemic, said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees election law. We have to come up with best practices and make sure that everyone can still vote.

Mr. Trump, who in recent days has been ratcheting up his criticism of voting by mail, intensified his resistance on Wednesday, instructing Republicans in a tweet to fight very hard when it comes to state wide mail-in voting and saying it doesnt work out well for Republicans. He also claimed there was tremendous potential for voter fraud, though there is little evidence to back up that assertion.

Elections experts say voter fraud in general is extremely rare, including fraud involving ballots mailed in by voters. Most mail-ballot fraud involves absentee ballots and is committed by corrupt campaigns or election officials, not voters and even that is rare and generally easily caught. (Mr. Trump conceded on Tuesday that he voted by mail in Floridas primary election in March.)

Still, the president made it clear last month that he regarded Democrats efforts to include broader voting access in the stimulus measure as a direct threat to Republicans electoral prospects. They had things levels of voting that, if you ever agreed to it, youd never have a Republican elected in this country again, Mr. Trump said then.

Voting by mail, which has been shown to increase turnout, is routine in many parts of the country and is the chief way of voting in states such as Colorado, Oregon and Washington. Yet some Republicans, taking their cues from Mr. Trump, have become increasingly open in making the argument that it is detrimental to their partys political fortunes.

In an interview with a local call-in show, David Ralston, the Republican speaker of Georgias House, said a proposed vote-by-mail option for the states May primary would be a disaster for his party, explaining that the president had said it best.

This will be extremely devastating to Republicans and conservatives in Georgia, Mr. Ralston said. This will certainly drive up turnout.

Other Republicans say their opposition to Democrats proposals is driven by a belief that states should control their own elections and that, beyond providing sufficient money to conduct safe and fair voting, the federal government should stay out of their way.

Im philosophically opposed to the federal government taking over elections, said Senator Roy Blunt of Missouri, the top Republican on the Rules Committee and a longtime state elections official himself. It is a bad idea. Im pretty flexible about the amount of money, but Im not flexible about a federal takeover of the election process itself.

Adding to the intensity over the fight is that Democrats and their allies see the forthcoming legislation as probably the last chance to force changes before it will be too late for states and counties to make adjustments in their election procedures for November. In a private conference call on Wednesday with House Democrats, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she would push to include $2 billion for voting assistance in the next sweeping coronavirus crisis response package that is expected to be debated this month, according to people familiar with the conversation who described it on the condition of anonymity.

Democrats say they realize that it would not be feasible to initiate nationwide mail voting in this election cycle and they are simultaneously pressing for other, potentially less contentious new rules.

One measure with strong Democratic support calls for guaranteeing that all states allow at least 20 days of early, in-person voting to enable people to spread out their trips to polling places rather than lining up on Election Day. Introduced in March by Ms. Klobuchar and Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, it would also loosen existing restrictions in some states on who can cast absentee ballots; allow registration online and by mail at least 21 days before an election, or closer if states allow; and require all jurisdictions to develop a plan for voting in the event of an emergency.

A big part of this will be voting at home, Ms. Klobuchar said, but it wouldnt be only voting at home.

Democrats fought to include their $2 billion request for significant changes in voting practices at the state level in the $2 trillion stimulus bill enacted last month. Republicans initially responded with an offer of $10 million, officials said, before the final amount was set at $400 million.

Democrats said they were disappointed with the absence of new voting accessibility requirements but did not want to hold up the emergency legislation over the election fight, since they assumed another bill would emerge and provide an avenue for enacting broad changes. Now, some lawmakers see a voting crisis emerging and promise that the coming fourth phase of government relief is their opportunity to do something about it.

On the next bill, I intend to be far more determined and fierce on insisting on vote-by-mail, said Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate subcommittee that funds elections. Mail voting is the method that best preserves the social distancing.

Despite calls for Congress to institute new ballot and voting protections after foreign interference in the 2016 elections and voting disputes around the country, Republicans have been reluctant to do so, though they have supported an infusion of funds to help local elections officials make changes they see as necessary.

Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, had drawn intense criticism for failing to act on proposals from the House. Republicans are likely to dig in on that position now that the president has taken such a strong stance against any changes. Republicans argue that Democrats are calling for the new voting rules only because they believe the modifications will give them an edge in the upcoming elections.

Our Democratic friends want the federal government to take over elections, but historically those have been handled at the state level I think that makes the most sense, Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, told reporters. Actually thats the safest, in terms of interference from outsiders. Its actually our dispersed system that makes it harder for an adversary to come in and meddle with our elections. So, I dont see that as being a part of this coronavirus response.

Mr. Blunt said that local elections officials were best positioned to determine how to carry out their own elections and that federal interference would bog down decision-making. He said the federal government should provide the resources but leave the final say to local jurisdictions.

If the states want to do all these things, I have no problem with it, Mr. Blunt said. This is a responsibility that the states have always had, and I think they would do it much better than the federal government. The federal government cannot do everything.

But after the spectacle of thousands of Wisconsin voters risking potential exposure to the coronavirus while waiting in line to cast their ballots this week, and with elections around the nation being postponed, Democrats say it is time for the federal government to step in.

When you look at what is happening in Wisconsin and whats going on around the country, we cant let this happen in the fall, Ms. Klobuchar said.

She conceded that it was impossible to predict now what the state of the pandemic crisis would be in several months. But whatever it is, she said, there is no reason that this early on we cannot reform our election process.

Michael Wines and Sheryl Gay Stolberg contributed reporting.

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As Pandemic Imperils Elections, Democrats Clash With Trump on Voting Changes - The New York Times

WASHINGTON Members of Congress grappling with how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic have few reasons to smile these days. But House Democrats have found one, and her name is Earnestine.

Earnestine Dawson is kind of a mystery woman, Democrats agree. Most have never seen her, though they all know the sound of her voice. Their spouses and kids adore her. There is talk of sending her flowers (that would be difficult they have no idea where she is), and some have invited her to join them for dinner at the Democratic Club once Covid-19 subsides and such things are possible again.

I dont know where we got Earnestine, confessed Representative Steny H. Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland and the majority leader. Does she work for us?

Yes, Earnestine does work for the party leadership. She is the digital director for the House Democratic Caucus, but better known by lawmakers for her pandemic side-gig as moderator of a seemingly endless series of conference calls that have become the Democrats only means of communication and deliberation during the pandemic.

A Mississippi native who grew up dreaming of a job in Washington, Ms. Dawson, 37, is in charge of shaping social media strategy for House Democrats messaging arm, a relatively obscure position that normally entails little interaction with members of Congress. But in recent weeks, House Democrats have gotten to know her as the cheery master of ceremonies for their private calls, calling on each lawmaker in turn with her signature tag line: Congresswoman So-and-So, you are NOW LIVE!

As people all over the world adjust to living and working in the age of the coronavirus, with its lack of human contact and seemingly endless stream of fear and bad news, rare silver linings appear in surprising ways. For House Democrats, struggling to adapt to life as remote legislators and representatives, one bright spot has been Earnestine.

She has brought them together through tense and serious business: the drafting of three coronavirus relief packages, including the most recent $2 trillion economic stimulus bill, hashed out during a series of calls that typically lasted two hours. With more than 200 members, the caucus is too large to convene by video.

Ms. Dawson has moderated more than a dozen two-hour caucus calls since March 16, facilitating nearly 300 questions from 235 individual lawmakers. Often the calls feature special guests. Janet Yellen, the former chair of the Federal Reserve, briefed Democrats on Monday, and Vice President Mike Pence, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and other members of the presidents coronavirus task force fielded questions from them on Wednesday.

Ms. Dawson is a constant, telling lawmakers to press star three to ask questions, gently teaching members twice her age how to unmute their phones, and letting them know sounding more like a party D.J. than a telephone operator when they have the floor to speak. She does it all from her desk in the basement of the House Longworth Building across from the Capitol, where she prefers to work rather than being at home.

I dont hear strain, I hear strength, Ms. Dawson said in an interview, her first. I think when they are on these calls together, they pull strength from one another.

But to hear Democrats tell it, the person from whom they are pulling strength is Ms. Dawson.

To Representative Richard Neal, 71, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Ms. Dawson is a reminder of what radio meant to us in the simpler days of his childhood. To Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, 66, Ms. Dawson is a touchstone and a rock the glue that keeps you together in a troubled, uncertain time.

Mr. Hoyer says Ms. Dawson deserves a title: We need to get a name for her, like Conference Queen or something like that. Very few of us know her personally, but we all know her through this phone connection, and shes the connector.

Americans of a certain age (including Mr. Neal, Ms. Dingell and Mr. Hoyer, 80) may remember another telephone operator named Ernestine a character played by the actress Lily Tomlin on Rowan & Martins Laugh-In, a 1960s- and 1970s-era television variety show. Ms. Tomlins Ernestine was nasal-voiced and slightly sarcastic. Ms. Dawson is nothing like her.

She is so sweet and she is so darling, said Representative Kim Schrier, Democrat of Washington, whose district was an early epicenter of the American pandemic. My husband and son love to listen to her say, Congressman Blah Blah Blah, you are now live! I purposely put her on speakerphone, just so they can hear her do the introduction.

A daughter of a bank manager and a corrections officer who worked in a maximum-security prison on death row, Ms. Dawson grew up in Cleveland, Miss., a city of roughly 11,000 people once divided by railroad tracks. Blacks, including Ms. Dawsons family, lived in the lowlands east of the tracks. Whites lived on the west side on higher ground. Each side had its own high school, though Ms. Dawson said they have since combined.

I had friends all over the city, she said, but we always knew what that railroad track meant when we crossed it.

Ms. Dawson said she knew early on that she wanted to get away from my small little town, and to serve the people, but her path to Capitol Hill was circuitous. She graduated from Tennessee State University in 2005 with a dream, she said, of becoming the first African-American female senator from Mississippi.

After a stint at a human rights group in her home state, Ms. Dawson grabbed a chance to get to Washington as an intern for a lobbying firm whose Republican politics were antithetical to her own. After a year in law school (I figured out real quickly it was not for me) and a string of jobs, including courtroom clerk and field organizer for President Barack Obamas 2012 re-election campaign, she made her way to Capitol Hill as digital director for Representative Yvette Clarke, Democrat of New York.

Ms. Clarke said Ms. Dawson had a way of making lemonade out of lemons, a trait the congresswoman attributed to her upbringing in a place with the legacy of segregation. Judge Hiram Puig-Lugo, for whom Ms. Dawson clerked when he was the deputy presiding judge of the Family Court division of the superior court in Washington, said the two often spoke about that aspect of her experience and how it shaped her.

When Democrats won control of the House in 2018, Ms. Dawson was hired by another New York Democrat, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, the caucus chairman. In her current post, she has established an informal program to mentor young people of color who want to work in the digital space, in fields where minorities are often underrepresented.

With lawmakers scattered around the country, including some in quarantine, the caucus needed to create a system for communicating that would mimic its in-person meetings, which occur weekly or more often. After a few practice runs, it seemed obvious that Ms. Dawson should manage the calls, said Michael Hardaway, the caucus communications director and Ms. Dawsons boss.

We literally have had to build a virtual Congress for our members, Mr. Hardaway said.

The lawmakers calls have not been without incident. There have been interruptions from doorbells, barking dogs and crying children, as well as the occasional overheard private spousal communications. Members are supposed to keep their comments to a minute, and if someone needs to be cut off, that task falls to Mr. Jeffries.

Last week, after teasing Ms. Dawson about whether she had gotten flowers that were never sent, Representative John Larson, Democrat of Connecticut, invited her to dinner on behalf of himself and a handful of other lawmakers.

She is such an absolute delight and such a break from everything that were going through, Mr. Larson said. We cant wait to take her out if shes willing to go with us.

Ms. Dawson, for the record, did not respond. She does not engage with members on the calls, even when they praise her, but said she tries to remain as invisible as possible out of a sense of respect and a desire to be discreet.

She sees her job, she said, as making sure that all the members have a happy voice on the other end, especially during these hard times.

They are making some very hard decisions for the American people, Ms. Dawson said. Im just someone on the other line, letting them know that its time for them to ask their question or make their comment in a very upbeat way on a topic thats not very upbeat.

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Democrats Have Found a Coronavirus Bright Spot. Her Name Is Earnestine. - The New York Times

John Steinbecks 1939 novel The Grapes of Wrath describes a similar moment during the Great Depression, when people starved even as orchards of fruit were burned to make the food that remained more profitable: Men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.

Were about to live this again, in more sophisticated ways. Then it was fruit being incinerated so no one could eat it. Now its cheap ventilators that werenever builtbecause a company called Covidien worried they would compete with their more expensive models. Its N95 masks that were not available because President Donald Trumpdelayed invokingthe Defense Production Act in order to protect corporate power. Its tens of thousands of hospital beds being eliminated in New York and New Jersey because the surplus capacity cost money; some of those hospitals were turned into luxury condos. Now, as it was 85 years ago, human beings are being offered as a blood sacrifice to profit. Now as then, the resulting wrath will be towering.

What we know from history is that someone always shows up to harvest this level of ambient rage but it can go in two directions. If people can be made angry at the crime, as Steinbeck wrote, there can be huge positive political changes. During the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt and unions organized the anger and used it to create the New Deal and the largest middle class in history. In unluckier countries, like Germany, Italy and Japan, the political left failed. The fury was organized by fascists, and directed at innocents.

Its tough to be optimistic that todays liberals can replicate Roosevelts success. The corporate-managerial-legal class that operates the Democratic Party fears anger and sees it as illegitimate as the basis for action. Having beaten back the threat of the Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren presidential candidacies, both fueled by strong populist emotion, they dream of a technocratic politics purified of messy, fickle human feelings.

But the American right specializes in the politics of anger. If the Democrats refuse to harness the legitimate rage of Americans and direct it at those responsible for our predicament, the right will make this anger its own and will win.

To understand the stakes, briefly imagine two possible versions of America one year from today, with two different uses of anger. Lets start with the anger we need, the kind that clarifies and motivates, and underlies all effective politics.

The Democratic candidate likely Joe Biden, but we know anything can happen in U.S. politics beat Donald Trump going away.

The winning Democrats slogan was Fighting Mad. And that was the core of his or her campaign both the unabashedly mad part and the demonstrated willingness to fight based on that anger.

The Democrat began the convention address either in Milwaukee or from his or her basement with no one within6 feet by saying: Im running for president because Im angry. And if youre angry too, theres nothing wrong with that. Anger comes from an Old Norse word that means sorrow. Every single one of us has known sorrow because of the thieves and incompetents whove been running this country. If youre angry, then join me and together well take that trash out to the curb.

The Democrat told the truth without truckling about who exactly was to blame for what had befallen them. The overall Democratic story could be understood by regular people because it included what every story needs: villains to be angry at, and heroes to root for. And unlike the rights stories, this story was true.

Were all in this together, the Democrat declared. And what that means is that the people whore out for themselves are going to pay the price. When Im president, were going to put all the presidents daily briefs online so everybody can see exactly how Trump screwed us. Politicians who made money off inside information on the coronavirus and profiteers who hoarded medical supplies are going to spend the rest of their lives in jail.

Mobilized anger at the healthcare industry terrified Congress into passing Medicare for All.

Mobilized anger at the countrys poisoning by Fox News led to a congressional investigation of whether the network had knowingly misled Americans about the dangers of Covid-19. The documentation uncovered became the basis for lawsuits that bankrupted and neutered Fox.

Mobilized anger created a sea change in U.S. culture. The taboo against being honest about the anguish and failure all humans experience was shattered. Suddenly Americans realized they were surrounded by suffering just like their own, and much of it was the fault of political choices, rather than them individually being losers.

The example from the top made an entire young, tragedy-stricken generation see that being a liberal politician can mean being a normal, angry human being instead of a technocrat built in a Stanford lab. Suddenly new potential candidates were showing up from unions and grassroots activists rather than elite law schools.

More than anything else, the liberal embrace of anger in 2021 transformed progressive politics into a movement that was serious about power. If there were no people who were truly dangerous, who were hurting us and rightfully deserved our fury, why bother getting out of bed to get power in the first place? And why wield it to vanquish your foes if were all on the same team in the end? Anger finally unlocked a liberal capacity to tell the truth.

Donald Trump was reelected. What stunned the Democrats, CNN, and the New York Times even more than Trumps victory is that he ran on the slogan Healing America even as voluminous, exquisitely researched media output demonstrated that his catastrophic mismanagement helped the coronavirus kill a million surplus Americans.

Yet it somehow didnt matter. Trump and the GOPs mighty Wurlitzer settled on a suite of hazy stories, all of which the partys base fervently believed even though they were mutually contradictory.

Such as, there had been mass deaths but they were the fault of Hunter Bidens friends in China. Simultaneously, they argued that barely anyone had died and the numbers had been wildly exaggerated by the media to hurt Trump. The suffocation of the countrys small businesses could be blamed on Nancy Pelosis bailout of big business and Wall Street. Big business and Wall Street had valiantly kept us alive despite the Democratic hate for free enterprise. At the bottom of the rights food chain, there were constant whispers thatbrown peoplefrom New York had streamed out of their warrens to purposefully infect the heartland.

What the stories had in common was that they featuredsomeone to blame, someone who could be the target of valid but misplaced rage. By contrast, the stories told by the Democratic candidate and the corporate press were accurate but had no villains and no heroes, and hence were not stories in the normal sense at all, just a complicated conglomeration of facts that looked good on a blackboard but had no heart.

The Democratic candidates quiet campaign refused to get exercised about much of anything. When the candidate was asked whether he or she would investigate Trumps dilatory response to the coronavirus at the beginning of 2020, the Democrat said no, because I know Donald loves this country and even out of office well need his shoulder at the wheel to beat this thing. What about prosecuting senators for insider trading? No, the candidate explained, because when Im president the country will all pull together.

With a terrifying resurgence of Covid-19 in the fall, and the Democrats failing to secure universal vote by mail, that November saw the lowest turnout ever in a presidential election. The Democratic base confused, demoralized, and frightened didnt show up. Trump declared his modest win to be the greatest landslide in history.

The Republican base became even more rage-filled and vindictive in victory. The Washington Post is trying to destroy America, Sean Hannity began to declare each week. Someones got to shut it down. Two days later, a gunman infiltrated Post headquarters and was stopped just before he could open fire.

Trump was now free of all restraints, and he commenced an enormous bombing campaign against Iran. Protests were outlawed for public safety. Large numbers of Americans continued to die from the coronavirus, although no one was sure exactly how many because the government no longer released statistics on it. Fox began quietly, and then more and more loudly, claiming that opponents of the war were importing biological bombers from Iran to spread the disease. The stage was set for the classic collapse into authoritarianism, with the official outside enemies purportedly collaborating with the enemies on the inside.

No one knows today which path the U.S. will take. But its going to be one or the other: The right or the left will emerge as the champion of the coming American rage. All we can do now is try to make the anger and its consequences rational, based on an accurate understanding of the world and the unnecessary sorrow we experience.We need to make people angry at the crime.

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The Left Must Organize the Coming American Fury - The Intercept

Republican governors have been widely criticized for being slower than their Democratic counterparts in imposing social distancing requirements to halt the spread of the new coronavirus. Some Democratic governors Govs. Gavin Newsom (California), Andrew Cuomo (New York), J.B. Pritzker (Illinois) and Jay Inslee (Washington) in particular moved to enact social distancing measures relatively early, in some cases weeks ahead of other states. But this hasnt been an entirely partisan push Republican Gov. Mike DeWine (Ohio) also enacted social distancing measures early, declaring we must be at war with the virus.

In fact, many of the governors who have responded the fastest, lead states that faced intense outbreaks of the virus much earlier than other states. New York, for instance, is at the epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. and accounts for nearly half of the countrys reported coronavirus-related deaths with thousands of new cases reported daily.

It makes sense, then, that we see some variation in when states first issued a statewide order to stay at home, but is there an actual partisan split in how Democratic and Republican governors have responded? In looking at the first recorded COVID-19 case in a given state and how many days passed before the governor imposed a statewide stay at home or shelter in place order, I found a governors party affiliation didnt make a huge difference in when the order was issued.

The median Democratic governor imposed such an order 21 days after the first case appeared and the median Republican governor took 25 days.

The key difference here, of course, is that the eight governors who have yet to impose a statewide order are all Republican. Yes, some of those states have partial stay-at-home orders enacted in some cities and counties, but nothing statewide. And each of those states is now well beyond the 25-day time frame of the median Republican-led state. Nebraska, for instance, saw its first case on Feb. 17 52 days ago and still hasnt imposed a statewide order.

However, these are also some of the states with the lowest number of detected cases. Obviously, detected cases arent a perfect metric, given the wide variation in testing strategies, but it does seem that there is less political demand on these governors to impose a stay-at-home order because the perception of an urgent public health crisis is less prevalent within those states. Their party affiliation probably plays a role in that perception.

Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, for instance, made a point in mid-March of taking his family out to dinner, encouraging other asymptomatic people to do the same to help the local business community. And although Stitt later sounded a more cautious tone, this is a line that has been echoed by a number of other Republican leaders, perhaps because the spread of the disease hasnt been as prevalent in their state. The virus largely appeared (or was detected) in Democratic-controlled states earlier, so theres been more pressure for Democratic governors to respond. But well see just how much longer before the remaining governors impose such an order in their state, as there are signs that the coronavirus could grow just as fast in red states.

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Democratic And GOP Governors Enacted Stay-At-Home Orders On The Same Timeline. But All Holdouts Are Republicans. - FiveThirtyEight

The coronavirus pandemic has canceled thousands of business, sporting and cultural events into the summer, with some rescheduled for the fall or even next year. But the Republican and Democratic presidential nominating conventions are likely to take place in August, as scheduled, according to one shrewd political analyst.

On the Yahoo Finance Electionomics podcast, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg explained why its crucial for President Trump to accept his partys presidential nomination in person at the convention in late August. Having a real convention will be important for him, Greenberg says. Trump will push very hard to have a real convention because it would be a real judgment about his presidency if he couldnt have a convention.

Trump has been itching to reopen the economy, pushing first for businesses to reopen on Easter Sunday, April 12. Thats obviously impossible, with coronavirus infections and deaths still cresting across the country. Trump later extended federal distancing guidance to April 30, and now he talks more broadly about light at the end of the tunnel.

If the outbreak remains so severe by August that neither party can hold a physical convention, that would amount to five months of business shutdowns. The toll on the economy would be so severe that Trumps reelection would probably be doomed by then. Economists have a hard time predicting when the U.S. economy will start to recover, because it depends on aggressive public health measures including widespread testing for the virus, antibody tests to determine who might be immune and careful plans for limited and safe business re-openings.

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Many forecasts call for a severe slowdown in the second quarter of the year, with a gradual recovery starting in the third quarter. If that pans out, the Republican convention might begin as scheduled on August 24, in Charlotte. Planners may still have to thin attendance, force distancing and abide by the Centers for Disease Control guidelines for reopening.

The Democratic Party has already postponed its convention, which was supposed to start in Milwaukee in mid July. Thats now scheduled to begin August 17, a week before Republicans gather. And if the Republicans hold theirs, the Democrats will essentially have to as well. Well have a lot of pressure on the Democrats to hold their convention, Greenberg says.

Conventions entail a lot of political theater that isnt essential to nominating a candidate. Each party could amend its rules to nominate a candidate and conduct other party business without gathering in person. But conventions generate party unity and garner a lot of free publicity, with the nominee typically enjoying a convention bump that pushes his or her poll numbers up a couple of points. Trump in particular is a devotee of orchestrated televised events, one reason hes likely to insist on a convention. And dont expect to see him wearing a mask.

If the conventions do happen, theyll probably be dominated by coronavirus anyway. Trump will try to convince voters hes a strong leader during tough times. Biden will make the case that hed do better. And voters, by then, will have strong views on whether theyre doing okay under Trump or want somebody else to take charge.

Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter:@rickjnewman. Confidential tip line:rickjnewman@yahoo.com.Encrypted communication available. Click here toget Ricks stories by email.

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Coronavirus won't stop the Republican and Democratic conventions - Yahoo Finance