Mar. 13

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COVID-19 Havoc Continues

Presumably, items like this one will be a regular occurrence for a while, as there's no particular sign of the COVID-19 virus (or its impacts) abating. In any event, Thursday was yet another day when the pandemic continued to disrupt life as we know it.

To start, the stock market had yet another lousy day, with the Dow Jones dropping 1,868 points. That would be the fourth time since Feb. 27 that the Index has exceeded pre-2020 record for a one-day loss (−1,175.21 points on Feb. 5, 2018). At the close of business Thursday, the Dow was at 21,200.62. On the day that Donald Trump took office, it was at 19,732.40. So, most of the growth that he crowed about on Twitter has evaporated. In fact, if we account for inflation, it has entirely evaporated. The $11.5 trillion that market gained after Jan. 20, 2017, is now all gone.

Meanwhile, the wave of high-profile cancellations and closures continued. Broadway has gone dark, Disney World and Disneyland have closed, and the LDS Church has suspended all services worldwide. The list of universities that have suspended classes, or moved them online for the foreseeable future, grows longer each day. In the world of sports, on Thursday Major League Baseball joined the NBA in suspending play, and so did the NHL. The PGA Championship and the NCAA Basketball Tournaments, Men's and Women's, were both canceled. We're getting close to the point that ESPN is going to have to fill its daily schedule with coverage of extreme ironing, chess boxing, and ferret-legging. In any event, all of these cancellations and suspensions are certainly not going to help the economy, nor calm whatever unhappy emotions people may be feeling.

Meanwhile, COVID-19 has infected a number of high-profile folks, and it continues to creep closer and closer to the Oval Office (if it's not already there). Actor Tom Hanks and wife Rita Wilson announced on Wednesday that they have contracted the virus; and on Thursday it was a number of prominent political figures, including Sophie Trudeau, wife of Canadian PM Justin Trudeau (who is now self-quarantining), as well as Fabio Wajngarten, who is an aide to Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. That means that we are presumably close to the day when a major world leader announced that they have been diagnosed. And since Wajngarten interacted with Trump and Mike Pence just days before being diagnosed, it's possible that world leader will be an American.

Or maybe that world leader already is an American. Despite the interactions with Wajngarten, the White House said on Thursday that Trump and Pence have not yet been tested for COVID-19, nor do they need to be tested, since they "had almost no interactions" with the Brazilian (though apparently enough interactions that the three men were photographed together). Anyhow, if all of this is true, then it certainly seems very irresponsible for Trump to go untested, and also at odds with his well-known germophobic tendencies. On the other hand, if he was tested, and if he did test positive, can we really believe he'd admit that? Trump's well-established habit of lying (including about COVID-19), his desire to downplay the seriousness of the disease, and the less-than-healthy demeanor he displayed during Wednesday night's address raise the possibility, at least, that the President already has the disease and that he's covering it up.

And speaking of Trump's speech, the savage reviews continued to roll in on Thursday. A further sampling (on top of the ones we already noted on Wednesday):

Plenty of behind-the-scenes details about the speech leaked out Thursday, including that it was written primarily by First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner and Senior Adviser Stephen Miller (no kidding), and that there was a fierce battle over whether to prioritize public health (what the CDC folks wanted) or to prioritize economic health (what Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and chief economic adviser Larry Kudlow wanted). Surely you don't need us to tell you which side won that little debate, but here's a hint: This president has never gone on Twitter to brag about how high the National Health Index has risen.

Unfortunately for Trump, and for everyone else, an address that put the health of the economy and the stock market above all else had the exact opposite effect of what was intended, as analysts agreed that the President did far more harm than good. The more tangible effect of the speech was to further damage the already vulnerable airlines, as their stocks took another deep dive on Thursday now that travel will be restricted. The more amorphous, but probably more significant, effect was to create uncertainty on Wall Street. The bankers and the stockbrokers and the like want to know that there is a plan, and they want to know the rough timeline it will take for the plan to unfold, so that they can adjust accordingly. Team Trump did nothing to convey that his administration has an actual plan, much less to give clarity on how long we should expect the worst phase of the COVID-19 pandemic to last.

That doesn't mean the government is doing nothing, though. The New York Federal Reserve announced on Thursday that it will inject $1.5 trillion into the economy to try to stabilize things. We shall see if that helps, but the best-case scenario is presumably that the money is just a band-aid. Meanwhile, it is interesting that when Barack Obama dumped considerably less than $1.5 trillion into saving banks and businesses, there was much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth on both the right and the left. The Fed's announcement, by contrast, barely attracted any notice. (Z)

Candidate Biden Gives an Audition for Role of President Biden

With Donald Trump having tried his hand at a COVID-19 speech, and having struck out, Democratic frontrunner Joe Biden thought he would give it a shot. And so, on Thursday, he delivered his own address on the pandemic. As with Trump's speech, we suggest you watch Biden's speech (at least part of it) before you read what we have to say. Here is a link, and here is an embedded version:



(Note: You may need to click on the link above; for some reason, some readers are seeing the Trump speech embedded rather than the Biden speech. We have no idea why, but it may be related to the browser being used.)

And now, our observations:

As with Trump's speech, the reviews of Biden's speech came quickly. Unlike Trump's, they were very positive. A sampling:

Trump was all over Twitter after Biden's address, with messages like this one:

Sleepy Joe Biden was in charge of the H1N1 Swine Flu epidemic which killed thousands of people. The response was one of the worst on record. Our response is one of the best, with fast action of border closings & a 78% Approval Rating, the highest on record. His was lowest!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 13, 2020

So, obviously, the President took the right lessons from the speech. (Z)

Wyden Wants National Vote-by-Mail

Already, COVID-19 is affecting this year's elections. All three remaining major presidential candidates have made the issue part of their campaigns, and all three have been compelled to cancel multiple campaign events that were planned, due to safety concerns. It also appears to be affecting the President's approval rating, which has dropped in every poll that's been released in the last week (relative to the previous entry of that poll).

Some politicians, however, are taking a slightly longer view; thinking less about this week and this month, and more about what happens when people try to cast their ballots in November. In particular, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR), for whom election security and ballot access have always been something of a crusade, is thinking in this way. He has filed a pair of bills in the Senate, one that would provide $500 million to states to help cope with voting-related disruptions caused by COVID-19, and another that would make voting-by-mail nationwide and mandatory under certain circumstances.

Needless to say, the U.S. Senate has, for many years, been the place where voting-access bills go to die. One has to imagine that is what will happen here, although the optics of this particular circumstance may make that very difficult. If Wyden's bill does pass, though, it could have some pretty monumental implications. First of all, if the federal government gets partly or fully into the business of running elections, that would certainly make it much easier to rectify some of the well-known problems that already exist (like insecure voting machines). Further, if vote-by-mail exists nationwide, it makes it much harder to execute shenanigans like voter ID laws. It would also make it more likely that low-turnout voters, like young people, cast ballots. All of these things would seem to work, in general, in favor of the Democrats. While Wyden is probably not looking at things from this vantage point. it's fair to bet that other Democrats, and many Republicans, are. (Z)

U.S. Strikes Iranian-backed Militias

On Wednesday, Iranian-backed groups launched a strike on a base that houses U.S. troops, killing two of them (along with one British soldier). On Thursday, the U.S. responded in kind, launching strikes against several sites in Iraq that are known as bases of operations for Iranian-backed militia groups.

Did Iran use COVID-19 as an opportunity to launch an attack? Is the Trump administration trying to create a distraction with its response? Given the track record of both Iran and Team Trump, these are reasonable questions, not that we'll ever get answers. In any event, when the U.S. and Iran were taking shots at one another back in January, there was (legitimate) concern that the situation could deteriorate and turn into World War III. The fact that the world's attention is currently focused on dealing with Spanish Influenza II does not make that concern any less salient, even if the Iran-U.S. news is flying under the radar right now. Obviously, if a hot war did emerge, that would be another debit against candidate-for-reelection Donald Trump, who may already have more debits than he can deal with right now. (Z)

Doing the Sanders Math

The presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) got a little bit of good news on Thursday, as enough mail-in ballots have been received for CNN to declare that he "won" California. On the other hand, the election gods giveth, and they taketh away; it's also become clear that, barring a miracle, Joe Biden is going to "win" Washington.

Anyhow, with delegate totals coming in fast and furious Tuesday night, we botched the math on Sanders' electoral hopes. So, let's take another look, doing what our fourth-grade math teacher demanded, and showing our work. At the moment, Sanders has 701 delegates. He would need 1,991 to claim the nomination. 1,991 minus 701 means he needs 1,291 more delegates. There are 2,294 available, and 1291/2294 equals 56.3%. That's a tough climb, though not as tough as the 65% we originally stuck him with.

And now, let's try to project into the future. This is necessarily going to be a little crude. In some states, including all the ones that vote in the next two weeks, there is current polling, and we used the average of those to award delegates. In other states, we only have polls taken while there were more candidates still running. In those cases, we awarded delegates in proportion to the support Joe Biden and Sanders got (so, if Biden polled at 30% and Sanders 20%, we gave Biden 60% of the delegates and Sanders 40%). And finally, in some states—particularly small ones, red ones, and/or ones that whose votes are far in the future—we don't have polls at all. In those cases, we just split the delegates evenly.

Anyhow, with all that said, here's how things project, with the delegates each candidate looks likely to win, the running tally for Sanders, and the percentage of remaining delegates Sanders would need after each contest:

Date State Delegates Biden Del. Sanders Del. Sanders Tally Pct. Needed
    854 701    
March 17 Arizona 67 48 19    
Florida 219 146 73    
Illinois 155 88 67    
Ohio 136 78 58 918 62.5%
March 24 Georgia 105 73 32 950 64.6%
March 29 Puerto Rico 51 25 25 975 65.1%
April 4 Alaska 15 7 7    
Hawaii 24 12 12    
Louisiana 54 27 27    
Wyoming 14 7 7 1028 66.2%
April 7 Wisconsin 84 44 40 1068 67.4%
April 28 Connecticut 60 38 22    
Delaware 21 19 2    
Maryland 96 53 43    
New York 274 170 104    
Pennsylvania 186 110 76    
Rhode Island 26 13 13 1328 93.8%
May 2 Guam 7 3 3    
Kansas 39 23 16 1347 97.4%
May 5 Indiana 82 48 34 1381 105.4%
May 12 Nebraska 29 14 14    
West Virginia 28 14 14 1409 111.5%
May 19 Kentucky 54 27 27    
Oregon 61 30 30 1466 129.0%
June 2 District of Columbia 20 10 10    
Montana 19 9 9    
New Jersey 126 49 77    
New Mexico 34 17 17    
South Dakota 16 8 8 1587 210.4%
June 6 US Virgin Islands 7 3 3 1590 216.8%

As you can see—and recall, we have up-to-date polling from all of the states that vote next week—Sanders is likely to reach the "needs about two-thirds of the remaining delegates" point on Tuesday. Under the Democrats' proportional system, that's basically not doable. If Sanders decides otherwise, however, then he will probably remain in the race for quite a bit longer, as the math does not take another sharply downward turn until the end of April. After the next really big primary day, on April 28, he will likely move to the the brink of "mathematically impossible." And in early May, he is set to officially cross the Rubicon into "mathematically eliminated."

Assuming that these numbers basically hold, then, Sanders' campaign will come to an end on or before May 5 (likely before). His 2016 campaign, by contrast, did not end until June 16. And a major reason for that, ironically, is the superdelegates. Because those 400 or so folks did not cast their votes until the convention, they were thus technically "available" throughout the entire process in 2016, and thus kept Sanders' math from becoming too daunting (even though everyone knew the superdelegates would break heavily for Clinton). Now that the superdelegates are sidelined, specifically due to demands from Sanders and his supporters that happen, the Vermont Senator is likely to be eliminated much more quickly. (Z)

Trump Tries to Cut Sessions Off at the Knees

Though COVID-19 is dominating the headlines right now, there's still an election unfolding, and some very closely fought Senate contests underway. One of the closest is the Republican run-off in Alabama, for which former Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville qualified with 33.4% of the vote, while AG Jeff Sessions made the cut with 31.6% of the vote.

Donald Trump pointedly did not make an endorsement in the first round of voting; with three candidates neck-and-neck-and-neck, he presumably did not want to be on the wrong horse yet again. But with only two Republicans left, the President has now jumped in, and thrown his support behind Tuberville. There have been two polls of the runoff; they gave Tuberville a 12-point lead and a 7-point lead, respectively. Since Tuberville already (slightly) outpolled Sessions at the ballot box, and since Trump remains quite popular in Alabama, it certainly looks like it will be the former Auburn coach who puts Sen. Doug Jones (D-AL) out of work in November. (Z)


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