The 2020 Election Early Retrospective

 Yeah, it's been awhile since I last blogged, but I was fighting with a 3 year old over. . .everything. Ugh. Anyway, as of this morning, here are my general thoughts:

It Looks Like Biden Will Win. . .

As of right now, Joe Biden appears poised to win the Presidency. He's up in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona, and looking promising in Pennsylvania and Georgia. He will most likely get over 300 electoral votes. While we can get into the some of the disappointment below, the thing to keep in mind is that Biden actually managed to pull off the victory. That's not a small feat given that Trump raised over $1 billion, blew threw it, and then utilized every portion of the federal government he controls to help his reelection. Our tax dollars funded much of his campaign, including the Republican National Convention being held on the grounds of the White House. That's. . .pretty fucking amazing. 

And if you look at the electoral history of presidential elections, what Biden did last night (assuming he pulls off the win), is even more amazing. Incumbent presidents get the benefit of the doubt - meaning that when someone who's undecided steps into the voting booth and votes, they tend to vote for the guy in office. That makes the job of the challenger incredibly hard, and that goes double for Presidential elections. In the past 90 years of Presidential elections, only three (if the numbers hold) Presidents have lost a reelection campaign: Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Donald Trump. 

What's also amazing about the potential win is that Joe Biden is not the transformative figure that Ronald Reagan or Bill Clinton were. He doesn't represent a watershed change in the Democratic Party - he is a Party insider. It is pretty clear to me is that Biden fits with the mood of the non-Trump voters. He was somber, and more than any other candidate I've ever seen, could understand the grief that a lot of people are feeling right now. And his campaign in that regard was pitch-perfect.

But It Wasn't A Landslide

If you look at the fundamentals of Donald Trump's Administration, it's pretty clear that, at least as domestic policies go, Donald Trump was the worst President of my lifetime. I would have said George W. Bush, but Bush got a fair bit of (EXTREMELY BAD) legislation passed. The only major piece of legislation passed in the past four years was a tax cut for the rich - and a major tax increase for middle class families, by the way. That's it. Everything else Trump has done has been by executive fiat. Now, unlike Bush, he hasn't gotten us into 2-3 foreign wars, but he fucked up the COVID-19 response, and 230,000 people have died.

In that context, it's little wonder that QANON developed with the underlying premise that this is all a facade of nonwork, and that behind the scenes, any day now, Trump is going to arrest all the sexual predators. For those of you who are wondering, Trump is not going to do any of that. He used to walk into the dressing rooms of Miss Teen USA to ogle teenage girls dressing. He doesn't give a shit about sex trafficking, and never has. 

And, in fact, Trump doesn't have any positions whatsoever - except for taking away the protections for people with preexisting conditions from the ACA. Nor does the Republican Party. Their platform was literally, "whatever Mr. Trump says it is." I'm paraphrasing, but I'm not joking. Look it up.

Despite all of his craziness, his rampant corruption, the fact that women are being forcibly sterilized at the Border, the fact that he orphaned hundreds of refugee kids, the fact that he bungled a pandemic so badly my daughter will probably never see her kindergarten classroom, Donald Trump almost won reelection. In fact, he got more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016. Now, again, some of that is the incumbent effect, but the deeper issue is that we have a divide in this country that is based largely on the types and sources of information we receive. As a result, it's like we as a country live in two different worlds. That's really, really, bad.

In fact, it's untenable. How can policies be discussed or considered when there's no agreement on what the underlying problem is? Or what's actually going on? How can you ever come to some agreement? As an attorney, I negotiate settlements all the time and I've learned something - the Parties have to be on the same page. Right now, we're nowhere near the same book.

To give you an example, take COVID-19. While we're still learning about this disease, we know that it is transmitted through the air, that it causes hospitalization in 15% of all reported cases, and it causes death in 2.75% of all cases. We know this because of the numbers put out by Johns Hopkins and the CDC, among others. Now, there might be some variation in the death toll, but we generally know that it kills anywhere from 1-5% of those who get the disease. Over 230,000 Americans have died from it. But you look on Facebook, and there are a variety of conspiracy theories regarding Fauci, or that doctors get paid more money for COVID*, and suddenly dealing with the pandemic becomes political. We can't agree on what needs to be done because 50% of the population doesn't believe that COVID-19 is at all dangerous, despite the fact that 1,000 people a day are dying.

A big part of that is the fact that we have two types of media in this country - corporate media (CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS) and conservative media (Fox, etc.). Corporate media just wants to sell advertising, and advertisers want to sell people stuff. Conservative media wants to sell itself, and push conservative ideals. In that context, people never really got a full understanding of how corrupt and ugly the Trump Administration really was. And in the meantime, Facebook gives special privileges to the Daily Wire, a conservative outlet, and wave after wave of conspiracy theories hit the public. In the meantime, there are dozens of examples of corporate media normalizing Trump's behavior.

Democrats, meanwhile, are hardly free from blame. Pelosi and the House Democrats stopped investigating and stopped putting in the work necessary to push Democratic messages to the forefront. When Obama wore a tan suit, that's all the GOP and conservative media could talk about for WEEKS. When Trump was found to be taking bribes, or paying $750 in taxes for 2016 and 2017, or when it was discovered he has a secret Chinese bank account, or when it was found that the DHS has an unlicensed doctor ripping out the uteruses of women in immigrant camps against their will, no one put in the work to get that story onto the front page of the New York Times for as long as possible. For that reason, I hope Pelosi steps down as the Speaker of the House. She isn't up to the task.

The long and short of it is, we're going to be dealing with this for a long time. Trump isn't the cause of this breakdown, he's a symptom of a larger rot. My guess is that we'll see Trump, or a Trumpist run for President in 2024, and win the GOP nomination. My worry is that the next one will be a little bit smarter, a little bit more disciplined, and a little bit less obvious in their authoritarian impulses. 

One Note Regarding Bernie Sanders

I've seen a fair number of people online (okay, on Twitter), who say that Sanders would've beaten Trump by a larger vote share. I disagree with this sentiment for a variety of reasons. First and foremost, Bernie Sanders' 2020 campaign apparatus was. . .bad. Going into 2020, Bernie Sanders had a solid core of support, a fundraising base that was unrivaled, and voter data for every voter in the 2016 Democratic primaries. He had every advantage, and never increased his base. I just don't see how Sanders could have pulled off a win.

That said, could a more progressive candidate have done a better job, or won by a larger margin? Possibly. Biden ran a very good campaign, but he was intentionally vague on certain things in order to maintain as large of a tent as possible. But since polling is absolutely fucked, who knows.

Polling is Fucked

As with 2016, the 2020 polling showed a Democratic wave election, and then flipped to a much closer one. While some people assert ulterior motives to pollsters, the issue here is voter screens, and how they're done. Think of it this way, if you call 1000 numbers at random, you are going to get a fair number of people who probably can't vote. You will also get a fair number of people who don't vote, and then you'll get likely voters. Of those, the likely voters are going to be the most valuable because their opinions will translate into actual votes.

But figuring out who the likely voters are in 2020 was a nightmare. Both Parties have shown a tremendous ability to get out their voters to the polls, with Donald Trump's campaign seemingly able to do this at a better rate than the Democrats in places like Florida, North Carolina, and Texas. While voter suppression is a real thing, more people actually voted for Trump this time around than in 2016, and no one expected their votes. That's either the result of good GOTV, or good fraud. 

Either way, the end result is that polling is now broken. I don't know how you fix this. The best bet is probably to stick with polling aggregators like fivethirtyeight.com, but even then, things are tricky.

The Failure of the Federal Government During the COVID-19 Crisis

So, its been a month and a half since my home state of California, along with most of the rest of the country, has been shut down due to COVID-19. It's been. . .interesting to work with a 2 year old in the house, to say the least. I've been lucky in that I can work from home - a good internet connection, Westlaw account, my cellphone, and a scanner (or support staff who can scan things), is all I need.

But for many of you out there, you're kind of fucked right now. If you think of all the industries that can't operate right now - music, hospitality, tourism, museums, retail shopping, sports, etc. - all multibillion dollar industries that are shut down. It's little wonder that we will probably have double-digit unemployment and a GDP contraction of 5%. In the meantime, everyone is wondering when this will end. And so-called "pro-life" politicians are advocating the deaths of upwards of hundreds of thousands of Americans (if not millions) in order to get the economy back on track.

But here's the thing that we all forget - this shelter-in-place order is meant to do two things. First, it's supposed to bend the curve so that our medical facilities don't get overburdened. California and Washington clamped down hard early, and the curve is bent the right way - we have relatively few deaths.* New York City, meanwhile, was slow and the draw to clamp down, and now has more deaths than anywhere else in the country - for now. And from historical accounts, we know that opening up too soon, which is what happened during the last pandemic one hundred years ago, only leads to even worse outbreaks. We need to stay put.

But the second reason we put shelter-in-place restrictions on was to buy time. Specifically, to buy time for the federal government to get its act together, or to get the fuck out of the way so state governments can step in. The goal here is to effectively put in place a test, trace, and treat regime to deal with COVID-19. Basically, we're all going to have to get tested - as unpleasant as the test looks - and tested, and tested. Anyone who tests positive immediately goes into quarantine, and the people they've been around get tested and quarantined. If they get sick in quarantine, they get treated. That's it. While Cheeto Jesus has been complaining about his news coverage, South Korea implemented this exact program - and keep in mind South Korea is a democracy, and is more densely populated than the U.S. - during the same timeline as we were supposed to, and although the U.S. and South Korea had their first infections of COVID-19 on the EXACT SAME FUCKING DAY, South Korea has had next to no new infections (4 yesterday, all from people who were foreign travelers), while we have over twenty thousand new cases today.

Current projections indicate that we need approximately 5 million tests done every single day for the next whenever in order to properly conduct test, trace, and treat. Rather than boost the product of tests and spread personal protective equipment (PPE) to medical facilities, our government has actually gone so far as confiscate PPE from states, hospitals, everyone. It's been a fucking mess. To give you an example, when the US Senate comes back from recess on Monday, they don't have enough tests for the Senators. They just plan to test "sick" Senators. When dealing with a disease that starts asymptomatic, that's felony stupid. And, I should note, THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAN'T SPARE 100 TESTS FOR US SENATORS WHEN WE NEED THE FEDS TO DEVELOP A TESTING PROTOCOL FOR 328 MILLION PEOPLE!!!!!

And that's why I'm writing this post - we are all pissed about being stuck at home. Trust me, I'm locked in with a two year old. A. TWO. YEAR. OLD. My wife and I have literally spent the past month as the snack bitches to our kids! It's awful, despite the fact that my sourdough game is on point now. But that isn't the fault of our governors. Many of them, Newsome included, are fucking TRYING to keep our dumb asses alive. No, your anger, your frustration, and your angry calls should be to Congress and the President. They're fucking this up, and have been from the start.

So stop marching on statehouses with your AR-15s, stop throwing pissyfits along the beach (Encintas and Pacific Beach), and focus that anger and energy on the people who have fucked this from the get-go.

Oh, and as far as where the virus came from - it doesn't matter. Look, it might matter in a few years, and on a historical note, it will be interesting to know, but right now, it doesn't matter. Your lawsuits against the PRC aren't going to amount to anything. Trust me, I am probably more happy to tilt at windmills than most attorneys and even I know that's a dumb idea for at least 6 different reasons.

One last thing: There's a current InfoWars video going around from two doctors in California, and it seems pretty clear that these guys are dead wrong on their conclusions. They cite to the fact that California has very few deaths, and then divide the total COVID-19 deaths in California by California's total population to argue that COVID-19 isn't all that deadly. I'm not a statistician, but even I know that's totally fucked up.

The key numbers are total infections and total hospitalizations. Because the number of hospital beds is basically fixed at just under 1,000,000, and approximately 2/3rds of all beds are filled with non-COVID-19 patients, we have around 300,000 beds nationwide for COVID-19 patients. When we go over that number in a region, the people who would normally survive from COVID-19 but need to be hospitalized will die. That's what's happening in NYC, and what happened in Italy (which had a 7.2% mortality rate). Additionally, because everything gets thrown at COVID-19, all the people who get sick from other shit (and other shit still exists) then have trouble getting treatment, especially when doctors and nurses are getting sick. So, in actuality, a disease which killed over 62,000 people in the past month in the US, is really fucking deadly. The reason why deaths in California are low is because we shut everything down on time.

Returning to Blogging - On the Democratic Primary and COVID-19

We all know blogging is dead, and everyone just tweets now, but there's so much going on that I felt the need to revive my dead blog and get this out of my before I explode. Without further ado, here are a few thoughts on:

The Democratic Primary

When we started the 2020 Democratic Primary, we had two frontrunners - Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden -- taking up all the oxygen, with Joe Biden whipping Sanders in a straight one on one fight. Then the campaign happened, Biden showed that he was a shadow of his former self, got owned by Kamala Harris, came in 4th in Iowa, entered into Super Tuesday with basically no money, and. . .ended up as the front runner. Right now, he's probably has a 99% chance of being the nominee.

The amazing thing about this race is that in the space of less than a month, the entire fucking campaign was wiped off the map. All of it. Every debate performance, every rally, every ad, every mail piece, everything that occurred between March 2019 and March 2020 got wiped off the map. Politically, it didn't exist. Biden is winning exactly where the polls showed him winning over a year ago, and Bernie is winning exactly where the polls showed he was winning a year ago. It's amazing.

And Biden looks to be the nominee despite getting outraised and outspent by a number of other candidates, including Mike Bloomberg who dropped $500 million in less than three months. This does happen. Like ever. And it's not like Biden was a dynamo on the campaign trail. If anything, Biden looked like a dinosaur compared to every else.

Nor was it the case that the Party coalesced around Biden causing everyone to drop out either. Typically, when the Party insiders decide on a candidate, nobody else jumps into the race unless they have something to prove. In 2016, everyone but Bernie Sanders, Martin O'Malley, and Jim Webb sat out of the race because it was Hillary Clinton's turn. In 2020, we had over twenty candidates, including candidates who are broadly known - Kamala Harris, Corey Booker, Elizabeth Warren, etc. That indicates that in the mind of Democratic Party insiders, this race was wide open. And then it wasn't. 

As for Bernie Sanders, it's hard to look at the past year and think about how much he and his campaign fucked up this race. Sanders entered this race with a huge donor base (he's raised more money than anyone, and spent more than anyone but Bloomberg), 100% name ID, and voter data from 2016 covering all 50 states. ALL 50 STATES! Every other candidate in this race, including Joe Biden, would have killed for these advantages going in. All Bernie had to do was expand his base, which he had the money and time to do. He just didn't.

And the worst part, from a prospective of a progressive, is that Bernie absolutely could have. The talk of a revolution made Sanders' proposals seem more radical than they were. For instance, Medicare for All doesn't affect the health care of anyone over 65 because they ALREADY HAVE MEDICARE. Instead of talking revolution, he could've pointed out to older voters that, if anything, his proposals would strengthen Medicare, while continuing to be a radical online. Sanders could have also done a lot more to reach out to African American voters, voters who bombed out his campaign in 2016. He knew he was weak there, and didn't fix the problem despite running for President for the past four years. Unreal.

COVID-19: We're Fucked

While the election was going on, and the impeachment having been only a few months ago (seriously!), we now have a pandemic to deal with. Of all the Presidents, Trump is probably the worst one to deal with a pandemic like this. At the best of times, he's shakey, but literally every Democrat in the country believes he should be removed from office. (With good reason, by the way, he did everything his articles of impeachment said that he did.) Add to that his "mercurial" relationship with doctors and the truth, and we are not in a good place.

Even if Trump hadn't dismantled the CDC's ability to handle pandemics (he did), COVID-19 would be a nightmare. What we know is that COVID-19 is like the flu, but (a) has more severe symptoms, and (b) is unrelated to the flu in anyway. The end result is that no one has been exposed to COVID-19 or any of its sister viruses, and so no one has any immunities to it (yet). That' means that when we're exposed, we have a high risk of catching the disease. 

Oh, but there's more, COVID-19 has an incubation period of 14 days, and people in the incubation period may be contagious even if they don't have any symptoms. And even though it's symptoms are similar to the flu, they are more severe. As a result, COVID-19 has a mortality rate of around 2%, while the flu has a mortality rate of 0.1%. 

So, it's a highly contagious disease with a mortality rate 10-20 times higher than the flu. The current estimates by the Trump Administration is that somewhere between 75 million and 150 million people will get COVID-19. Not in the next year, but in the next six months. With a 1-2% mortality rate, that means we're looking at the deaths of anywhere from 750,000 to 3 million people. Additionally, and this is fun, COVID-19 also has a hospitalization rate of at least 10%, meaning that between 7.5 million and 15 million people will have to be hospitalized because of COVID-19. In the meantime, everyone else who gets COVID-19 has to stay home for at least 2 weeks. 

These are not good numbers. For one, it's not clear if our hospitals can handle the influx of patients - especially when medical professionals start getting sick themselves. Second, even if everyone survived, we're all going to avoid hotels, restaurants, sporting events, and bars from now until this blows over. Not just for our own health, but for the health of those susceptible to the disease (seniors). As a result, tourism and other service industries, which already operate on a tight margin, are going to get hit hard. Airlines are going to be hit hard. Health insurance companies are going to get hit hard with claims. 

As a result, we're probably going to get hit with a demand-side shock, resulting in a recession. Already, we're in the first bear market on Wall Street since 2009. That's just the beginning. The real question is how bad this will get over the next several months. What we do know is that already the economy is also getting hit with supply shocks because the world's second largest economy, China, has 930 million people under quarantine. Italy - the entire country - is under quarantine. Germany and France may be next. How long this goes creates uncertainty, which causes greater and greater problems.

In this context, I think the decision of many voters to go with a steady hand, Joe Biden, may make sense. We've lived through tumultuous times over the past several years, and the "return to normalcy" has a lot of appeal.