There was a spirited Democratic primary in the congressional district of Laredo in Texas where the incumbent Democrat Henry Cuellar was challenged by a young 26-year old progressive Jessica Cisneros, who failed narrowly, by a margin of 51.8% to 48.2%. Although this is a safe Democratic seat, Cuellar is pretty much a Republican and is backed by business and other right-wing forces and the party establishment.
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If one wanted evidence that the stock market is the major driver of US policies, one need look no further than the decision yesterday by the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates by half a percentage point, a large amount.
Launching the emergency measure as a pre-emptive strike to protect the US economy after pressure from Donald Trump to act, the Fed warned: “The fundamentals of the US economy remain strong. However, the coronavirus poses evolving risks to economic activity.”
Jerome Powell, its chair, said: “Of course the ultimate solutions to this challenge will come from others, particularly health professionals. We can and will do our part, however, to keep the US economy strong as we meet this challenge.”
Just over two weeks ago after the Nevada caucuses where he came in fifth, Joe Biden’s campaign was considered over and Bernie Sanders was deemed to be the overwhelming favorite to win the Democratic nomination, causing panic in the party establishment’s ranks. But Biden’s emphatic win in South Carolina the following week enabled the Democratic party establishment to achieve what they long sought and that is to coalesce behind him and that seems to have paid off on Super Tuesday with Biden doing so well that he has overtaken Sanders in the delegate totals. He now has 467 delegates and Sanders has 392 so far though the totals will change as more results come in from yesterday’s polls. You need 1990 delegates to win on the first ballot.
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Joel Mokyr, a professor of economics and history, tries to answer the question of why, starting around 1500 CE, “In a time of great powers and empires, just one region of the world experienced extraordinary economic growth”. He looks at various factors that might have contributed and points to two major features. One is that the area we now call Europe was fragmented into many different political entities that competed with each other.
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The public radio program On The Media had an excellent interview with Ibram X. Kendi about how the media is obsessively focusing on the wrong swing voters, and because of that error, party establishment Democrats are trying to persuade people who are unlikely to switch back to them, at the cost of ignoring those voters who previously voted Democratic but either did not vote in 2016 or voted third party. He says that these latter voters are far more persuadable to vote Democrat this time and should be the primary focus of the campaigns.
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The veteran TV personality on MSNBC has announced his retirement from his show Hardball effective immediately. I for one am not sorry to see him go, because in addition to his highly problematic treatment of women and his virulent antipathy towards progressive ideas in general and Bernie Sanders in particular, he was a terrible interviewer, constantly interrupting his guests and not letting them finish their thoughts. This last behavior seemed to happen more frequently when his interview subjects were women or people with ideas he disagreed with.
The veteran MSNBC host Chris Matthews announced his immediate retirement from Hardball, citing his inappropriate comments about women and a conversation with network executives.
“The younger generation” is “improving the workplace” with “better standards than we grew up with, fairer standards,” Matthews said.
Matthews said “compliments on a woman’s appearance” that some men, himself included, once “incorrectly thought were OK, were never OK.”
I hope other TV personalities take note. The times, they are a changing.
John Oliver has an excellent show, dispelling a lot of the myths surrounding this epidemic and providing advice on what to do about it.
The South Carolina primary results in which Joe Biden won easily with 48% of the vote, with Bernie Sanders trailing far behind with just 20%, was a boost to those in the political and media establishment who have been in a panic over Sanders’ earlier successes. The establishment especially took heart from the fact that black voters, a major constituency of the Democratic party, overwhelmingly supported Biden over Sanders by a margin of 61% to 17%. The only group that Sanders won was black voters under 30. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, James Carville, and Terry McAuliffe gloated over this result, arguing that this lack of black support alone should doom the Sanders candidacy. But does it?
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The South Carolina primary seems to be having a major impact on the Democratic presidential race. Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota, has announced that she is leaving the race, joining Pete Buttigieg and Tom Steyer. She has endorsed Joe Biden.
I had thought she would stay in at least until tomorrow because her home state of Minnesota votes on Super Tuesday and she had been endorsed by a major newspaper there and she could go out having at least one victory to her name. But maybe her internal polling had shown that she would lose badly an so she decided to leave now so that she can continue to argue that she is a proven winner in her state.
This leaves just Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg still in it.
This pruning of the field will undoubtedly please the political and media establishment who seem to think that many candidates were splitting the anti-Sanders vote and that the supporters of the people who have dropped out will flock to Biden or Bloomberg and one of them will become their sole standard bearer and beat Sanders.
Where this leaves Warren is not clear.
What is also not clear is what this means for early voting practices. Those who had already voted for the three candidates who dropped out may be regretting their decision to do so.
Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison while awaiting trial for pedophilia, had earlier received an extraordinarily lenient plea deal for charges related to sex with minors, with one of the federal prosecutors who negotiated that deal, U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, ending up as a cabinet member for Donald Trump. Questions had been raised as to why Epstein off so easily and most answers were that he had used his money to buy favors from influential people.
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