Schrödinger’s Tinder Date

As every savvy single knows , the phenomenon of the Tinder date lives in the liminal space between left and right , swiped and un-swiped , in which states of reality can only be determined through direct observation , as with the theoretical cat in a box in Schrödinger ’ s famous thought experiment .
Here are some of those quantum possibilities , and their implications for your online-dating life .
When you choose the location of a date , you set up an inevitable series of revelations that can only be manifested once you arrive .
Some theorists might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that all potential locations exist simultaneously until collapsing into a single , sad bar that is equidistant from both parties ’ apartments ( the Copenhagen interpretation* ) .
Until then , yes , the date is in an escape room , a lobster restaurant , and on a Ferris-wheel ride that ends in tears .
The passage of time is just one of many variables affecting the quantum state of particles in a sad bar equidistant from two single people ’ s apartments .
If you show up to the bar ten minutes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on time .
If you show up on time , he will be late .
If you show up early , I ’ m sorry , but he ’ s definitely not coming .
On the bright side , you can have a nice drink by yourself .
We know many things about the universe , namely that , if one has access to Tinder , one also can easily have access to mobile photo-editing apps , resulting in a paradox wherein any given Tinder date ’ s physical appearance is impossible to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spot-correction on your own Tinder profile perfectly correlates with the diffraction pattern of a double-slit experiment .
That ’ s your business .
The reality is that your Tinder date doesn ’ t look like his photo , and that ’ s O.K .
Conversation is one way for a person to increase the chances of quantum entanglement with a Tinder date .
However , conversation is dangerous , as , the longer you speak , the more the conversation begins to behave somewhat like a particle that is decomposing and threatening to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ poisoning .
Also , don ’ t bother asking what he does for work .
He ’ s both a physicist and an unemployed Ph.D. student .
These realities exist at the same time and there ’ s nothing we can do about it .
If you don ’ t go to his apartment for a drink , the apartment will either be a studio on Fifth Avenue or a four-bedroom with five roommates in Gowanus .
Also , drinks will both be served and not be served , because can you really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Solo cup ?
Optimism is not a relevant variable—you are going to Gowanus to hang out on a mattress on the floor .
Getting Locked in a Bathroom in Gowanus Does human observation matter , and when will quantum superposition end ?
These are questions that one can ponder while locked in a bathroom in Gowanus because you got up to pee after your Tinder date fell asleep .
Although it may seem like this can not possibly be happening , it can , because there are many things about the nature of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ science .
Having to Call Your Friend for Help After You ’ ve Gotten Locked in a Bathroom If you attempt to call your friend for help after finding yourself locked in your Tinder date ’ s bathroom , one of two things will happen : either your phone will die instantly despite being at thirty-five-per-cent battery , or you will discover that your friend has fallen asleep at 11:30 P.M. while watching YouTube videos of cats sitting in boxes .
This is why it ’ s best to not call the friend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ credit card to break out of your Tinder date ’ s bathroom .
Discovering That Your Date Has a Pet Chihuahua That , Though Small , Is Ferocious A waveform representing the probability of your Tinder date ’ s Chihuahua waking up as you make a graceful exit from his apartment is represented by treating the Chihuahua as a particle in the equation : where t is equal to the time it takes to call an Uber and where H is the Hamiltonian operator , or the sum of potential and kinetic energies @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Left Your Wallet Behind While Fleeing an Enraged Chihuahua Though it may be possible to escape your Tinder date ’ s apartment with dignity intact , the entanglement of two particles will continue to impact their spin , polarization , and chances of going on a second date , regardless of distance .
Compounding this , you ’ ll have to go back to Gowanus to pick up the wallet you left in the bathroom , begging the question : Is it spooky action at a distance or is it .
.
.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ interpretation of the Tinder date is different from the Copenhagen interpretation of the long-term relationship , wherein a couple goes on a European vacation to discover how incompatible they are .

As every savvy single knows, the phenomenon of the Tinder date lives in the liminal space between left and right, swiped and un-swiped, in which states of reality can only be determined through direct observation, as with the theoretical cat in a box in Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment. Here are some of those quantum possibilities, and their implications for your online-dating life.
Location
When you choose the location of a date, you set up an inevitable series of revelations that can only be manifested once you arrive. Some theorists might even go so far as to say that all potential locations exist simultaneously until collapsing into a single, sad bar that is equidistant from both parties’ apartments (the Copenhagen interpretation*). Until then, yes, the date is in an escape room, a lobster restaurant, and on a Ferris-wheel ride that ends in tears.
Time of Arrival
The passage of time is just one of many variables affecting the quantum state of particles in a sad bar equidistant from two single people’s apartments. If you show up to the bar ten minutes late, your Tinder date will be on time. If you show up on time, he will be late. If you show up early, I’m sorry, but he’s definitely not coming. On the bright side, you can have a nice drink by yourself.
Your Tinder Date’s Appearance
We know many things about the universe, namely that, if one has access to Tinder, one also can easily have access to mobile photo-editing apps, resulting in a paradox wherein any given Tinder date’s physical appearance is impossible to determine until directly observed. Perhaps the spot-correction on your own Tinder profile perfectly correlates with the diffraction pattern of a double-slit experiment. That’s your business. The reality is that your Tinder date doesn’t look like his photo, and that’s O.K.
Making Conversation
Conversation is one way for a person to increase the chances of quantum entanglement with a Tinder date. However, conversation is dangerous, as, the longer you speak, the more the conversation begins to behave somewhat like a particle that is decomposing and threatening to kill everyone in the bar with radiation poisoning. Also, don’t bother asking what he does for work. He’s both a physicist and an unemployed Ph.D. student. These realities exist at the same time and there’s nothing we can do about it.
Staying Over
If you don’t go to his apartment for a drink, the apartment will either be a studio on Fifth Avenue or a four-bedroom with five roommates in Gowanus. Also, drinks will both be served and not be served, because can you really “serve” anything out of a Solo cup? Optimism is not a relevant variable—you are going to Gowanus to hang out on a mattress on the floor.
Getting Locked in a Bathroom in Gowanus
Does human observation matter, and when will quantum superposition end? These are questions that one can ponder while locked in a bathroom in Gowanus because you got up to pee after your Tinder date fell asleep. Although it may seem like this cannot possibly be happening, it can, because there are many things about the nature of the universe that are yet unexplained by science.
Having to Call Your Friend for Help After You’ve Gotten Locked in a Bathroom
If you attempt to call your friend for help after finding yourself locked in your Tinder date’s bathroom, one of two things will happen: either your phone will die instantly despite being at thirty-five-per-cent battery, or you will discover that your friend has fallen asleep at 11:30 P.M. while watching YouTube videos of cats sitting in boxes. This is why it’s best to not call the friend at all, but rather use a credit card to break out of your Tinder date’s bathroom.
Discovering That Your Date Has a Pet Chihuahua That, Though Small, Is Ferocious
A waveform representing the probability of your Tinder date’s Chihuahua waking up as you make a graceful exit from his apartment is represented by treating the Chihuahua as a particle in the equation:
where t is equal to the time it takes to call an Uber and where H is the Hamiltonian operator, or the sum of potential and kinetic energies of the Chihuahua.
Realizing That You Left Your Wallet Behind While Fleeing an Enraged Chihuahua
Though it may be possible to escape your Tinder date’s apartment with dignity intact, the entanglement of two particles will continue to impact their spin, polarization, and chances of going on a second date, regardless of distance. Compounding this, you’ll have to go back to Gowanus to pick up the wallet you left in the bathroom, begging the question: Is it spooky action at a distance or is it . . . something more?
*Note: The Copenhagen interpretation of the Tinder date is different from the Copenhagen interpretation of the long-term relationship, wherein a couple goes on a European vacation to discover how incompatible they are.


newyorker--2020-02-27--Welcome to The Climate Crisis Newsletter

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes .
Sign up to receive future installments .
We ’ re eight weeks into the new decade , and , so far , we ’ ve had the warmest January ever recorded .
( Indeed , researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that 2020 is more than ninety-eight per cent likely to be one of the five warmest years ever measured , with a nearly forty-nine-per-cent chance to set a new annual record . )
We ’ ve seen the highest temperature ever measured on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ swarms of locusts descending on the Horn of Africa , a plague which scientists assure us will “ become more frequent and severe under climate change.
” I ’ m calling this new newsletter—and welcome aboard—The Climate Crisis because this is what a crisis looks like .
I ’ ve been at this beat for so long that when I first started writing for The New Yorker on this topic , in the nineteen-eighties , we called it the “ greenhouse effect.
” “ Global warming , ” “ climate change ” —those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t capture where we are right now : not facing some distant or prospective threat but licked by the flames .
Thousands of people huddled on Australian beaches this year , ready to wade into the ocean as their only protection from the firestorms raging on the shore .
This is not only a crisis—it is the most thorough and complete crisis our species and our civilizations have ever faced , one there is no guarantee that we will survive intact .
Does that sound extreme ?
Consider the conclusions of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s largest bank , in a report to high-end clients which leaked to the British press , last Friday : “ Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive.
” But the name of this newsletter is also a nod to W. E. B .
Du Bois , and the magazine that he founded a hundred and ten years ago , at the start of the N.A.A.C.P .
The Crisis was , and is , a crucial journal in the analysis of the race @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our collective life to this day ; it linked readers to news from around the world , so that they could examine the currents roiling their lives .
I ’ ll do the same in a section we ’ re calling Climate School—perhaps , if only by long exposure , I have some sense of how emerging science , economics , and politics fit into the larger picture .
I mostly won ’ t be doing original reporting .
( Check out Emily Atkin ’ s excellent daily newsletter , Heated , for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t shy away from talking about the activism and organizing that many people—myself included—are now engaged in .
Du Bois ’ s The Crisis was an organ of action , constantly suggesting ways that its readers could move forward .
“ Is a toothache a good thing ?
” Du Bois asked , in the first issue .
“ No .
Is it therefore useless ?
No .
It is supremely useful , for it tells the body of decay , dyspepsia and death.
” A toothache , he declared , “ is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ in order that Remedy may be found.
” Since I am an agitator as well as a journalist , I ’ ll include many suggestions about where a push might help us make progress .
My sense is that we ’ ve reached a place where many people are eager to help .
National polling released this month , in a study by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities , found that one in five Americans said that they would “ personally engage in non-violent civil disobedience ” against “ corporate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worse ” if a person they liked and respected asked them to .
If that ’ s anywhere close to true , then it ’ s possible to imagine a movement big enough to make a difference—a movement one can see already emerging with the school climate strikers , the extinction rebels , and the Green New Dealers .
I hope to introduce you to many of these people , and to the scientists , entrepreneurs , and policy wonks whose work undergirds their activism—people I ’ ve met in my years as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the global climate campaign .
Most weeks , I ’ ll include a short interview that lets them address you directly .
I wouldn ’ t bother doing any of this if I didn ’ t think that we could still make a real difference in the outcome .
But I can ’ t offer you any guarantee that we ’ ll win—the short time that science gives us to make sweeping changes is daunting .
When an iceberg twice the size of Washington , D.C. , crashes into the Southern Ocean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historic winter flooding , it ’ s a reminder that we ’ re a long way back in this race .
The only guarantee I ’ ve got is that the fight is under way .
Thank you for being a part of it .
An as-yet-unpublished study from researchers at Brown University shows that a fourth or more of the climate chatter on Twitter is produced by automated bots , which are more likely to be on the side of climate denial .
This is good to know : in real life @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polling shows that more and more people understand the reality of climate change .
The New Yorker has published luminous climate coverage over the years : few writers match the penetrating authority of Elizabeth Kolbert , and younger writers such as Carolyn Kormann are doing superb reporting .
This recent piece , by Robin Wright , is excellent both for its evocation of the Antarctic Peninsula ( the place on Earth , I think , that most feels like another planet ) and its reminder that this is a war that we can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the effects will last essentially forever .
And Bernard Avishai ’ s account of the vanishing solar-tax credit is a reminder of just how much quiet damage the Trump Administration is doing .
A new study in the journal Nature implies that the total methane emissions—the most significant global-warming gas after CO —from man-made fossil sources ( coal , natural gas , and oil ) are higher than previous estimates .
That means that they underestimated how much comes from oil , gas , and coal—which , in a twisted way , is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if we wanted to , we could turn off that source—say , by replacing gas with solar and wind power .
The invaluable Hiroko Tabuchi provided a particularly good account in the Times , under the always-useful headline “ Oil and Gas May Be a Far Bigger Climate Threat Than We Knew ” ; a key point for understanding our current energy debate is that natural gas is a bridge fuel to a dramatically hotter planet .
Without Christiana Figueres , there would have been no Paris climate accord—the Costa Rican-born former executive @ @ @ @ @ @ @ convention worked tirelessly to create an opening where the Kyoto and Copenhagen processes had run aground .
Her new book , co-written with Tom Rivett-Carnac , is called “ The Future We Choose.
” Your book paints two remarkable pictures of where we will go if we don ’ t act on the climate , and where we can go if we do .
Can you give the gist of those two worlds , in a few sentences ?
The decade we have just started is the most consequential decade humanity has ever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to cut our current global greenhouse-gas emissions by fifty per cent over the next ten years , we will be poised to enter into a world of constant destruction of infrastructure , congested and polluted cities , rampant diseases , increasing burning and flooding , mass migrations due to extensive droughts , heat or land loss leading to the abandonment of uninhabitable areas , and political turmoil as people fight for food , water , and land .
At the current level of emissions , that is the world that we are heading @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hand , we set our minds and determination to the necessary transformation , reducing our global greenhouse gases [ by ] half over the next ten years , we would have actually co-created a path toward a very different world : a reforested planet with regenerated agriculture , clean and efficient transport , enjoyable cities , clean air , and ubiquitous cheap energy for everyone .
Your endless optimism and hard work midwifed the Paris climate accords .
Describe what it felt like the day you heard President Trump withdraw the U.S. from @ @ @

Subscribers to The Climate Crisis newsletter received this piece in their in-boxes. Sign up to receive future installments.
We’re eight weeks into the new decade, and, so far, we’ve had the warmest January ever recorded. (Indeed, researchers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that 2020 is more than ninety-eight per cent likely to be one of the five warmest years ever measured, with a nearly forty-nine-per-cent chance to set a new annual record.) We’ve seen the highest temperature ever measured on the Antarctic continent, and also record swarms of locusts descending on the Horn of Africa, a plague which scientists assure us will “become more frequent and severe under climate change.”
I’m calling this new newsletter—and welcome aboard—The Climate Crisis because this is what a crisis looks like. I’ve been at this beat for so long that when I first started writing for The New Yorker on this topic, in the nineteen-eighties, we called it the “greenhouse effect.” “Global warming,” “climate change”—those are fine, too. But they don’t capture where we are right now: not facing some distant or prospective threat but licked by the flames. Thousands of people huddled on Australian beaches this year, ready to wade into the ocean as their only protection from the firestorms raging on the shore. This is not only a crisis—it is the most thorough and complete crisis our species and our civilizations have ever faced, one there is no guarantee that we will survive intact. Does that sound extreme? Consider the conclusions of a team of economists from the world’s largest bank, in a report to high-end clients which leaked to the British press, last Friday: “Something will have to change at some point if the human race is going to survive.”
But the name of this newsletter is also a nod to W. E. B. Du Bois, and the magazine that he founded a hundred and ten years ago, at the start of the N.A.A.C.P. The Crisis was, and is, a crucial journal in the analysis of the race hatred that mars and shames and undermines our collective life to this day; it linked readers to news from around the world, so that they could examine the currents roiling their lives. I’ll do the same in a section we’re calling Climate School—perhaps, if only by long exposure, I have some sense of how emerging science, economics, and politics fit into the larger picture. I mostly won’t be doing original reporting. (Check out Emily Atkin’s excellent daily newsletter, Heated, for that.) And I won’t shy away from talking about the activism and organizing that many people—myself included—are now engaged in. Du Bois’s The Crisis was an organ of action, constantly suggesting ways that its readers could move forward. “Is a toothache a good thing?” Du Bois asked, in the first issue. “No. Is it therefore useless? No. It is supremely useful, for it tells the body of decay, dyspepsia and death.” A toothache, he declared, “is agitation,” and agitation is necessary “in order that Remedy may be found.” Since I am an agitator as well as a journalist, I’ll include many suggestions about where a push might help us make progress.
My sense is that we’ve reached a place where many people are eager to help. National polling released this month, in a study by researchers at Yale and George Mason Universities, found that one in five Americans said that they would “personally engage in non-violent civil disobedience” against “corporate or government activities that make global warming worse” if a person they liked and respected asked them to. If that’s anywhere close to true, then it’s possible to imagine a movement big enough to make a difference—a movement one can see already emerging with the school climate strikers, the extinction rebels, and the Green New Dealers. I hope to introduce you to many of these people, and to the scientists, entrepreneurs, and policy wonks whose work undergirds their activism—people I’ve met in my years as a journalist and a volunteer at 350.org, the global climate campaign. Most weeks, I’ll include a short interview that lets them address you directly.
I wouldn’t bother doing any of this if I didn’t think that we could still make a real difference in the outcome. But I can’t offer you any guarantee that we’ll win—the short time that science gives us to make sweeping changes is daunting. When an iceberg twice the size of Washington, D.C., crashes into the Southern Ocean, or when the South is experiencing historic winter flooding, it’s a reminder that we’re a long way back in this race. The only guarantee I’ve got is that the fight is under way. Thank you for being a part of it.
Climate School
An as-yet-unpublished study from researchers at Brown University shows that a fourth or more of the climate chatter on Twitter is produced by automated bots, which are more likely to be on the side of climate denial. This is good to know: in real life, as opposed to social-media combat, polling shows that more and more people understand the reality of climate change.
The New Yorker has published luminous climate coverage over the years: few writers match the penetrating authority of Elizabeth Kolbert, and younger writers such as Carolyn Kormann are doing superb reporting. This recent piece, by Robin Wright, is excellent both for its evocation of the Antarctic Peninsula (the place on Earth, I think, that most feels like another planet) and its reminder that this is a war that we can’t afford to lose, because the effects will last essentially forever. And Bernard Avishai’s account of the vanishing solar-tax credit is a reminder of just how much quiet damage the Trump Administration is doing.
A new study in the journal Nature implies that the total methane emissions—the most significant global-warming gas after CO 2 —from man-made fossil sources (coal, natural gas, and oil) are higher than previous estimates. That means that they underestimated how much comes from oil, gas, and coal—which, in a twisted way, is kind of good news. Because, if we wanted to, we could turn off that source—say, by replacing gas with solar and wind power. The invaluable Hiroko Tabuchi provided a particularly good account in the Times, under the always-useful headline “Oil and Gas May Be a Far Bigger Climate Threat Than We Knew”; a key point for understanding our current energy debate is that natural gas is a bridge fuel to a dramatically hotter planet.
Passing the Mic
Without Christiana Figueres, there would have been no Paris climate accord—the Costa Rican-born former executive secretary of the U.N.’s climate-change convention worked tirelessly to create an opening where the Kyoto and Copenhagen processes had run aground. Her new book, co-written with Tom Rivett-Carnac, is called “The Future We Choose.”
Your book paints two remarkable pictures of where we will go if we don’t act on the climate, and where we can go if we do. Can you give the gist of those two worlds, in a few sentences?


newyorker--2020-02-27--Why Shouldn’t Prisoners Be Voters?

Why Shouldn’t Prisoners Be Voters?

Foster Bates lives in G-Pod , a medium-security unit of Maine State Prison , a cluster of concrete buildings that sits an hour and a half northeast of Portland in the woods of a town called Warren .
G-Pod contains two tiers of locking cells , a weight machine , a few potted plants , some tables , and many hard plastic chairs .
There , before each election , Bates receives an absentee ballot through the prison mail .
After it arrives , he makes lists of the respective candidates ’ priorities and compares them with his own .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ is to assess the best candidate for my values , my family ’ s values , and the values of the country , ” he told me , after I visited G-Pod last summer .
“ I want to have a say in my own future.
” Bates is one of about a million and a half people who are currently serving prison terms in the United States .
Only a tiny minority of those people are allowed to vote : in forty-eight states , voting from prison—which is legal in most of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disparate as Indonesia , South Africa , Canada , and Kenya—is either severely restricted or outlawed altogether .
Alabama , Mississippi , and Alaska allow some people in prison to vote , depending on what crimes they have been convicted of .
( Each state has a list of disqualifying crimes ; a state representative in Mississippi has called his state ’ s list , which includes check-forging but not child molestation , “ irrational.
” ) Only Maine and Vermont extend the franchise to all incarcerated citizens .
In this sense , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ either a national outlier or a glimpse of what a different sort of democracy might look like .
I met Bates , who is fifty-two , on a warm afternoon in June , just outside the prison woodshop where he works for a fraction of the minimum wage .
Bates , unlike most prisoners in Maine , is black , with a salt-and-pepper goatee .
He is the president of the Maine State Prison chapter of the N.A.A.C.P.
, which has registered thousands of incarcerated voters over the years .
He described voting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he shares with the society that has sent him away .
“ When a person is incarcerated , the thing that remains is that he ’ s still a citizen , ” Bates said .
“ We have to have something to go home for.
” Bates is serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a woman named Tammy Dickson , who was found strangled to death in South Portland , in 1994 .
He maintains his innocence , alleging racial bias from an all-white jury ; he has appealed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( Maine outlawed parole in 1976 . )
Two women have come forward with testimony that could cast doubt on his conviction , but , in July , a judge said that a one-year deadline to present new evidence had passed .
Bates estimated that in 2008 the N.A.A.C.P .
registered about three hundred voters in Maine State Prison , an unusually high number that he attributed to enthusiasm for Barack Obama .
( The prison houses about nine hundred people . )
But Republican candidates have a strong base of support within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
He believes that it ’ s difficult to generalize about the political views of the incarcerated , and he isn ’ t convinced that political affiliations on the inside closely follow racial lines .
Bates does not belong to a political party , but he hopes that a Democrat will “ get the country back on track ” after four years of President Trump .
When we spoke , he was leaning toward Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris .
Harris ’ s background as a prosecutor seemed not to bother him .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ like her values , ” he told me .
He said he would consider voting for Joe Biden but worried that the former Vice-President wasn ’ t electable enough .
I had gone to see Bates after the voting rights of the incarcerated briefly and perhaps improbably became an issue in the 2020 Presidential race .
In Iowa , last April , a volunteer for the A.C.L.U .
had asked Bernie Sanders whether people in prison should be able to vote , and Sanders had said yes , unequivocally .
He reiterated his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that month .
The Republican senator Lindsey Graham then seized on Sanders ’ s comments as a political opportunity : “ Let ’ s vote on @ BernieSanders idea to allow rapists , murderers , and terrorists to vote from prison , ” Graham wrote on Twitter .
“ See where every elected official stands !
” The other Democratic candidates were subsequently asked for their views .
Four candidates who have since dropped out—O ’ Rourke , Castro , Booker , and Yang—said that some people should be allowed to vote from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we should have “ a conversation ” about people voting in prison ; Pete Buttigieg argued that disenfranchisement is a necessary part of incarceration .
( All the candidates supported restoring voting rights for those who have completed their sentences . )
In the common area of G-Pod—where prison officials allowed me to conduct interviews on the condition that I omit the names of the people I met—I spoke to a white voter with a buzz cut and goatee .
He told me that he usually preferred the Democrats but sometimes agreed with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ News along with CNN and a local station .
He estimated that a quarter of his fellow-prisoners vote .
“ There ’ s nothing holding you back , ” he said .
“ It ’ s whether you want to.
” Another man , who had immigrated to the U.S. from Somalia , in 2011 , shared his disappointment that he wasn ’ t allowed to vote because he is not a U.S. citizen .
“ I wish I filled out my paperwork at the appropriate time , so I could express how @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Like Bates , he supported Kamala Harris .
“ I think we ’ re ready for a female President , ” he said .
Just before I left the prison , a guard led me through an activity building , where I noticed a tall , bearded man sitting at a computer .
When I asked about his views on voting from prison , he thought for a long moment and said , in a deep voice , “ Yes .
Prisoners should have the right to vote.
” He pointed out that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and said that they could make good choices .
But he had made a personal decision not to vote , he told me .
“ I ’ m not big on choosing between the lesser of two evils , ” he said .
On an abstract level , the argument for restricting the voting rights of incarcerated citizens may seem straightforward .
“ If you ’ re not willing to follow the law yourself , then you shouldn ’ t have a right in making the law for everyone else , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Center for Equal Opportunity , a conservative think tank in Virginia that also opposes bilingual education and affirmative action , told me recently .
Incarceration prevents people from exercising many other basic rights , and while the Constitution outlaws disenfranchisement “ on account of race , color , or previous condition of servitude , ” it levies no penalty against states that disenfranchise citizens “ for participation in rebellion , or other crime.
” David Feldman , a law professor at Cambridge who has written about the voting rights of prisoners , told @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , frame voting rights in terms of a social contract : citizens earn the franchise by following certain rules set by society and can lose the franchise if they commit specific crimes .
This , however , is not the logic followed in the U.S. , he noted : people are often disenfranchised according to the sentences they receive , rather than the crimes that they commit .
Feldman believes that only a few crimes , such as voter fraud or election tampering , ought to disqualify someone from voting .
“ A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ’ s both over-inclusive and under-inclusive , ” he told me .
“ There are people in prison who really are not bad people , and happen to have been sentenced to prison not for any particularly serious offenses , but perhaps for a build-up of a whole lot of fairly minor offenses.
” Other people who have committed crimes are never convicted or never face incarceration .

Foster Bates lives in G-Pod, a medium-security unit of Maine State Prison, a cluster of concrete buildings that sits an hour and a half northeast of Portland in the woods of a town called Warren. G-Pod contains two tiers of locking cells, a weight machine, a few potted plants, some tables, and many hard plastic chairs. There, before each election, Bates receives an absentee ballot through the prison mail. After it arrives, he makes lists of the respective candidates’ priorities and compares them with his own. “As a voter, my job is to assess the best candidate for my values, my family’s values, and the values of the country,” he told me, after I visited G-Pod last summer. “I want to have a say in my own future.”
Bates is one of about a million and a half people who are currently serving prison terms in the United States. Only a tiny minority of those people are allowed to vote: in forty-eight states, voting from prison—which is legal in most of the European Union and in countries as disparate as Indonesia, South Africa, Canada, and Kenya—is either severely restricted or outlawed altogether. Alabama, Mississippi, and Alaska allow some people in prison to vote, depending on what crimes they have been convicted of. (Each state has a list of disqualifying crimes; a state representative in Mississippi has called his state’s list, which includes check-forging but not child molestation, “irrational.”) Only Maine and Vermont extend the franchise to all incarcerated citizens. In this sense, the northeastern corner of the U.S. is either a national outlier or a glimpse of what a different sort of democracy might look like.
I met Bates, who is fifty-two, on a warm afternoon in June, just outside the prison woodshop where he works for a fraction of the minimum wage. Bates, unlike most prisoners in Maine, is black, with a salt-and-pepper goatee. He is the president of the Maine State Prison chapter of the N.A.A.C.P., which has registered thousands of incarcerated voters over the years. He described voting as a small but resilient bond that he shares with the society that has sent him away. “When a person is incarcerated, the thing that remains is that he’s still a citizen,” Bates said. “We have to have something to go home for.”
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Bates is serving a life sentence for the rape and murder of a woman named Tammy Dickson, who was found strangled to death in South Portland, in 1994. He maintains his innocence, alleging racial bias from an all-white jury; he has appealed his conviction four times without success. (Maine outlawed parole in 1976.) Two women have come forward with testimony that could cast doubt on his conviction, but, in July, a judge said that a one-year deadline to present new evidence had passed.
Bates estimated that in 2008 the N.A.A.C.P. registered about three hundred voters in Maine State Prison, an unusually high number that he attributed to enthusiasm for Barack Obama. (The prison houses about nine hundred people.) But Republican candidates have a strong base of support within the prison, too, he said. He believes that it’s difficult to generalize about the political views of the incarcerated, and he isn’t convinced that political affiliations on the inside closely follow racial lines. Bates does not belong to a political party, but he hopes that a Democrat will “get the country back on track” after four years of President Trump. When we spoke, he was leaning toward Elizabeth Warren or Kamala Harris. Harris’s background as a prosecutor seemed not to bother him. “I like her strategy, I like her values,” he told me. He said he would consider voting for Joe Biden but worried that the former Vice-President wasn’t electable enough.
“I want to have a say in my own future.” Foster Bates, a resident of Maine State Prison
I had gone to see Bates after the voting rights of the incarcerated briefly and perhaps improbably became an issue in the 2020 Presidential race. In Iowa, last April, a volunteer for the A.C.L.U. had asked Bernie Sanders whether people in prison should be able to vote, and Sanders had said yes, unequivocally. He reiterated his position at a CNN town hall later that month. The Republican senator Lindsey Graham then seized on Sanders’s comments as a political opportunity: “Let’s vote on @BernieSanders idea to allow rapists, murderers, and terrorists to vote from prison,” Graham wrote on Twitter. “See where every elected official stands!” The other Democratic candidates were subsequently asked for their views. Four candidates who have since dropped out—O’Rourke, Castro, Booker, and Yang—said that some people should be allowed to vote from prison; Warren and Harris said that we should have “a conversation” about people voting in prison; Pete Buttigieg argued that disenfranchisement is a necessary part of incarceration. (All the candidates supported restoring voting rights for those who have completed their sentences.)
In the common area of G-Pod—where prison officials allowed me to conduct interviews on the condition that I omit the names of the people I met—I spoke to a white voter with a buzz cut and goatee. He told me that he usually preferred the Democrats but sometimes agreed with Republicans, and that he watched Fox News along with CNN and a local station. He estimated that a quarter of his fellow-prisoners vote. “There’s nothing holding you back,” he said. “It’s whether you want to.” Another man, who had immigrated to the U.S. from Somalia, in 2011, shared his disappointment that he wasn’t allowed to vote because he is not a U.S. citizen. “I wish I filled out my paperwork at the appropriate time, so I could express how I feel,” he said. Like Bates, he supported Kamala Harris. “I think we’re ready for a female President,” he said.
Just before I left the prison, a guard led me through an activity building, where I noticed a tall, bearded man sitting at a computer. When I asked about his views on voting from prison, he thought for a long moment and said, in a deep voice, “Yes. Prisoners should have the right to vote.” He pointed out that he is incarcerated with many educated men, and said that they could make good choices. But he had made a personal decision not to vote, he told me. “I’m not big on choosing between the lesser of two evils,” he said.
On an abstract level, the argument for restricting the voting rights of incarcerated citizens may seem straightforward. “If you’re not willing to follow the law yourself, then you shouldn’t have a right in making the law for everyone else,” Roger Clegg, the president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a conservative think tank in Virginia that also opposes bilingual education and affirmative action, told me recently. Incarceration prevents people from exercising many other basic rights, and while the Constitution outlaws disenfranchisement “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” it levies no penalty against states that disenfranchise citizens “for participation in rebellion, or other crime.” David Feldman, a law professor at Cambridge who has written about the voting rights of prisoners, told me that one could, of course, frame voting rights in terms of a social contract: citizens earn the franchise by following certain rules set by society and can lose the franchise if they commit specific crimes. This, however, is not the logic followed in the U.S., he noted: people are often disenfranchised according to the sentences they receive, rather than the crimes that they commit.
Feldman believes that only a few crimes, such as voter fraud or election tampering, ought to disqualify someone from voting. “A blanket ban is totally indiscriminate, and it’s both over-inclusive and under-inclusive,” he told me. “There are people in prison who really are not bad people, and happen to have been sentenced to prison not for any particularly serious offenses, but perhaps for a build-up of a whole lot of fairly minor offenses.” Other people who have committed crimes are never convicted or never face incarceration.
In recent years, activists on the left have built a movement for voting-rights restoration. It has largely focussed on the reënfranchisement of people who have already served their time. The legislatures of Kentucky, New Jersey, and Louisiana have restored voting rights for large numbers of formerly incarcerated people; Democratic governors, and occasionally Republican ones, have used their clemency powers to do the same. But these efforts seldom aim for universal suffrage. When advocates in Florida proposed a voting-rights-restoration amendment to the state constitution, in 2018, they excluded people on probation or parole and those who were convicted of murder or sexual offenses. After the amendment passed, with sixty-four per cent of the vote, Republican state legislators passed a bill to lessen its impact, requiring potential voters to pay court-imposed fines and fees before they could cast a ballot. Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the bill into law, and, after the Florida Supreme Court affirmed that the law did not contravene the state constitution, he declared, on Twitter, “Voting is a privilege that should not be taken lightly.” (Last week, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the law violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, upholding a federal judge’s preliminary injunction.) Many people—including Hillary Clinton, who supports voting rights for former but not current prisoners—tweeted back at DeSantis to say that voting is not a privilege but a right. DeSantis later blamed his staff for the tweet.
Americans generally assume that they have a right to vote, but that right is not explicitly guaranteed by the Constitution. Voting isn’t mentioned at all in the Bill of Rights; the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, which were adopted shortly after the Civil War, refer to a right to vote, and there are legal scholars who believe that this implicit granting of the right applies to all citizens. But the Supreme Court has continued to defer to states when it comes to the regulation of elections—a legacy, in part, of the original drafting of the Constitution. In 2013, when the Supreme Court overturned a key provision in the Voting Rights Act of 1965, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the decision, cited an earlier ruling, which held that “the Framers of the Constitution intended the States to keep for themselves, as provided in the Tenth Amendment, the power to regulate elections.” As Victoria Bassetti, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, has observed, it was not “politically practicable,” when the Constitution was written, “to impose uniform suffrage laws across the former colonies. Was the fragile new federal government really going to tell South Carolina that free blacks could vote? Or was it going to have to do the opposite and tell Massachusetts, which did allow blacks to vote, that it would have to stop? Easier to let state laws and provisions dealing with the vote stand.”
Two centuries ago, only Connecticut barred citizens with criminal convictions from voting. The state’s constitution, which was ratified in 1818, declared that a man’s right to vote could be “forfeited by a conviction of bribery, forgery, perjury, duelling, fraudulent bankruptcy, theft, or other offence for which an infamous punishment is inflicted.” In the years before the Civil War, seventeen states joined Connecticut in passing some form of felony disenfranchisement. Then, in the decade after the abolition of slavery, while the national movement for black suffrage was building momentum, ten more states, mostly in the South, quickly adopted them. The same period saw a sharp increase, in many states, in the incarceration of African-Americans. (Although the vast majority of people in prison cannot vote, the census counts them as living where they are incarcerated, shifting political representation to the places that have prisons.)
Many state lawmakers were explicit about the racist motivations for these changes. In 1901, Alabama Democrats, who had a history of election tampering, called a convention to rewrite the state constitution. “The justification for whatever manipulation of the ballot box that has occurred in this State has been the menace of negro domination,” John B. Knox, the president of the convention, said in his opening remarks. “If we should have white supremacy, we must establish it by law—not by force or fraud.” The resulting constitution named twenty convictions, from robbery to forgery to vagrancy, that would strip men of their right to vote. The same document discriminated against black voters with poll taxes and literacy tests.
Felony-disenfranchisement laws spread across the country: by the nineteen-seventies, forty-six states had them. Massachusetts was the last state to join the group, passing a constitutional amendment in 2000 with more than sixty per cent of the vote. (The Prison Policy Initiative observed that it was “the first time that the Massachusetts constitution has been amended to take away rights from a group of people.”) Three years later, three researchers published a paper in the American Journal of Sociology showing that the most stringent of these laws were to be found in states with many potential voters of color. In Tennessee, where citizens lose the franchise for life if they are convicted of crimes such as forgery, sodomy, or receiving stolen property, a fifth of African-Americans are barred from voting, according to the Sentencing Project. (The same was true in Virginia and Alabama until recently, when the Democratic governors of those states restored the franchise to large numbers of citizens.)
Vermont and Maine, the only states that have never disenfranchised prisoners, are also the whitest states in the nation. Less than four per cent of Vermonters, and less than five per cent of Mainers, are people of color. “I do think that it’s not a coincidence that it’s only Maine and Vermont that allow inmate voting,” Emily Tredeau, a supervising attorney at the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office, told me. “White voters will give pause before they disenfranchise other white people.” Joseph Jackson, a formerly incarcerated activist, added, “Mainers look at Maine folks that are incarcerated as though they are not other.” (While the prison population in Maine is mostly white, it is significantly less white than the state as a whole: nearly twenty per cent of those incarcerated in Maine are people of color.)
Maine has not been entirely immune from peer pressure, though: between 1999 and 2013, legislators in Maine proposed bills to restrict voting from prison on six different occasions. L. Gary Knight, a Republican former member of the Maine House of Representatives, led the last of these efforts. He recalled that several people had been murdered in his area of Maine, and after speaking to the families of the victims, he was disturbed that those responsible were still allowed to vote. “I wondered why they could still be having some of the privileges of citizenship while they were incarcerated,” he told me. “I put the bill in to bring us more into line with what the rest of the country was doing.” He saw his proposal as a relatively moderate measure: it only would have affected people serving long sentences, most of whom have committed serious crimes, such as murder or rape. (The restrictions, under his proposed law, would have been lifted when people completed those sentences.) “It was deliberate that I did not try to involve all prisoners,” Knight told me. People with criminal convictions should not be able to vote for judges who decide criminal cases, Knight thought. “When you break laws, there are consequences to those laws. Of course they should give up their rights.”
“White voters will give pause before they disenfranchise other white people.” Emily Tredeau, attorney at the Vermont Prisoners’ Rights Office
Knight’s bill was opposed by a broad coalition, including the A.C.L.U. of Maine, the Maine N.A.A.C.P., and the Maine Council of Churches. Laurent Gilbert, a former police chief and the mayor of Lewiston, denounced it, saying that “maintaining the dignity of the human being is of utmost importance for a person to accept responsibility for his or her actions.” Rachel Talbot Ross, a prison abolitionist who, as the president of the N.A.A.C.P. of Greater Portland, organized voter-registration drives in prison, said, “We cannot conscionably penalize entire communities by reducing their political power and their voice in the political decisions that affect them.” Democrats in the legislature defeated the amendment by a wide margin. Three years later, Talbot Ross became the first African-American woman elected to the Maine House of Representatives.


newyorker--2020-02-27--Bryan Washington Makes Bread Pudding

Bryan Washington Makes Bread Pudding

“ Bread pudding was the first thing that I baked after I came out to my parents , ” the fiction writer Bryan Washington says , standing at his oven .
The dish , which he ’ d been making since childhood , in one form or another , was a vehicle for nostalgia and comfort .
“ The hope is that , within a few bites , the dessert will transport you to a place much warmer , more familiar , than where you began , ” Washington writes , in a Kitchen Notes piece on his signature recipe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up a white-bread baguette that crunches as he rips it , and drops the bite-size pieces into a baking dish .
“ On my block , no one had any real money , but , for bread pudding , you didn ’ t need it .
Everyone kept bread in his pantry .
It didn ’ t need to be fresh—even better if it wasn ’ t .
Stale bread sopped up more batter , giving the pudding a forgiving crunch , ” Washington says .
Using simple ingredients and equipment—for the pudding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the microwave—a home cook can orchestrate what he calls “ a minor symphony of sweetness.
” After Washington came out to his parents , and baked that comforting batch of bread pudding for himself , he made another .
“ One for my mother , scalding and soaked in coconut milk splashed with rum , ” he writes .
This time , when he pulls the baking dish out of the oven , the torn baguette has absorbed the recipe ’ s syrupy liquids , turning gooey inside and crisply golden on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s a simple dish , but one that , as Washington puts it , “ will change your whole fucking day .
”

“Bread pudding was the first thing that I baked after I came out to my parents,” the fiction writer Bryan Washington says, standing at his oven. The dish, which he’d been making since childhood, in one form or another, was a vehicle for nostalgia and comfort. “The hope is that, within a few bites, the dessert will transport you to a place much warmer, more familiar, than where you began,” Washington writes, in a Kitchen Notes piece on his signature recipe.
In the video, he tears up a white-bread baguette that crunches as he rips it, and drops the bite-size pieces into a baking dish. “On my block, no one had any real money, but, for bread pudding, you didn’t need it. Everyone kept bread in his pantry. It didn’t need to be fresh—even better if it wasn’t. Stale bread sopped up more batter, giving the pudding a forgiving crunch,” Washington says. Using simple ingredients and equipment—for the pudding, Washington heats white-chocolate chips and cream in the microwave—a home cook can orchestrate what he calls “a minor symphony of sweetness.”
After Washington came out to his parents, and baked that comforting batch of bread pudding for himself, he made another. “One for my mother, scalding and soaked in coconut milk splashed with rum,” he writes. This time, when he pulls the baking dish out of the oven, the torn baguette has absorbed the recipe’s syrupy liquids, turning gooey inside and crisply golden on top—transformed inside and out. It’s a simple dish, but one that, as Washington puts it, “will change your whole fucking day.”


newyorker--2020-02-26--Watching Liverpool’s Awesome, Fretful Return to the Top of English Soccer

On a raw , windy night earlier this week , I went to watch Liverpool play its twenty-seventh match of the English Premier League season .
The team had won twenty-five of its games and tied the other , against Manchester United , its traditional rival , which currently sits in fifth place in the league , an astonishing thirty-eight points behind Liverpool , the runaway leaders .
Since August , Liverpool has not so much cruised through England ’ s most important and gruelling soccer competition as questioned its logic as a contest .
The E.P.L .
imagines itself @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which less skilful teams can always find a way to topple the grandest opponents .
And , in fairness , for the other nineteen teams in the league this season , that has been the case .
But Liverpool has defied the rules that apply to everybody else .
Leading up to Monday night ’ s match , the team had won seventeen E.P.L .
games in a row and had not lost a league match at Anfield , its home stadium , for the best part of three years .
Earlier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ second-place team in the standings by twenty-five points , something that has never happened in a hundred and thirty-two years of professional soccer in England .
Liverpool ’ s steamrolling of the E.P.L .
this year has been the equivalent of Tiger Woods ’ s improbable demolition of the Masters , in 1997 , or of a rider being half a day ahead in the Tour de France .
“ The gap is so insane , I don ’ t really understand it , ” Jürgen Klopp , Liverpool ’ s coach , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Norwich City last week .
Liverpool hasn ’ t always won by much this season , but it has pretty much always won .
This week ’ s visitor was West Ham , a fitful side from East London , whose coach , David Moyes , had not won a match at Anfield in fifteen attempts .
Liverpool has a swarming , energetic style of play that is designed to catch opponents off guard .
On Monday night , it took less than nine minutes for Trent Alexander-Arnold , Liverpool ’ s precocious @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deep swerving cross , which Gini Wijnaldum , an all-action Dutch midfielder , headed low into the right-hand corner of the West Ham net .
Afterward , some pundits said that Lukasz Fabianski , the West Ham goalkeeper , could have done better .
But I was standing behind the goal—getting pawed and jostled and screamed at by Liverpool fans , who swore and thanked the dark heavens above , while Wijnaldum and Virgil van Dijk , the team ’ s captain and totem , broke out a celebratory dance on the windswept @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to me .
Liverpool was in front .
But the lead didn ’ t last long .
Three minutes later , to everybody ’ s amazement , West Ham scored a soft , headed goal of its own—a near-post nod by Issa Diop , the club ’ s tall French center back .
On the sideline , Klopp , in a gray jacket , spectacles , and black tracksuit pants , made a frantic revolving motion with his hands—to indicate something obvious that his defenders were supposed to have done—and then threw them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ gesture of WTF .
In a corner of Anfield , the West Ham fans , whose team is at risk of being relegated from the E.P.L.
, sang , “ Now you ’ re going to believe us .
Now you ’ re going to believe us .
We ’ re going to win the league !
” And everyone was still relaxed enough to laugh .
Liverpool ’ s success this year is how things used to be—and then weren ’ t .
When I was growing up , in the eighties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the First Division , the predecessor to the E.P.L.
, six times in ten years .
Between 1977 and 1984 , Liverpool also won the European Cup , the forerunner to the Champions League , four times—an unprecedented achievement for a British club .
The team was built in the image of Bill Shankly , a charismatic Scot who managed the club from 1959 to 1974 , then bequeathed it to his assistant , Bob Paisley , who hauled in trophies for the following nine years .
“ My idea was to build @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Had Napoleon had that idea , he would have conquered the bloody world , ” Shankly once said .
“ I wanted Liverpool to be untouchable .
My idea was to build Liverpool up and up until , eventually , everyone would have to submit and give in.
” I didn ’ t understand it , growing up as a middle-class boy in London , but Liverpool ’ s footballing power was—in part—an expression of its rage and despair as a city .
“ When I arrived at Anfield , it was the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also said .
“ You should have seen the place.
” During the twentieth century , Liverpool suffered a frightening and , at times , vindictive decline from its former status as the prime port of the British Empire .
In the late nineteenth century , it was fashionable to predict that Liverpool , which was exotic , futuristic , and commercially minded , would overtake London one day .
In 1886 , The Illustrated London News described the city as “ the New York of Europe , a world-city rather than merely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ embassies and foreign consulates than the capital .
But the future passed Liverpool by .
The port declined .
Industry left .
The Empire fell .
Between 1930 and 2001 , the city ’ s population was reduced by half .
When its football club was at its zenith , Liverpool was cratering—a cultural and economic cast-off in Margaret Thatcher ’ s Britain .
But you didn ’ t get any of that watching the Red Machine play on TV .
The great Liverpool teams of the seventies and eighties were exuberant and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ball-carrying defenders , tigerish midfielders , and explosive wingers .
“ This will sound like a working-class sob story , because it is , ” a friend of mine , who grew up in the city , told me .
“ We didn ’ t have anything , but we were fucking aristocrats when it came to the only two things that mattered , which were rock and roll and football.
” Liverpool ’ s monopoly of the English game ended in tragedy .
On April 15 , 1989 , ninety-four of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a stadium crush at Hillsborough stadium , in Sheffield .
( Two more died later . )
Liverpool won the league the following year .
And then it couldn ’ t .
At some point in the coming weeks , the club will return to the summit of English football for the first time in thirty years .
There have been moments , during the intervening decades , when it looked as if Liverpool might win the league again .
In April , 2014 , the club was three games from the title @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s captain and pivotal figure of the previous decade , slipped while controlling a routine pass—allowing Chelsea to score and , ultimately , Manchester City to beat Liverpool to the trophy .
In October , 2015 , when Klopp took over the team , Liverpool was in tenth place .
“ History is great , ” he said .
“ But only to remember.
” Klopp is one of the sport ’ s rare , genuine innovators .
He spent most of his playing career in defense for Mainz , a club in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ For two years , he trained under a maverick coach , Wolfgang Frank , who schooled his defenders by making them watch hours of videos of A.C. Milan ’ s legendary back line , from the late eighties .
When Klopp took charge of Mainz himself , in 2001 , he pioneered a high-energy tactic known as gegenpressing—counter pressing—in which players , when they lose the ball , furiously rush to close down angles and areas of the pitch .
Gegenpressing differs from other forms of pressing in its attack-mindedness and its determination @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moment the opposition has regained it .
“ The best moment to win the ball is immediately after your team has just lost it , ” Klopp has said .
In Germany , Klopp led Borussia Dortmund , another great club that had fallen away , to consecutive Bundesliga titles , deposing the mighty Bayern Munich .
When he arrived at Liverpool , he instigated gegenpressing immediately .
The club ’ s star forward line , led by Mohamed Salah , often grabs the headlines , but most people acknowledge that Liverpool became @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a fluid , formidable defense , anchored by van Dijk—who was signed from Southampton , for seventy-five million pounds , in December , 2017—and also Alisson Becker , the Brazilian goalkeeper , and its two fast , flat-crossing fullbacks , Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson .

On a raw, windy night earlier this week, I went to watch Liverpool play its twenty-seventh match of the English Premier League season. The team had won twenty-five of its games and tied the other, against Manchester United, its traditional rival, which currently sits in fifth place in the league, an astonishing thirty-eight points behind Liverpool, the runaway leaders. Since August, Liverpool has not so much cruised through England’s most important and gruelling soccer competition as questioned its logic as a contest. The E.P.L. imagines itself as a hurly-burly, blood-and-thunder affair, in which less skilful teams can always find a way to topple the grandest opponents. And, in fairness, for the other nineteen teams in the league this season, that has been the case. But Liverpool has defied the rules that apply to everybody else. Leading up to Monday night’s match, the team had won seventeen E.P.L. games in a row and had not lost a league match at Anfield, its home stadium, for the best part of three years. Earlier in February, Liverpool had led the second-place team in the standings by twenty-five points, something that has never happened in a hundred and thirty-two years of professional soccer in England. Liverpool’s steamrolling of the E.P.L. this year has been the equivalent of Tiger Woods’s improbable demolition of the Masters, in 1997, or of a rider being half a day ahead in the Tour de France. “The gap is so insane, I don’t really understand it,” Jürgen Klopp, Liverpool’s coach, said, after the team narrowly beat Norwich City last week. Liverpool hasn’t always won by much this season, but it has pretty much always won.
This week’s visitor was West Ham, a fitful side from East London, whose coach, David Moyes, had not won a match at Anfield in fifteen attempts. Liverpool has a swarming, energetic style of play that is designed to catch opponents off guard. On Monday night, it took less than nine minutes for Trent Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool’s precocious right back, to dig out a deep swerving cross, which Gini Wijnaldum, an all-action Dutch midfielder, headed low into the right-hand corner of the West Ham net. Afterward, some pundits said that Lukasz Fabianski, the West Ham goalkeeper, could have done better. But I was standing behind the goal—getting pawed and jostled and screamed at by Liverpool fans, who swore and thanked the dark heavens above, while Wijnaldum and Virgil van Dijk, the team’s captain and totem, broke out a celebratory dance on the windswept turf—and the header looked fast and true to me.
Liverpool was in front. But the lead didn’t last long. Three minutes later, to everybody’s amazement, West Ham scored a soft, headed goal of its own—a near-post nod by Issa Diop, the club’s tall French center back. On the sideline, Klopp, in a gray jacket, spectacles, and black tracksuit pants, made a frantic revolving motion with his hands—to indicate something obvious that his defenders were supposed to have done—and then threw them wide apart in the universal, post-verbal gesture of WTF. In a corner of Anfield, the West Ham fans, whose team is at risk of being relegated from the E.P.L., sang, “Now you’re going to believe us. Now you’re going to believe us. We’re going to win the league!” And everyone was still relaxed enough to laugh.
Liverpool’s success this year is how things used to be—and then weren’t. When I was growing up, in the eighties, Liverpool finished at the top of the First Division, the predecessor to the E.P.L., six times in ten years. Between 1977 and 1984, Liverpool also won the European Cup, the forerunner to the Champions League, four times—an unprecedented achievement for a British club. The team was built in the image of Bill Shankly, a charismatic Scot who managed the club from 1959 to 1974, then bequeathed it to his assistant, Bob Paisley, who hauled in trophies for the following nine years. “My idea was to build Liverpool into a bastion of invincibility. Had Napoleon had that idea, he would have conquered the bloody world,” Shankly once said. “I wanted Liverpool to be untouchable. My idea was to build Liverpool up and up until, eventually, everyone would have to submit and give in.”
I didn’t understand it, growing up as a middle-class boy in London, but Liverpool’s footballing power was—in part—an expression of its rage and despair as a city. “When I arrived at Anfield, it was the biggest slum in Liverpool,” Shankly also said. “You should have seen the place.” During the twentieth century, Liverpool suffered a frightening and, at times, vindictive decline from its former status as the prime port of the British Empire. In the late nineteenth century, it was fashionable to predict that Liverpool, which was exotic, futuristic, and commercially minded, would overtake London one day. In 1886, The Illustrated London News described the city as “the New York of Europe, a world-city rather than merely British provincial.’’ It had more embassies and foreign consulates than the capital. But the future passed Liverpool by. The port declined. Industry left. The Empire fell. Between 1930 and 2001, the city’s population was reduced by half. When its football club was at its zenith, Liverpool was cratering—a cultural and economic cast-off in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain.
But you didn’t get any of that watching the Red Machine play on TV. The great Liverpool teams of the seventies and eighties were exuberant and cosmopolitan. They played with stylish, ball-carrying defenders, tigerish midfielders, and explosive wingers. “This will sound like a working-class sob story, because it is,” a friend of mine, who grew up in the city, told me. “We didn’t have anything, but we were fucking aristocrats when it came to the only two things that mattered, which were rock and roll and football.” Liverpool’s monopoly of the English game ended in tragedy. On April 15, 1989, ninety-four of the club’s supporters were killed in a stadium crush at Hillsborough stadium, in Sheffield. (Two more died later.) Liverpool won the league the following year. And then it couldn’t. At some point in the coming weeks, the club will return to the summit of English football for the first time in thirty years.
There have been moments, during the intervening decades, when it looked as if Liverpool might win the league again. In April, 2014, the club was three games from the title when Steven Gerrard, the team’s captain and pivotal figure of the previous decade, slipped while controlling a routine pass—allowing Chelsea to score and, ultimately, Manchester City to beat Liverpool to the trophy. In October, 2015, when Klopp took over the team, Liverpool was in tenth place. “History is great,” he said. “But only to remember.”
Klopp is one of the sport’s rare, genuine innovators. He spent most of his playing career in defense for Mainz, a club in the second tier of German football. For two years, he trained under a maverick coach, Wolfgang Frank, who schooled his defenders by making them watch hours of videos of A.C. Milan’s legendary back line, from the late eighties. When Klopp took charge of Mainz himself, in 2001, he pioneered a high-energy tactic known as gegenpressing—counter pressing—in which players, when they lose the ball, furiously rush to close down angles and areas of the pitch. Gegenpressing differs from other forms of pressing in its attack-mindedness and its determination to win back possession at the very moment the opposition has regained it. “The best moment to win the ball is immediately after your team has just lost it,” Klopp has said. In Germany, Klopp led Borussia Dortmund, another great club that had fallen away, to consecutive Bundesliga titles, deposing the mighty Bayern Munich. When he arrived at Liverpool, he instigated gegenpressing immediately. The club’s star forward line, led by Mohamed Salah, often grabs the headlines, but most people acknowledge that Liverpool became serious E.P.L. contenders when Klopp assembled a fluid, formidable defense, anchored by van Dijk—who was signed from Southampton, for seventy-five million pounds, in December, 2017—and also Alisson Becker, the Brazilian goalkeeper, and its two fast, flat-crossing fullbacks, Alexander-Arnold and Andy Robertson.
The other great motivating force has been rivalry. In the summer of 2016, Manchester City, which is bankrolled by the state of Abu Dhabi, hired Pep Guardiola, who is generally regarded as the world’s best coach, to secure its grip on the E.P.L. Consciously or not, I think a lot of other teams in the league quietly gave up. But Klopp and Liverpool did not. Between 2013 and 2015, Klopp and Guardiola had gone toe to toe in the Bundesliga. Guardiola was brought in by Bayern Munich to reassert its dominance, and he did this by signing one of Klopp’s star players and modifying his own tactics with elements of the gegenpress. As Michael Cox explains, in “Zonal Marking,” an excellent recent history of European football, Klopp borrowed in return from Guardiola’s ornate, suffocating possession-based version of the game. (Liverpool’s attack is arguably modelled on Guardiola’s at Barcelona). Last season, with Klopp and Guardiola going for it, Liverpool and Manchester City played in their own, two-horse version of the E.P.L., pushing each other to extraordinary heights of technique and endurance. In the final three months of the season, Manchester City won fourteen consecutive games, scoring thirty-two goals and conceding four. Liverpool finished a point behind, with ninety-seven points, which would have been enough to win the E.P.L. in all but one of its preceding seasons. Last May, Klopp led Liverpool to its sixth European Cup—a great triumph in its own right—but there was a sense that the club was still haunted by its failure to regain the English championship.
This season, Liverpool has simply carried on where it left off. “We’ve done this through fear,” Dave Potts, a fan, told me before the match on Monday. “We’re petrified of drawing a game. We just know that Manchester City can win twenty games in a row.” Potts was selling merchandise in a barbershop a few hundred yards from the stadium. He was nine years old on April 28, 1990, the last time that Liverpool won the league, with a 2–1 victory over Queen’s Park Rangers, at Anfield. “I was there,” Potts said. “But I didn’t understand it.” Like many long-suffering supporters, Potts has had his own private moment of realizing that Liverpool would finally win the league this year (it was the team’s 3–1 win over Manchester City at home, in November), but that is not the same as watching it actually happen. Potts credits Klopp with restoring the club’s former aura. “We are Liverpool. And we are our own benchmark,” a Klopp saying, is fixed to lampposts near the stadium. “He’s a legend if he brings this in,” Potts told me. “He already is.” Potts’s barbershop was next door to the Klopp Guest Rooms. Before the match against West Ham kicked off, a large red flag billowed across the bottom of the Kop, the steep, imposing stand that is home to Liverpool’s most fervent supporters, showing the faces of the club’s most celebrated managers arranged in the style of Soviet iconography. Shankly was in Marx’s spot. Klopp was a couple of places to the right of Stalin.


newyorker--2020-02-26--Joe Biden’s Struggling Campaign Gets a Lift in South Carolina

After suffering through a miserable few weeks in his third Presidential campaign , former Vice-President Joe Biden desperately needed some good news , and on Wednesday , in South Carolina , he finally received some .
Congressman James Clyburn , one of the most prominent black Democrats in the country , endorsed Biden for President , and two new polls indicated that he is heading for a comfortable victory in Saturday ’ s primary .
The endorsement from Clyburn , a fourteen-term representative who is currently the Majority Whip , had been widely expected .
He and Biden have had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wife , Emily , a librarian and political activist who died last year , was a personal friend of the former Vice-President .
But nothing could detract from the fulsome and emotional nature of Clyburn ’ s gesture .
Surrounded by other Democratic officials at Trident Technical College , which is in his North Charleston congressional district , the seventy-nine-year-old Clyburn , who has the bearing of distinguished preacher , raised his right hand and said , “ I am fearful for the future of this country .
I am fearful for my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ children ’ s future.
” Clyburn enunciated his words slowly , tapping the dais with his fingers for emphasis .
“ This country is at an inflection point , ” he went on .
“ It is time to restore this country ’ s dignity , this country ’ s respect .
That is what is at stake this year , and I can think of no-one better suited , better prepared .
I can think of no one with the integrity , no one more committed to the fundamental principles that make @ @ @ @ @ @ @ good friend—my late wife ’ s great friend—Joe Biden.
” Of course , it remains to be seen what impact the endorsement will have .
In an age of gaping generational divides and political dealignment , hat tips from party elders—even emotional ones—don ’ t count for as much as they used to .
But with about two-thirds of the voters in Saturday ’ s primary likely to come from South Carolina ’ s African-American community , Clyburn ’ s wholehearted support of Biden can ’ t be discounted , either .
Seeking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Biden campaign issued a video in which Clyburn said that South Carolina had launched to the White House Bill Clinton and Barack Obama , who both won primaries in the state , and would now launch Biden on the same path .
The other good news for Biden came in the form of a pair of new polls from East Carolina University and Clemson University .
The East Carolina survey showed him with a lead of eight points over Bernie Sanders—thirty-one per cent to twenty-three per cent .
The Clemson poll @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : eighteen points .
He was at thirty-five per cent .
The billionaire Tom Steyer , who has spent a lot of money on television ads , was in second place , at seventeen per cent .
Sanders was in third , at thirteen per cent .
As always , the new survey data should be interpreted with caution .
Just a couple of days ago , two other polls were released that showed Sanders rising to within striking distance of Biden in South Carolina .
In an NBC News/Marist College poll , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ points , and in a survey from CBS News/YouGov it was five points .
When Sanders walked off the stage after Tuesday night ’ s food fight of a debate in Charleston , he told CNN , “ I think we have the momentum to win here in South Carolina , to pull off a real upset.
” That could still happen .
But the timing of the polls will provide some encouragement for Biden and his supporters .
Whereas the field work for the NBC News/Marist College and CBS News/YouGov surveys were @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the questioning for the new polls was done after the Nevada caucus .
The Biden campaign will be hoping that the sight of Sanders recording a blowout victory encouraged some of the former Vice-President ’ s supporters to come home .
Whatever happens on Saturday , Sanders will remain the front-runner and the favorite to get the nomination .
As the race moves onto the fourteen-state Super Tuesday contest , just three days later , Biden will still be vying with Pete Buttigieg , Amy Klobuchar , and Michael Bloomberg for the support @ @ @ @ @ @ @ show Sanders leading big in California , and slightly ahead in North Carolina and Texas .
If these poll results are borne out in the actual voting , he will rack up a huge lead in pledged delegates .
The Biden campaign is so financially strained that it has barely advertised in the Super Tuesday states .
At this stage , however , Biden will take any victory he can get and hope to emerge as the only realistic alternative to Sanders .

After suffering through a miserable few weeks in his third Presidential campaign, former Vice-President Joe Biden desperately needed some good news, and on Wednesday, in South Carolina, he finally received some. The congressman James Clyburn, one of the most prominent black Democrats in the country, endorsed Biden for President, and two new polls indicated that he is heading for a comfortable victory in Saturday’s primary.
The endorsement from Clyburn, a fourteen-term representative who is currently the Majority Whip, had been widely expected. He and Biden have had a long political association, and his wife, Emily, a librarian and political activist who died last year, was a personal friend of the former Vice-President. But nothing could detract from the fulsome and emotional nature of Clyburn’s gesture. Surrounded by other Democratic officials at Trident Technical College, which is in his North Charleston congressional district, the seventy-nine-year-old Clyburn, who has the bearing of distinguished preacher, raised his right hand and said, “I am fearful for the future of this country. I am fearful for my daughters and their future, and their children’s future.”
Clyburn enunciated his words slowly, tapping the dais with his fingers for emphasis. “This country is at an inflection point,” he went on. “It is time to restore this country’s dignity, this country’s respect. That is what is at stake this year, and I can think of no-one better suited, better prepared. I can think of no one with the integrity, no one more committed to the fundamental principles that make this country what it is than my good friend—my late wife’s great friend—Joe Biden.”
Of course, it remains to be seen what impact the endorsement will have. In an age of gaping generational divides and political dealignment, hat tips from party elders—even emotional ones—don’t count for as much as they used to. But with about two-thirds of the voters in Saturday’s primary likely to come from South Carolina’s African-American community, Clyburn’s wholehearted support of Biden can’t be discounted, either. Seeking to make the most of the endorsement, the Biden campaign issued a video in which Clyburn said that South Carolina had launched to the White House Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who both won primaries in the state, and would now launch Biden on the same path.
The other good news for Biden came in the form of a pair of new polls from East Carolina University and Clemson University. The East Carolina survey showed him with a lead of eight points over Bernie Sanders—thirty-one per cent to twenty-three per cent. The Clemson poll showed Biden with an even bigger lead: eighteen points. He was at thirty-five per cent. The billionaire Tom Steyer, who has spent a lot of money on television ads, was in second place, at seventeen per cent. Sanders was in third, at thirteen per cent.
As always, the new survey data should be interpreted with caution. Just a couple of days ago, two other polls were released that showed Sanders rising to within striking distance of Biden in South Carolina. In an NBC News/Marist College poll, the margin between them was just four points, and in a survey from CBS News/YouGov it was five points. When Sanders walked off the stage after Tuesday night’s food fight of a debate in Charleston, he told CNN, “I think we have the momentum to win here in South Carolina, to pull off a real upset.”
That could still happen. But the timing of the polls will provide some encouragement for Biden and his supporters. Whereas the field work for the NBC News/Marist College and CBS News/YouGov surveys were carried out last week, some of the questioning for the new polls was done after the Nevada caucus. The Biden campaign will be hoping that the sight of Sanders recording a blowout victory encouraged some of the former Vice-President’s supporters to come home.
Whatever happens on Saturday, Sanders will remain the front-runner and the favorite to get the nomination. As the race moves onto the fourteen-state Super Tuesday contest, just three days later, Biden will still be vying with Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, and Michael Bloomberg for the support of moderate Democrats. The latest polls show Sanders leading big in California, and slightly ahead in North Carolina and Texas. If these poll results are borne out in the actual voting, he will rack up a huge lead in pledged delegates.
The Biden campaign is so financially strained that it has barely advertised in the Super Tuesday states. At this stage, however, Biden will take any victory he can get and hope to emerge as the only realistic alternative to Sanders.


newyorker--2020-02-26--What the South Carolina Debate Says About Mike Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders, and Why So Many Democrats

What the South Carolina Debate Says About Mike Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders, and Why So Many Democrats Are Still Running

In Tuesday night ’ s Democratic debate , Gayle King , one of the CBS moderators , asked Mike Bloomberg a question that got at some of what many Democrats find frustrating with his candidacy .
It also hinted at why so many other candidates , despite the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders , are still in the race .
King noted that Bloomberg had repeatedly said that he was sorry for stop-and-frisk , a policy that , during his time as mayor of New York , involved hundreds of thousands of police searches of people who might just have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ targeted black and Latino men and teen-agers .
But , King asked , “ What exactly are you apologizing for ?
” The point of the question seemed to be to give Bloomberg a chance to address something that he had seemed oblivious to in the last debate : the moral and civil-liberty perversions of stop-and-frisk .
He didn ’ t take it .
Instead , he answered , “ We let it get out of control and , when I realized that , I cut it back by ninety-five per cent.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ realized ” that it was out of control by way of a judge ’ s order .
He repeated that he ’ d apologized , and added , “ I ’ ve met with black leaders to try to get an understanding of how I can better position myself , and what I should have done , and what I should do next time.
” Is how he will “ position ” himself really the heart of the matter ?
Bloomberg can ’ t seem to refrain from talking about stop-and-frisk as if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but not worth dwelling on .
When King asked why the issue continued to follow him , he said , “ Well , that ’ s because it ’ s in their interest to promote that ” —referring , presumably , to his competitors for the nomination .
Bloomberg ’ s tasks at the debate included doing better than last time—a low bar , which he certainly did surpass—and stopping Sanders , who is charging ahead after a near-tie with Pete Buttigieg in Iowa and victories in New Hampshire and Nevada , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Latino voters .
There , Bloomberg was not so successful ; Sanders had a strong night , and Bloomberg is a natural foil for him .
For Sanders , it all comes back to capitalism , and a belief that the logic of the market , which Bloomberg exemplifies , distorts the judgment of people with power .
In the first question of the debate , King asked Bloomberg if he thought that a Sanders economy would be better than a Donald Trump economy .
Bloomberg said that Trump thought that he ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that while Bloomberg didn ’ t agree , Vladmir Putin , the President of Russia , did .
Bloomberg then said to Sanders , “ And that ’ s why Russia is helping you get elected , so you will lose to him.
” “ Oh , Mr. Bloomberg , ” Sanders said , as if embarrassed for his opponent .
( He added , “ Hey , Mr. Putin , if I ’ m President of the United States , trust me , you ’ re not going to interfere in any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wasn ’ t alone in drawing an effective contrast to Bloomberg .
King , as a follow-up to her stop-and-frisk question , turned to Buttigieg .
“ You ’ ve certainly had your issues with the black community as well , ” she said .
( Jelani Cobb has a summary of criminal-justice issues that the Democrats face this year . )
“ Do you think New York City ’ s implementation of stop-and-frisk was racist ?
” Buttigieg said yes , “ Because it was about profiling people based on their race.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ this issue with “ a lot of humility , ” as well as a consciousness of the reality that he and his fellow-candidates are “ seven white people ” declaiming on racial justice .
“ None of us have the experience , the lived experience of , for example , walking down the street , or in a mall , and feeling eyes on us , regarding us as dangerous , without knowing the first thing about us , just because of the color of our skin.
” He noted that lack of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maternal mortality , too , and said that , not having it , “ the next best thing we can do is actually listen to those who do.
” That answer in itself may not improve Buttigieg ’ s poll numbers among black voters , but he at least managed to express some of what Bloomberg had missed .
His response also spoke to his strength on the debate stage , where , on Tuesday , he expressed an air of good sense and discipline .
So did Senator Amy Klobuchar , to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the CBS moderators , next posed the same question , about whether stop-and-frisk was racist in its implementation .
Klobuchar did think so , and quoted Martin Luther King , Jr. , on our interwoven destinies , but then said that she wanted to talk about “ where we ’ re going to go forward.
” This involved sentencing reform but also issues such as child care , the minimum wage , and voting rights .
In the previous debate , in Las Vegas , Klobuchar and Buttigieg sniped at each other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ particularly well .
But Buttigieg had a reasonably strong third-place finish in Nevada , and in Tuesday ’ s debate strove to convey that he is the alternative to Bloomberg and Sanders .
Klobuchar did a good job of arguing why , in terms of her moderate policies and Midwestern profile , she should be that alternative , but she has fewer resources and , so far , fewer votes .
On Tuesday , Klobuchar praised Representative Jim Clyburn , the popular African-American South Carolina politician , who was expected to announce his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Joe Biden .
The former Vice-President was forceful and spirited throughout the debate , and is counting heavily on South Carolina , but Sanders is gaining there .
Senator Elizabeth Warren is also still fighting ; she had something of a breakthrough in the Las Vegas debate , but without much to show for it .
( She finished in fourth place in Nevada , with less than ten per cent of the vote . )
Last time , she had flustered Bloomberg with damaging quotes about women that have been attributed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and demands that he release some of those women from nondisclosure agreements they had signed with this firm .
Bloomberg didn ’ t seem prepared for that , although he should have been , which may be why Warren made a similar attack in South Carolina .
She said that he had allegedly told a pregnant woman at his company , “ Kill it.
” Bloomberg has denied saying this—the quote is from a 1998 suit that the woman brought , and which was settled—and did so again Tuesday .
( The Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ case , which does not reflect favorably on Bloomberg . )
Whether because of the denials , or because it required more explanation , or because Warren ’ s follow-through was less surefooted , the tactic didn ’ t come across as strongly .
Since the last debate , Bloomberg has offered to release a number of women from their N.D.A.s , which he accused Warren of ignoring .
“ We ’ re following exactly what she asked to do !
” he said .
“ And the trouble is , with this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The last comment , with its evocation of a nagging woman , was not attractive , and Bloomberg ’ s added note that the releases , which were confined to three women , might transform “ the corporate landscape ” was a reminder of his tendency toward grandiosity .
But Warren hadn ’ t triumphed , either .
Her vagueness on questions relating to foreign policy , specifically Syria and Israel , did not help her performance .

In Tuesday night’s Democratic debate, Gayle King, one of the CBS moderators, asked Mike Bloomberg a question that got at some of what many Democrats find frustrating with his candidacy. It also hinted at why so many other candidates, despite the rise of Senator Bernie Sanders, are still in the race. King noted that Bloomberg had repeatedly said that he was sorry for stop-and-frisk, a policy that, during his time as mayor of New York, involved hundreds of thousands of police searches of people who might just have been walking down the street, and targeted black and Latino men and teen-agers. But, King asked, “What exactly are you apologizing for?” The point of the question seemed to be to give Bloomberg a chance to address something that he had seemed oblivious to in the last debate: the moral and civil-liberty perversions of stop-and-frisk.
He didn’t take it. Instead, he answered, “We let it get out of control and, when I realized that, I cut it back by ninety-five per cent.” That was a distortion. He “realized” that it was out of control by way of a judge’s order. He repeated that he’d apologized, and added, “I’ve met with black leaders to try to get an understanding of how I can better position myself, and what I should have done, and what I should do next time.” Is how he will “position” himself really the heart of the matter? Bloomberg can’t seem to refrain from talking about stop-and-frisk as if it were a failed product launch—regrettable, but not worth dwelling on. When King asked why the issue continued to follow him, he said, “Well, that’s because it’s in their interest to promote that”—referring, presumably, to his competitors for the nomination.
Bloomberg’s tasks at the debate included doing better than last time—a low bar, which he certainly did surpass—and stopping Sanders, who is charging ahead after a near-tie with Pete Buttigieg in Iowa and victories in New Hampshire and Nevada, where he had a particularly strong showing with Latino voters. There, Bloomberg was not so successful; Sanders had a strong night, and Bloomberg is a natural foil for him. For Sanders, it all comes back to capitalism, and a belief that the logic of the market, which Bloomberg exemplifies, distorts the judgment of people with power. In the first question of the debate, King asked Bloomberg if he thought that a Sanders economy would be better than a Donald Trump economy. Bloomberg said that Trump thought that he’d be a better President, and that while Bloomberg didn’t agree, Vladmir Putin, the President of Russia, did. Bloomberg then said to Sanders, “And that’s why Russia is helping you get elected, so you will lose to him.”
“Oh, Mr. Bloomberg,” Sanders said, as if embarrassed for his opponent. (He added, “Hey, Mr. Putin, if I’m President of the United States, trust me, you’re not going to interfere in any more American elections.”) But Sanders wasn’t alone in drawing an effective contrast to Bloomberg. King, as a follow-up to her stop-and-frisk question, turned to Buttigieg. “You’ve certainly had your issues with the black community as well,” she said. (Jelani Cobb has a summary of criminal-justice issues that the Democrats face this year.) “Do you think New York City’s implementation of stop-and-frisk was racist?” Buttigieg said yes, “Because it was about profiling people based on their race.” He added that he came to this issue with “a lot of humility,” as well as a consciousness of the reality that he and his fellow-candidates are “seven white people” declaiming on racial justice. “None of us have the experience, the lived experience of, for example, walking down the street, or in a mall, and feeling eyes on us, regarding us as dangerous, without knowing the first thing about us, just because of the color of our skin.” He noted that lack of experience with regard to racial disparities in maternal mortality, too, and said that, not having it, “the next best thing we can do is actually listen to those who do.” That answer in itself may not improve Buttigieg’s poll numbers among black voters, but he at least managed to express some of what Bloomberg had missed. His response also spoke to his strength on the debate stage, where, on Tuesday, he expressed an air of good sense and discipline.
So did Senator Amy Klobuchar, to whom Norah O’Donnell, another of the CBS moderators, next posed the same question, about whether stop-and-frisk was racist in its implementation. Klobuchar did think so, and quoted Martin Luther King, Jr., on our interwoven destinies, but then said that she wanted to talk about “where we’re going to go forward.” This involved sentencing reform but also issues such as child care, the minimum wage, and voting rights. In the previous debate, in Las Vegas, Klobuchar and Buttigieg sniped at each other, which didn’t serve either particularly well. But Buttigieg had a reasonably strong third-place finish in Nevada, and in Tuesday’s debate strove to convey that he is the alternative to Bloomberg and Sanders. Klobuchar did a good job of arguing why, in terms of her moderate policies and Midwestern profile, she should be that alternative, but she has fewer resources and, so far, fewer votes. On Tuesday, Klobuchar praised Representative Jim Clyburn, the popular African-American South Carolina politician, who was expected to announce his endorsement the next day. He endorsed Joe Biden. The former Vice-President was forceful and spirited throughout the debate, and is counting heavily on South Carolina, but Sanders is gaining there.
Senator Elizabeth Warren is also still fighting; she had something of a breakthrough in the Las Vegas debate, but without much to show for it. (She finished in fourth place in Nevada, with less than ten per cent of the vote.) Last time, she had flustered Bloomberg with damaging quotes about women that have been attributed to him (“horse-faced lesbian”) and demands that he release some of those women from nondisclosure agreements they had signed with this firm. Bloomberg didn’t seem prepared for that, although he should have been, which may be why Warren made a similar attack in South Carolina. She said that he had allegedly told a pregnant woman at his company, “Kill it.” Bloomberg has denied saying this—the quote is from a 1998 suit that the woman brought, and which was settled—and did so again Tuesday. (The Washington Post has a good overview of the case, which does not reflect favorably on Bloomberg.) Whether because of the denials, or because it required more explanation, or because Warren’s follow-through was less surefooted, the tactic didn’t come across as strongly. Since the last debate, Bloomberg has offered to release a number of women from their N.D.A.s, which he accused Warren of ignoring. “We’re following exactly what she asked to do!” he said. “And the trouble is, with this senator, enough is never enough.” The last comment, with its evocation of a nagging woman, was not attractive, and Bloomberg’s added note that the releases, which were confined to three women, might transform “the corporate landscape” was a reminder of his tendency toward grandiosity. But Warren hadn’t triumphed, either. Her vagueness on questions relating to foreign policy, specifically Syria and Israel, did not help her performance.
All the Democrats are going to need a great deal of money if they hope to compete nationally, and Bloomberg, at times crassly, reminded the others that he had plenty. “I have the resources,” is how he put it. (Tom Steyer, another billionaire candidate, has them, too, but on the debate stage he seemed to often be jumping in mostly to remind people that he was still there.) Bloomberg doesn’t give the impression that he is particularly perturbed by the current state of campaign finance; at times, he seems to suggest that it allows the better sort of person to get into politics. Some very wealthy candidates justify their presence by saying that they can’t be bought, but Bloomberg seems to want to be praised for the good taste he exhibits in his political purchases. Indeed, he seemed to begin to say “I bought” with regard to the Democrats’ current congressional majority—he had supported many of the candidates who won new seats—before catching himself and saying that he “got” it. Bloomberg has also done much to support other key Democratic issues, such as gun control, and yet during the debate seemed to struggle to find a way to talk about it in terms of his passion rather than his checkbook. Still, it is hard to say that Bloomberg, who did have real achievements as mayor—for example, in the 9/11 recovery—is out of it, or that any of them is (except, perhaps, Steyer), let alone that Sanders has it all wrapped up. The race is in an uncertain place.