theatlantic--2020-10-26--The Biden Doctrine Begins With Latin America

The trip to Guatemala was a crucial one , Joe Biden told the delegation flying with him on Air Force Two .
It was January 2016 , and the Central American country was emerging from months of political chaos after its president and vice president were ousted and jailed over a multimillion-dollar corruption scheme .
Fed up with the political establishment , Guatemalans elevated a TV star , Jimmy Morales , to the presidency .
Now Biden would attend Morales ’ s inauguration , lending legitimacy to the new leader .
Biden would spend just one day in Guatemala , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Morales , led migration talks with the leader and his El Salvadoran and Honduran counterparts , joined a lunch with them and the American delegation , and answered questions from the local press .
( Representative Norma Torres , part of the delegation , told me it was obvious to the other presidents in the room for the working lunch that Biden had just given Morales “ the talk , ” in which he set out the United States ’ expectations for Guatemala , and she recounted how the other leaders all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden at some point too . )
While there , Biden pitched his vision for the region , in which the three so-called Northern Triangle countries could work to be more open societies and tackle the “ root causes ” of mass migration—all with American financial and political backing .
On the face of it , the trip was unremarkable : a diplomatic visit in keeping with those made by senior American leaders in the past , containing some combination of platitudes and pressure for the host country .
Yet in many ways @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Guatemala offers significant insights into what his administration ’ s foreign policy would look like .
President Donald Trump has largely ignored Latin America , part of a broader withdrawal from international affairs that has had the effect of sparing the region of the chaos that his presidency has created when dealing with China , Iran , North Korea , or the future of the NATO alliance .
So Latin American leaders have adapted their policies in recent years to account for this absence of U.S. leadership , as well as Trump ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time in office as vice president and as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee , as well as by the accounts of his close friends , his former aides , and policy experts , Biden would approach the region differently .
The former vice president made more trips just to Guatemala—hardly a behemoth such as Mexico or Brazil , or a strategic interest such as Colombia—in his two terms than Trump has made to all of Latin America as president .
And his efforts to court the region ’ s leaders during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another key tenet of Biden ’ s policies were he to be elected : A major part of American domestic policy depends on stability along its southern border , and so the U.S. should promote cooperation among countries , and partner with them , to prevent and control migration .
William J. Burns : The United States needs a new foreign policy Biden ’ s interest in Latin America , and experience there ( he was Obama ’ s chief emissary to the region ) —combined with Trump ’ s apparent lack of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ president an opportunity : Regional leaders have come to accept the ebb and flow of American engagement as a condition of living next to a superpower , but Biden could use Latin America to signal a restoration of Washington ’ s historic leadership , leveraging his existing relationships and focus on multilateralism to cement American primacy in a region largely eager for a respite from years of erratic diplomacy .
Latin American countries have long had good reason to distrust the U.S. , which was itself an imperialist power in the region after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ operations , coups d ’ état supported by Washington , and direct American invasions colored Latin American perceptions of the U.S. during the 20th century , and the rise of leftist politicians in the 1990s and 2000s cemented strong anti-American attitudes .
So when Obama and Biden entered office in 2009 , they were faced with a legacy of decades of harm and distrust .
Biden declared on his first visit to the region that “ the time of the United States dictating unilaterally , the time where we only talk and don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Secretary of State John Kerry reaffirmed that message in 2013 , announcing the era of the Monroe Doctrine—a U.S. policy ostensibly issued to condemn European intervention in the Americas but really just used to justify America ’ s own intervention in Latin American affairs—to be over , sparking some measure of celebration in the region .
( Though the degree of America ’ s engagement did change , it did intervene in countries ’ internal affairs , often with their government ’ s support . )
If the Obama administration sought to characterize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a softer tone and focused on multilateral cooperation on climate change , trade , migration , and economic development , the Trump administration ’ s overall strategy has been significantly more haphazard .
In some cases , it has sought to strong-arm regional leaders to agree to its demands , but beyond a handful of issues related to migration and Venezuela , the U.S. has noticeably stepped back as social unrest , economic crisis , and political turmoil have rolled through the region .
Demonstrations broke out across South America in 2019 : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up protests in Chile , Colombia , and Ecuador , while frustration with corruption drove people to the streets in Peru , and outrage over a tainted presidential election led to an uprising in Bolivia .
With regimes falling , governments fleeing capitals , and discontent rising , some fashioned it a “ Latin Spring.
” At the same time , the coronavirus ’ s spread ( now apparently slowing overall ) has led to what looks to be an economic catastrophe .
Lockdowns , shutdowns , and national social-distancing efforts have plunged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 20 years ’ worth of poverty-reduction efforts and sending unemployment rates soaring .
“ Latin America is not in good shape .
It was not in good shape before the pandemic , and it ’ s in worse shape now , ” Michael Shifter , the president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington , told me .
Unrest didn ’ t end with the pandemic , but social movements did take a pause .
Populist leaders in Brazil and Mexico reasserted control over society and assured their people that the public-health @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hemisphere countries enter the summer months , when the coronavirus is expected to abate , the root causes of discontent are once again fomenting instability , and violence .
Embezzlement , price gouging , and graft have been commonplace across the continent during the pandemic .
And through it all , America has watched from afar , declining to intervene or lead .
The U.S. ’ s absence throughout the tumult is a snapshot of the larger failings of the Trump administration to take its southern neighbors seriously , Cynthia Arnson , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Latin American Program , told me .
Aside from renegotiating NAFTA , forcing Central American countries to accept a “ safe third country ” deal , and inflaming Venezuela ’ s domestic political crisis , “ there hasn ’ t been much else to U.S. policy in the hemisphere , ” she said .
Instead , driven by then–National Security Adviser John Bolton , the White House has revived the Monroe Doctrine , asserting a right to intervene in the region to prevent the growth of Russian and Chinese influence—which , ironically , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has stepped away .
Tensions between the U.S. and Latin America aren ’ t new , but the region now holds an overwhelmingly negative perception of Washington—similar to the antagonism of the Bush era of the 2000s .
Now , as the region becomes divided between the conservative governments in Central America , Colombia , and Brazil and the leftist leaders around them , the Trump administration ’ s policies seem to be fueling polarization , Shifter said .
“ It ’ s made things worse .
So you could see some sort @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by a new administration.
” There is reason to believe that Latin American leaders might actually trust a President Biden—he has dealt with their contemporaries , and he has already rebuilt American relations with the region once before .
“ The Trump administration has been very disruptive , and the aftereffects of that are not going to vanish overnight , ” Dan Erikson , who is advising Biden on Latin America policy , told me .
“ But there ’ s an underlying resilience in the U.S.–Latin American relationship that Joe Biden would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden ’ s history in the region lends him legitimacy .
As a senator in the ’ 90s , he was the point person on the Plan Colombia in Congress , working with the Bill Clinton administration to hash out the details of an anti-drug-trafficking , anti-violence financial and security package that Colombian leaders repeatedly praised .
While vice president , he met often with Northern Triangle leaders in their countries and in Washington to draft the guidelines for the Alliance for Prosperity , which offered foreign aid in exchange for domestic reforms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ensure that they also pledged money to anti-poverty and security goals .
Biden often expresses his diplomatic approach in terms of personality—at Democratic primary debates and in foreign-policy speeches he has talked about how “ all politics is personal , particularly international relations ” and spoke about his “ relations all over the world , ” boasting about how he knows many world leaders .
But in Latin America , those relationships were actually personal .
He spoke regularly with regional presidents , ministers , and prosecutors .
He once joked with Colombian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when Santos was a finance minister and Biden was a senator ( “ Now you ’ re president and I ’ m vice president , ” Biden said .
“ It ’ s obvious who did well !
” ) .
Alongside those personal connections , Biden also made multiple official visits .
Whereas Trump has visited a Latin American country only once in his presidency—Argentina , for the 2018 G20 Summit in Buenos Aires—and Vice President Mike Pence has traveled to the region five times , Obama made five trips ( three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden visited 16 times , more than any other president or vice president .
Part of the frequency of Biden ’ s trips is for raw policy reasons : He was assigned the Latin America brief during the Obama administration .
But there might also be a deeper emotional underpinning to Biden ’ s interest in the region .
Senator Tom Carper of Delaware , a longtime Biden friend , told me that the former vice president also feels a moral obligation for the U.S. to be active in Latin America .
Motivated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington has to care for and support its neighbors , especially the Northern Triangle nations .
“ He believes that we—the U.S.—are the root cause of much of the violence and crime and the lack of economic opportunity in these three countries in Central America , ” Carper said .
“ If it weren ’ t for our dependence and our reliance on illegal drugs , fostering the sale and the transport of these drugs … life in these countries would be a lot better.
” Carper , who like Torres was on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ last official trip to Guatemala , said he was certain Biden would “ make sure that we do a better job , and take seriously our response ” to Central and South American countries because “ we have a moral responsibility , having created havoc in these countries.
” In that vein , Biden ’ s pitch to Latin America will sound a lot like what he ’ s said before : that he envisions “ a hemisphere that was secure , middle class and democratic , from the northern reaches of Canada @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Biden plans to deal with root causes and rely on multilateralism .
He hasn ’ t been quiet about America ’ s neglect of its southern neighbors and has articulated a wide-ranging vision to reengage the region .
The “ Biden Plan for Central America , ” for example , updates the 2015 Alliance for Prosperity to use $ 4 billion in foreign aid over four years to fund and back anti-corruption efforts in Guatemala , Honduras , and El Salvador ; push them to reduce migration and fight human trafficking ; and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ these factors for migration to the United States and violence in migrants ’ home countries .
Although Bolton spoke of Latin America as “ our hemisphere , ” in which Washington would call the shots , Biden instead sees the U.S. as “ the driving force ” to “ enable all of our countries to prosper and grow.
” The difference between the two views is subtle , but important .
“ The best way to pursue a reset in Latin America , in many ways , is just to start by listening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump never does , ” Ben Rhodes , Obama ’ s former deputy national security adviser and a co-host of the Pod Save the World podcast , told me .
“ The capacity to make leaders and people in Latin America feel like they ’ re being heard again by the United States is going to be essential after the Trump administration basically played into every negative stereotype and generalization about how America has acted in that region for the last hundred years.
” Shifter , Arnson , and others I spoke with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ presidency would be welcomed in the region because he would emphasize multilateral dialogue in confronting climate change , the coronavirus pandemic , and economic recovery , after Latin American leaders became “ accustomed to being bullied or ignored or arm-twisted into capitulating to U.S. demands ” during the Trump years , Arnson said .
A new Biden approach to the region would likely also account for the link between foreign and domestic policy on issues such as immigration reform and border security , for example .
A return to the traditional asylum process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ would create space for tougher negotiations with Mexico and Northern Triangle countries on fighting organized crime and cartels .
The fact is that although American foreign policy tends to devote much of its attention to events in Europe , the Middle East , and Asia , Latin America policy has perhaps the greatest impact on Americans themselves—Latino and Hispanic families are often directly affected by any change in policy in the region .
The Trump administration ’ s decision to end temporary protected status , a program that normalizes the legal status of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and policies that force asylum seekers at the southern border to remain in Mexico while their cases are processed , are just two examples of how foreign and domestic policy mix .
“ Americans who have family in Latin America understand that , ” Rhodes said , “ but more broadly , there ’ s just a lack of an awareness of how closely impacted we are—in terms of the flow of people , in terms of trade , in terms of political dynamics—by what we ’ re doing in Latin America.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ eerie endgame of modern politics That direct link between foreign policy and American politics demonstrates why sustained engagement and longer-term investments in the region are necessary .
These nuances in foreign policy also have political ramifications in an election year : As Biden endeavors to juice up his support among Latinos , a more tailored campaign strategy that emphasizes his accomplishments in specific Latin American countries would resonate with smaller communities of Nicaraguans , Hondurans , Salvadorans , Cubans , and Colombians living in swing states such as Florida , Torres told me @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get a second chance at achieving his vision for a free and secure Western Hemisphere .
At the very least , these states would have an American ally who actually cares about them—and doesn ’ t inject himself into domestic affairs to revive a flailing campaign .
Biden ’ s interest in Guatemala captures this dynamic well .
When he first championed the Alliance for Prosperity and anti-corruption reforms in the country , Biden dealt with President Otto Pérez Molina , a former army officer accused of links with human-rights abuses and civilian @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala ( known by its Spanish acronym , CICIG ) , which worked with Guatemala Attorney General Thelma Aldana to investigate official corruption , including allegations of bribery against Molina and his vice president .
Both were investigated , ousted , and jailed .
Then Biden had the task of assuring Morales , Molina ’ s successor , that he , too , should support the CICIG and Aldana ’ s work .
But in Trump ’ s first year in office , Aldana moved to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ responded by trying to curb the CICIG ’ s power , and block Aldana ’ s probe into him and his family .
Guatemalan presidents have legal immunity that can be stripped away by a two-thirds vote in the country ’ s Congress , but because Aldana and the CICIG were also investigating senior lawmakers at the time , her effort died there .
The next two years , “ the CICIG died a death by a thousand cuts , ” Arnson told me .
• The Most Important Alliance You ’ ve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Eerie Endgame of Modern Politics Throughout this whole episode , Morales actively courted Trump ’ s support to delegitimize the CIGIG and push Aldana out .
To an extent , he won a minor victory : The White House remained mum on Morales ’ s actions .
Without a strong American presence , Morales turned out not to be the great crusader for justice Biden had once hoped he would be .
To contrast Trump and Biden ’ s approaches , Senator Carper told me about conversations he had with Biden and Aldana @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , when the prosecutor was running to succeed Morales .
Carper was about to meet with Biden in Washington when the senator found out Aldana was in town .
He told Biden , who stopped what he was doing , tracked her down , and spoke with her on the phone .
Biden had met with Aldana on his 2016 trip , and during their conversation three years later , Carper said , the former vice president encouraged her in her campaign , saying , “ hopefully , she would win .
And @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there to help her and help her government to be successful.
” Aldana was ultimately disqualified from running after prosecutors unsealed corruption charges against her that she argued were trumped up .
She fled for the U.S. , where she was granted political asylum .
She now lives outside Washington .
The episode illustrates many of the complexities and pitfalls that have troubled U.S. policy in Latin America for decades .
Throughout , however , Biden has remained unbowed , his interest in the region clear over the years , and likely to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should he be elected .
“ The challenges ahead are formidable , ” he wrote in a 2015 op-ed that laid out the administration ’ s gambit .
“ But if the political will exists , there is no reason Central America can not become the next great success story of the Western Hemisphere .
”

The trip to Guatemala was a crucial one, Joe Biden told the delegation flying with him on Air Force Two. It was January 2016, and the Central American country was emerging from months of political chaos after its president and vice president were ousted and jailed over a multimillion-dollar corruption scheme. Fed up with the political establishment, Guatemalans elevated a TV star, Jimmy Morales, to the presidency. Now Biden would attend Morales’s inauguration, lending legitimacy to the new leader.
Biden would spend just one day in Guatemala, but nevertheless squeezed in a private meeting with Morales, led migration talks with the leader and his El Salvadoran and Honduran counterparts, joined a lunch with them and the American delegation, and answered questions from the local press. (Representative Norma Torres, part of the delegation, told me it was obvious to the other presidents in the room for the working lunch that Biden had just given Morales “the talk,” in which he set out the United States’ expectations for Guatemala, and she recounted how the other leaders all seemed to remember having that conversation with Biden at some point too.) While there, Biden pitched his vision for the region, in which the three so-called Northern Triangle countries could work to be more open societies and tackle the “root causes” of mass migration—all with American financial and political backing.
On the face of it, the trip was unremarkable: a diplomatic visit in keeping with those made by senior American leaders in the past, containing some combination of platitudes and pressure for the host country. Yet in many ways, Biden’s 2016 tour of Guatemala offers significant insights into what his administration’s foreign policy would look like.
President Donald Trump has largely ignored Latin America, part of a broader withdrawal from international affairs that has had the effect of sparing the region of the chaos that his presidency has created when dealing with China, Iran, North Korea, or the future of the NATO alliance. So Latin American leaders have adapted their policies in recent years to account for this absence of U.S. leadership, as well as Trump’s general unpredictability.
Judging by his time in office as vice president and as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as well as by the accounts of his close friends, his former aides, and policy experts, Biden would approach the region differently. The former vice president made more trips just to Guatemala—hardly a behemoth such as Mexico or Brazil, or a strategic interest such as Colombia—in his two terms than Trump has made to all of Latin America as president. And his efforts to court the region’s leaders during Barack Obama’s presidency point to another key tenet of Biden’s policies were he to be elected: A major part of American domestic policy depends on stability along its southern border, and so the U.S. should promote cooperation among countries, and partner with them, to prevent and control migration.
William J. Burns: The United States needs a new foreign policy
Biden’s interest in Latin America, and experience there (he was Obama’s chief emissary to the region)—combined with Trump’s apparent lack of concern for it—thus offer the former vice president an opportunity: Regional leaders have come to accept the ebb and flow of American engagement as a condition of living next to a superpower, but Biden could use Latin America to signal a restoration of Washington’s historic leadership, leveraging his existing relationships and focus on multilateralism to cement American primacy in a region largely eager for a respite from years of erratic diplomacy.
Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez speaks with Biden during a press conference in March 2015. (Johan Ordonez / AFP / Getty)
Latin American countries have long had good reason to distrust the U.S., which was itself an imperialist power in the region after European nations faded away. Covert CIA operations, coups d’état supported by Washington, and direct American invasions colored Latin American perceptions of the U.S. during the 20th century, and the rise of leftist politicians in the 1990s and 2000s cemented strong anti-American attitudes.
So when Obama and Biden entered office in 2009, they were faced with a legacy of decades of harm and distrust. Biden declared on his first visit to the region that “the time of the United States dictating unilaterally, the time where we only talk and don’t listen, is over.” Secretary of State John Kerry reaffirmed that message in 2013, announcing the era of the Monroe Doctrine—a U.S. policy ostensibly issued to condemn European intervention in the Americas but really just used to justify America’s own intervention in Latin American affairs—to be over, sparking some measure of celebration in the region. (Though the degree of America’s engagement did change, it did intervene in countries’ internal affairs, often with their government’s support.)
If the Obama administration sought to characterize its policy toward Latin America as having a softer tone and focused on multilateral cooperation on climate change, trade, migration, and economic development, the Trump administration’s overall strategy has been significantly more haphazard. In some cases, it has sought to strong-arm regional leaders to agree to its demands, but beyond a handful of issues related to migration and Venezuela, the U.S. has noticeably stepped back as social unrest, economic crisis, and political turmoil have rolled through the region.
Demonstrations broke out across South America in 2019: Anger at elites and economic inequality fired up protests in Chile, Colombia, and Ecuador, while frustration with corruption drove people to the streets in Peru, and outrage over a tainted presidential election led to an uprising in Bolivia. With regimes falling, governments fleeing capitals, and discontent rising, some fashioned it a “Latin Spring.” At the same time, the coronavirus’s spread (now apparently slowing overall) has led to what looks to be an economic catastrophe. Lockdowns, shutdowns, and national social-distancing efforts have plunged economies into severe recessions, wiping away 20 years’ worth of poverty-reduction efforts and sending unemployment rates soaring.
“Latin America is not in good shape. It was not in good shape before the pandemic, and it’s in worse shape now,” Michael Shifter, the president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington, told me.
Unrest didn’t end with the pandemic, but social movements did take a pause. Populist leaders in Brazil and Mexico reasserted control over society and assured their people that the public-health crisis was under control. As Southern Hemisphere countries enter the summer months, when the coronavirus is expected to abate, the root causes of discontent are once again fomenting instability, and violence. Embezzlement, price gouging, and graft have been commonplace across the continent during the pandemic. And through it all, America has watched from afar, declining to intervene or lead.
Read: The pandemic isn’t a death knell for populism
The U.S.’s absence throughout the tumult is a snapshot of the larger failings of the Trump administration to take its southern neighbors seriously, Cynthia Arnson, the director of the Wilson Center’s Latin American Program, told me. Aside from renegotiating NAFTA, forcing Central American countries to accept a “safe third country” deal, and inflaming Venezuela’s domestic political crisis, “there hasn’t been much else to U.S. policy in the hemisphere,” she said. Instead, driven by then–National Security Adviser John Bolton, the White House has revived the Monroe Doctrine, asserting a right to intervene in the region to prevent the growth of Russian and Chinese influence—which, ironically, is exactly what has happened as America has stepped away.
Tensions between the U.S. and Latin America aren’t new, but the region now holds an overwhelmingly negative perception of Washington—similar to the antagonism of the Bush era of the 2000s. Now, as the region becomes divided between the conservative governments in Central America, Colombia, and Brazil and the leftist leaders around them, the Trump administration’s policies seem to be fueling polarization, Shifter said. “It’s made things worse. So you could see some sort of reduction of polarization with greater predictability by a new administration.”
Joe Biden greets students during a visit to Villa Nueva municipality south of Guatemala City in March 2015. (Johan Ordonez / AFP / Getty )
There is reason to believe that Latin American leaders might actually trust a President Biden—he has dealt with their contemporaries, and he has already rebuilt American relations with the region once before.
“The Trump administration has been very disruptive, and the aftereffects of that are not going to vanish overnight,” Dan Erikson, who is advising Biden on Latin America policy, told me. “But there’s an underlying resilience in the U.S.–Latin American relationship that Joe Biden would be well positioned to capitalize on.”
Biden’s history in the region lends him legitimacy. As a senator in the ’90s, he was the point person on the Plan Colombia in Congress, working with the Bill Clinton administration to hash out the details of an anti-drug-trafficking, anti-violence financial and security package that Colombian leaders repeatedly praised. While vice president, he met often with Northern Triangle leaders in their countries and in Washington to draft the guidelines for the Alliance for Prosperity, which offered foreign aid in exchange for domestic reforms and economic investment, and worked to ensure that they also pledged money to anti-poverty and security goals.
Biden often expresses his diplomatic approach in terms of personality—at Democratic primary debates and in foreign-policy speeches he has talked about how “all politics is personal, particularly international relations” and spoke about his “relations all over the world,” boasting about how he knows many world leaders. But in Latin America, those relationships were actually personal. He spoke regularly with regional presidents, ministers, and prosecutors. He once joked with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos about knowing him when Santos was a finance minister and Biden was a senator (“Now you’re president and I’m vice president,” Biden said. “It’s obvious who did well!”).
Alongside those personal connections, Biden also made multiple official visits. Whereas Trump has visited a Latin American country only once in his presidency—Argentina, for the 2018 G20 Summit in Buenos Aires—and Vice President Mike Pence has traveled to the region five times, Obama made five trips (three in his first term), and Biden visited 16 times, more than any other president or vice president.
Read: The Biden doctrine
Part of the frequency of Biden’s trips is for raw policy reasons: He was assigned the Latin America brief during the Obama administration. But there might also be a deeper emotional underpinning to Biden’s interest in the region. Senator Tom Carper of Delaware, a longtime Biden friend, told me that the former vice president also feels a moral obligation for the U.S. to be active in Latin America. Motivated by his Catholic faith, Biden believes Washington has to care for and support its neighbors, especially the Northern Triangle nations. “He believes that we—the U.S.—are the root cause of much of the violence and crime and the lack of economic opportunity in these three countries in Central America,” Carper said. “If it weren’t for our dependence and our reliance on illegal drugs, fostering the sale and the transport of these drugs … life in these countries would be a lot better.”
Carper, who like Torres was on Air Force Two for Biden’s last official trip to Guatemala, said he was certain Biden would “make sure that we do a better job, and take seriously our response” to Central and South American countries because “we have a moral responsibility, having created havoc in these countries.”
In that vein, Biden’s pitch to Latin America will sound a lot like what he’s said before: that he envisions “a hemisphere that was secure, middle class and democratic, from the northern reaches of Canada to the southern tip of Chile.” Biden plans to deal with root causes and rely on multilateralism. He hasn’t been quiet about America’s neglect of its southern neighbors and has articulated a wide-ranging vision to reengage the region. The “Biden Plan for Central America,” for example, updates the 2015 Alliance for Prosperity to use $4 billion in foreign aid over four years to fund and back anti-corruption efforts in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador; push them to reduce migration and fight human trafficking; and decrease poverty. Biden has long blamed these factors for migration to the United States and violence in migrants’ home countries. Although Bolton spoke of Latin America as “our hemisphere,” in which Washington would call the shots, Biden instead sees the U.S. as “the driving force” to “enable all of our countries to prosper and grow.” The difference between the two views is subtle, but important.
“The best way to pursue a reset in Latin America, in many ways, is just to start by listening, which the U.S. rarely does and Trump never does,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser and the host of the Missing America podcast, told me. “The capacity to make leaders and people in Latin America feel like they’re being heard again by the United States is going to be essential after the Trump administration basically played into every negative stereotype and generalization about how America has acted in that region for the last hundred years.”
Shifter, Arnson, and others I spoke with agree with this assessment: A Biden presidency would be welcomed in the region because he would emphasize multilateral dialogue in confronting climate change, the coronavirus pandemic, and economic recovery, after Latin American leaders became “accustomed to being bullied or ignored or arm-twisted into capitulating to U.S. demands” during the Trump years, Arnson said.
A new Biden approach to the region would likely also account for the link between foreign and domestic policy on issues such as immigration reform and border security, for example. A return to the traditional asylum process and an overhaul of U.S. immigration law would create space for tougher negotiations with Mexico and Northern Triangle countries on fighting organized crime and cartels.
The fact is that although American foreign policy tends to devote much of its attention to events in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, Latin America policy has perhaps the greatest impact on Americans themselves—Latino and Hispanic families are often directly affected by any change in policy in the region. The Trump administration’s decision to end temporary protected status, a program that normalizes the legal status of Salvadorans and Hondurans living in the U.S., and policies that force asylum seekers at the southern border to remain in Mexico while their cases are processed, are just two examples of how foreign and domestic policy mix.
“Americans who have family in Latin America understand that,” Rhodes said, “but more broadly, there’s just a lack of an awareness of how closely impacted we are—in terms of the flow of people, in terms of trade, in terms of political dynamics—by what we’re doing in Latin America.”
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That direct link between foreign policy and American politics demonstrates why sustained engagement and longer-term investments in the region are necessary. These nuances in foreign policy also have political ramifications in an election year: As Biden endeavors to juice up his support among Latinos, a more tailored campaign strategy that emphasizes his accomplishments in specific Latin American countries would resonate with smaller communities of Nicaraguans, Hondurans, Salvadorans, Cubans, and Colombians living in swing states such as Florida, Torres told me.
Supporters watch Joe Biden as he delivers remarks at Hillsborough Community College in Tampa, Florida. (Leah Millis / Reuters)
If he wins, Biden might get a second chance at achieving his vision for a free and secure Western Hemisphere. At the very least, these states would have an American ally who actually cares about them—and doesn’t inject himself into domestic affairs to revive a flailing campaign.
Biden’s interest in Guatemala captures this dynamic well. When he first championed the Alliance for Prosperity and anti-corruption reforms in the country, Biden dealt with President Otto Pérez Molina, a former army officer accused of links with human-rights abuses and civilian murders. He pushed Molina to accept the U.N.-backed International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala (known by its Spanish acronym, CICIG), which worked with Guatemala Attorney General Thelma Aldana to investigate official corruption, including allegations of bribery against Molina and his vice president. Both were investigated, ousted, and jailed.
Then Biden had the task of assuring Morales, Molina’s successor, that he, too, should support the CICIG and Aldana’s work. But in Trump’s first year in office, Aldana moved to investigate Morales for campaign-finance-law violations. Morales responded by trying to curb the CICIG’s power, and block Aldana’s probe into him and his family. Guatemalan presidents have legal immunity that can be stripped away by a two-thirds vote in the country’s Congress, but because Aldana and the CICIG were also investigating senior lawmakers at the time, her effort died there. The next two years, “the CICIG died a death by a thousand cuts,” Arnson told me.
Throughout this whole episode, Morales actively courted Trump’s support to delegitimize the CIGIG and push Aldana out. To an extent, he won a minor victory: The White House remained mum on Morales’s actions. Without a strong American presence, Morales turned out not to be the great crusader for justice Biden had once hoped he would be.
To contrast Trump and Biden’s approaches, Senator Carper told me about conversations he had with Biden and Aldana before Guatemala’s 2019 presidential election, when the prosecutor was running to succeed Morales. Carper was about to meet with Biden in Washington when the senator found out Aldana was in town. He told Biden, who stopped what he was doing, tracked her down, and spoke with her on the phone. Biden had met with Aldana on his 2016 trip, and during their conversation three years later, Carper said, the former vice president encouraged her in her campaign, saying, “hopefully, she would win. And when that happened, we would be there to help her and help her government to be successful.”
Aldana was ultimately disqualified from running after prosecutors unsealed corruption charges against her that she argued were trumped up. She fled for the U.S., where she was granted political asylum. She now lives outside Washington.
The episode illustrates many of the complexities and pitfalls that have troubled U.S. policy in Latin America for decades. Throughout, however, Biden has remained unbowed, his interest in the region clear over the years, and likely to be a centerpiece of his foreign policy should he be elected. “The challenges ahead are formidable,” he wrote in a 2015 op-ed that laid out the administration’s gambit. “But if the political will exists, there is no reason Central America cannot become the next great success story of the Western Hemisphere.”


theatlantic--2020-10-27--The Pandemic’s Toll on Meatpacking Workers

Colorado reported its first confirmed case of the virus on March 5 .
The company decided to require masks on March 19 .
By March 24 , at least one worker was in the hospital .
Stacey ’ s daughter started asking her questions about what would happen if she got sick .
She told her they would have to isolate from each other .
Meanwhile , at the plant , workers were left in the dark .
When management posted notices , some would be only in English , even though many of the plant workers speak other languages @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hero only makes you feel better As the cases at the plant grew into the dozens , workers stopped showing up because they were afraid of getting sick or spreading the virus .
Management at the Brazilian-owned company told them that a statewide stay-at-home order did not apply to them .
“ People from the plant were not helping us , ” Stacey said .
“ They were saying the plant wasn ’ t going to close .
We asked for face masks , and they said we didn ’ t have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sick were not in our shift.
” Stacey said the company didn ’ t provide her with protective equipment until just before the county health department came for a visit , in April .
The health department warned JBS that it wasn ’ t confident the company was taking enough measures to protect its workers and that a work-while-sick culture was contributing to the spread of the disease .
After the local health department ordered the plant to close , JBS completely shut down on April 15 .
Across the country , other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ By the end of April , 12 of Nebraska ’ s meat-processing plants had 588 confirmed cases , two Iowa facilities had 377 cases , and five Wisconsin plants had 389 cases .
Read : The capitalist way to make Americans stop eating meat Soon , at least 20 meatpacking plants were shuttered across the country .
JBS promised that it would test all of its employees before the plant reopened .
President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged the JBS outbreak in their daily coronavirus briefing on April 10 , saying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to Colorado .
But the tests never materialized .
On April 23 , JBS announced it was reopening with less than 24 hours ’ notice .
Four days after Stacey went back to work , President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act , a Korean War–era law that allows the president to require industry to act in the service of national interest .
The factories were declared critical infrastructure and were compelled to remain open .
The move denied local health authorities , like the ones in Greeley , of one of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ communities—closing the plants .
Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration , a government agency tasked with regulating American workplaces , issued guidelines about protecting workers during the pandemic , the recommendations weren ’ t mandatory in practice , and the Department of Labor said it would consider siding with meat processors if they were sued by workers who got sick .
On September 11 , OSHA fined JBS $ 15,615 for failing to protect workers .

When Donald Trump took the oath of office on a gray January morning in 2017, he laid out his vision for the United States under his leadership. “We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease,” he said. “A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.” Nearly four years later, the divide in how we view the consequences of his first term remains large. But the nation is undeniably changed. From family separation, to nation-wide protests and economic volatility, to a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, Trump will leave behind a legacy—whether he’s reelected or not. We are telling the stories of seven individuals living with the consequences of Trump’s first term. You can read the rest of the stories here.
When coronavirus cases started appearing at the JBS beef-processing facility in Greeley, Colorado, this past March, Stacey was terrified. She works on the plant’s kill floor, removing intestines that weigh between 30 and 50 pounds from hundreds of cattle each hour.
In normal times, the plant’s 6,000 workers stand shoulder to shoulder and carpool to work. Stacey, whom I am calling by a pseudonym because she fears retribution at work, was afraid she would get her family sick. “I had trouble sleeping. I was very nervous. And sometimes I was just irritable,” she said. “Everyone was feeling very nervous.”
Colorado reported its first confirmed case of the virus on March 5. The company decided to require masks on March 19. By March 24, at least one worker was in the hospital.
Stacey’s daughter started asking her questions about what would happen if she got sick. She told her they would have to isolate from each other. Meanwhile, at the plant, workers were left in the dark. When management posted notices, some would be only in English, even though many of the plant workers speak other languages.
Karleigh Frisbie Brogan: Calling me a hero only makes you feel better
As the cases at the plant grew into the dozens, workers stopped showing up because they were afraid of getting sick or spreading the virus. Management at the Brazilian-owned company told them that a statewide stay-at-home order did not apply to them.
“People from the plant were not helping us,” Stacey said. “They were saying the plant wasn’t going to close. We asked for face masks, and they said we didn’t have to worry because the people that got sick were not in our shift.”
Stacey said the company didn’t provide her with protective equipment until just before the county health department came for a visit, in April. The health department warned JBS that it wasn’t confident the company was taking enough measures to protect its workers and that a work-while-sick culture was contributing to the spread of the disease.
After the local health department ordered the plant to close, JBS completely shut down on April 15. Across the country, other plants were shutting down, too: By the end of April, 12 of Nebraska’s meat-processing plants had 588 confirmed cases, two Iowa facilities had 377 cases, and five Wisconsin plants had 389 cases.
Read: The capitalist way to make Americans stop eating meat
Soon, at least 20 meatpacking plants were shuttered across the country.
JBS promised that it would test all of its employees before the plant reopened. President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence acknowledged the JBS outbreak in their daily coronavirus briefing on April 10, saying that they were working to send tests to Colorado.
But the tests never materialized. On April 23, JBS announced it was reopening with less than 24 hours’ notice.
Four days after Stacey went back to work, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, a Korean War–era law that allows the president to require industry to act in the service of national interest. The factories were declared critical infrastructure and were compelled to remain open. The move denied local health authorities, like the ones in Greeley, of one of their best means of preventing outbreaks in their communities—closing the plants. Although the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, a government agency tasked with regulating American workplaces, issued guidelines about protecting workers during the pandemic, the recommendations weren’t mandatory in practice, and the Department of Labor said it would consider siding with meat processors if they were sued by workers who got sick. On September 11, OSHA fined JBS $15,615 for failing to protect workers.
Read: Essential workers are being treated as expendable
In spite of the pandemic’s impact on JBS operations, the company’s profits during the quarter its Greeley plant was shuttered exceeded industry analyst expectations. The company earned $629 million between April and July.
When Stacey and her co-workers went back to the kill floor, there were fewer people there to do the same job.
The company offered a bonus for perfect attendance after reopening. Stacey got the bonus. She’s proud of the job she does—she’s been able to buy a house with her earnings and help feed thousands of people, who probably never think about what it takes to put food on their table. But it comes with serious risk. JBS hasn’t instituted paid sick leave, instead providing surgical masks and face shields that employees aren’t allowed to keep. (JBS did not respond to requests for comment on this story.)
That hasn’t kept workers from getting sick. By early fall, the plant had 305 confirmed cases and seven deaths, one of the state’s largest outbreaks to date. The union representing workers at the plant estimates that likely far more people have caught the disease. The Food and Environment Reporting Network, which has been tracking outbreaks in the food system, tallied 42,730 meatpackers who’ve been infected and 204 who have died. Unless Trump rescinds his executive order, plants will be required to remain open, no matter how many more fall ill.
Eric Schlosser: America’s slaughterhouses aren’t just killing animals
At Stacey’s plant, workers are organizing for safer conditions. Stacey has kept working. She’s coping with the new reality, but her worries aren’t gone—she knows how easily and quickly the disease can spread.
Plus, she has other worries to keep her up at night. “Now, my daughter went back to school,” she said.


theatlantic--2020-10-27--Trump Added Insult to Injury for Charlottesville Survivors

Three days later , President Trump , referring to the Unite the Right protesters in Charlottesville , told reporters that “ you had some very bad people in that group , but you also had people that were very fine people , on both sides.
” I spoke with Romero in early September about her experience and the president ’ s remarks .
What follows is her story in her own words , condensed and edited for clarity .
I don ’ t remember who showed me the clip .
I tried to stay off of social media for a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stuff .
But when I heard that— “ very fine people on both sides ” —it was one of the most disrespectful things that this man could have ever said .
The most disrespectful and ignorant thing I could have ever heard come out of the president of the United States .
It ’ s pretty heartbreaking .
Like , Wow , you ’ re about to be a year in , sir .
You have done nothing but disrespect so many minority and marginalized communities .
Then something like this happens , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around in Nazi memorabilia and white-supremacist memorabilia , and they were spewing terrorism all over the internet , and then they came out here and they did acts of terrorism against people .
People that Mr. Trump is supposed to protect .
Jonathan D. Karl : The second battle of Charlottesville This was August 12 .
School started within the next couple of days .
And I was like , I don ’ t care .
I don ’ t care .
Roll me up to class in a wheelchair .
I will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thought that it was something that I could kind of brush over and move past , like a lot of other things in my life .
And it didn ’ t turn out to be like that .
I ended up taking the semester off .
Some of the long-term things have been , like , it gave me really bad vertigo .
I can ’ t look into light .
I got terrified of driving .
I was terrified to leave my house .
And at some point , I started to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ phone calls .
One of them being like , “ Hi , ma ’ am , we ’ re trying to sell silver Dodge Challengers in Charlottesville.
” Or , “ Hi , do you know Natalie Romero ?
She should have died in the hospital.
” That really left me in a state of distress .
It was a decision , whether or not I was going to come back after that withdrawal .
I didn ’ t know if I wanted to come back to UVA , but I decided that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ getting my school paid for , and I just absolutely do not have the privilege of putting this opportunity to the side right now .
So I came back .

“I really thought that it was something that I could kind of brush over and move past, like a lot of other things in my life. And it didn’t turn out to be like that.”
When Donald Trump took the oath of office on a gray January morning in 2017, he laid out his vision for the United States under his leadership. “We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space, to free the Earth from the miseries of disease,” he said. “A new national pride will stir our souls, lift our sights, and heal our divisions.” Nearly four years later, the divide in how we view the consequences of his first term remains large. But the nation is undeniably changed. From family separation, to nation-wide protests and economic volatility, to a pandemic that has killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, Trump will leave behind a legacy—whether he’s reelected or not. We are telling the stories of seven individuals living with the consequences of Trump’s first term. You can read the rest of the stories here.
In the summer of 2017, Natalie Romero had just finished her first year at the University of Virginia. She was a first-generation, former ROTC student on scholarships, adjusting to the culture shock of moving from Houston to Charlottesville. On Friday, August 11, white supremacists bearing tiki torches swarmed the university’s rotunda, chanting racist slogans and getting into fights with anti-racist protesters. Natalie and a group of other student organizers showed up to oppose them that night, and they made plans to gather again the next day. She was taking part in a march on August 12 when a neo-Nazi drove his car through the crowd, injuring 19 people and murdering a woman named Heather Heyer. Images of Natalie, bloodied and badly hurt by the attack, circulated widely on the internet.
Three days later, President Trump, referring to the Unite the Right protesters in Charlottesville, told reporters that “you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides.” I spoke with Romero in early September about her experience and the president’s remarks. What follows is her story in her own words, condensed and edited for clarity.
I don’t remember who showed me the clip. I tried to stay off of social media for a little bit and not really look at stuff. But when I heard that—“very fine people on both sides”—it was one of the most disrespectful things that this man could have ever said. The most disrespectful and ignorant thing I could have ever heard come out of the president of the United States.
It’s pretty heartbreaking. Like, Wow, you’re about to be a year in, sir. You have done nothing but disrespect so many minority and marginalized communities. Then something like this happens, where white supremacists are very comfortable walking around in Nazi memorabilia and white-supremacist memorabilia, and they were spewing terrorism all over the internet, and then they came out here and they did acts of terrorism against people. People that Mr. Trump is supposed to protect.
Jonathan D. Karl: The second battle of Charlottesville
This was August 12. School started within the next couple of days. And I was like, I don’t care. I don’t care. Roll me up to class in a wheelchair. I will not not start classes. I really thought that it was something that I could kind of brush over and move past, like a lot of other things in my life. And it didn’t turn out to be like that.
I ended up taking the semester off. Some of the long-term things have been, like, it gave me really bad vertigo. I can’t look into light. I got terrified of driving. I was terrified to leave my house. And at some point, I started to receive threatening phone calls—really, really disturbing phone calls. One of them being like, “Hi, ma’am, we’re trying to sell silver Dodge Challengers in Charlottesville.” Or, “Hi, do you know Natalie Romero? She should have died in the hospital.” That really left me in a state of distress.
Adam Serwer: The white nationalists are winning
It was a decision, whether or not I was going to come back after that withdrawal. I didn’t know if I wanted to come back to UVA, but I decided that, you know, I’m getting my school paid for, and I just absolutely do not have the privilege of putting this opportunity to the side right now. So I came back.


theatlantic--2020-10-28--America Is About to Choose How Bad the Pandemic Will Get

And yet , the pandemic is not impossible to control , contrary to what White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows recently suggested .
Many other nations have successfully controlled it , some more than once .
Masks can stop people from transmitting the virus .
Shutting down nonessential indoor venues and improving ventilation can limit the number of superspreading events .
Rapid tests and contact tracing can identify clusters of infection , which can be contained if people have the space and financial security to isolate themselves .
Social interventions such as paid sick leave can give vulnerable people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ risking their livelihoods .
The playbook is clear , but it demands something that has thus far been missing—federal coordination .
Only the federal government can fund and orchestrate public-health measures at a scale necessary to corral the coronavirus .
But Trump has abdicated responsibility , leaving states to fend for themselves .
In May , I asked several health experts whether governors and mayors could hold the line on their own .
Most were doubtful , and the ensuing months have substantiated their fears .
There are three small mercies that Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 is a starter pandemic , and SARS-CoV-2 is neither as contagious nor as lethal as other pathogens .
Second , it is the only major epidemic that Trump has faced during his presidency .
( By contrast , Barack Obama dealt with the H1N1 flu and MERS in his first term , and Ebola and Zika in his second . )
Third , it occurred not during the dawn of his term but at its twilight , when Americans have an opportunity to avert further incompetence .
Whatever the outcome of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficult .
And whoever occupies the White House on January 21 will probably have to deal with another major epidemic before his term is over .
With luck , that event won ’ t begin until the COVID-19 threat has subsided , but overlapping outbreaks are also possible .
We do not know how Joe Biden would fare , and if he is elected , the U.S. will still be riddled with systemic weaknesses and inequities that another pathogen could also exploit .
But we do know exactly how Trump will react to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trapped in a pandemic spiral , and so is Donald Trump .
Science values replication—repeated experiments that verify whether the same outcome occurs .
But in this case , that work is unnecessary .
The U.S. has now clearly seen what happens when a pandemic occurs under Trump .
It is an experiment that no one should ever want to rerun .

The president’s response to the pandemic should not have been a surprise. In December 2016, a month before Donald Trump was inaugurated, I asked how a pandemic would play out during his term. The question was not idly put: Every recent president before Trump had been challenged by epidemics, and Trump’s actions as both a citizen during the 2014 Ebola outbreak and a candidate on the campaign trail had been troubling. His record suggested that come a pandemic, he would lie, spread misinformation, opt for travel bans in lieu of more effective measures, and heed his own counsel over that of experts.
In the 2020 election, on top of every routine test of character and capability, the candidates must answer the challenge the coronavirus has brought to this country. Trump’s response has been so lax as to effectively cede the country to a virus whose spread is controllable. He has, by his own admission, repeatedly downplayed the threat after he became aware of how dangerous the new coronavirus could be. He caught the virus himself and seems to have learned nothing from the encounter.
Experience usually molds understanding, but Trump is still downplaying the pandemic, urging Americans not to “let it dominate your life” even after 210,000 had already lost theirs. One week ago, when asked if “there was anything that you think you could have done differently,” he said, “Not much.”
As November nears, the coronavirus is surging again, with cases rising to record-breaking heights for the third time. To control the pandemic, changes are necessary, but Trump has proved that he does not learn from his mistakes—perhaps the most costly of his failings. If he is reelected, he will continue on the same path, and so will the coronavirus. More Americans will be sickened, disabled, and killed. Donald Trump is unchanging; the election offers an opportunity for the country to change instead.
Read: The case against Donald Trump
The near-term future is already set. Trump has repeated the lie that numbers are spiking because the U.S. tests extensively; in fact, the climbing cases have far outpaced the rise in testing, and are due instead to the rapidly spreading virus. Thanksgiving and Christmas are approaching. Several generations of family members will gather in indoor spaces for prolonged periods of close proximity and spirited conversation—the very conditions in which the coronavirus most readily spreads.
Hospitalizations are rising in most states. Encouragingly, doctors and nurses have learned how to better care for COVID-19 patients, and the odds of dying from the disease, though still higher than for the flu, have fallen since the pandemic began. But health-care workers, physically exhausted and emotionally battered from a year of relentless work, are once again facing flooded emergency rooms and insufficient amounts of protective gear. The workforce of health-care providers is missing more than 1,000 colleagues who have died of COVID-19. And while the two previous surges were concentrated in specific parts of the U.S., allowing health-care workers from more tranquil regions to help colleagues in the hardest-hit ones, the current surge has lit up most of the country. Reinforcements will be scarce.
Death rates always lag behind cases and hospitalizations. During the national death rate’s recent plateau, about 700 people were still dying every day, and that rate has risen by 15 percent in the past two weeks. It will climb further. This is not, as Trump baselessly suggested, because doctors and hospitals are overcounting COVID-19 deaths to “get more money”; in fact, deaths are undercounted. COVID-19 has already become the second leading cause of death in the U.S. this year after heart disease (or the third, if you lump all cancers together). It is likely the new leading cause of death among people ages 25 to 44. Every lost person leaves behind an average of nine grieving loved ones. Many thousands of survivors are struggling with long-term symptoms.
Read: Long-haulers are redefining COVID-19
As I wrote last month, there is a real risk that Americans will become habituated to this horror, and that COVID-19 will become another unacceptable thing that the U.S. learns to accept. That is all but inevitable if Trump wins a second term. His administration has given no indication that it will dramatically change its strategy. If anything, it has doubled down. It is allowing the virus to freely spread among younger people in the hopes of reaching herd immunity—an unfeasible strategy that has been widely panned by the scientific community. Such a strategy could leave millions dead, and many others with chronic illness.
Vaccines will arrive, but not quickly enough to put a dent in the ongoing surge. Treatments are being developed, but so far, months of trials have provided strong, consistent evidence only for dexamethasone, which reduces mortality rates among the most severely ill patients from 26 percent to 23 percent.
And yet, the pandemic is not impossible to control, contrary to what White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows recently suggested. Many other nations have successfully controlled it, some more than once. Masks can stop people from transmitting the virus. Shutting down nonessential indoor venues and improving ventilation can limit the number of super-spreading events. Rapid tests and contact tracing can identify clusters of infection, which can be contained if people have the space and financial security to isolate themselves. Social interventions such as paid sick leave can give vulnerable people the option of protecting their lives without risking their livelihoods.
Read: America is trapped in a pandemic spiral
The playbook is clear, but it demands something that has thus far been missing—federal coordination. Only the federal government can fund and orchestrate public-health measures at a scale necessary to corral the coronavirus. But Trump has abdicated responsibility, leaving states to fend for themselves. In May, I asked several health experts whether governors and mayors could hold the line on their own. Most were doubtful, and the ensuing months have substantiated their fears.
There are three small mercies that Americans can be thankful for. First, COVID-19 is a starter pandemic, and SARS-CoV-2 is neither as contagious nor as lethal as other pathogens. Second, it is the only major epidemic that Trump has faced during his presidency. (By contrast, Barack Obama dealt with the H1N1 flu and MERS in his first term, and Ebola and Zika in his second.) Third, it occurred not during the dawn of his term but at its twilight, when Americans have an opportunity to avert further incompetence.
Whatever the outcome of the election, the coming winter will be difficult. And whoever occupies the White House on January 21 will probably have to deal with another major epidemic before his term is over. With luck, that event won’t begin until the COVID-19 threat has subsided, but overlapping outbreaks are also possible. We do not know how Joe Biden would fare, and if he is elected, the U.S. will still be riddled with systemic weaknesses and inequities that another pathogen could also exploit. But we do know exactly how Trump will react to the next crisis. The U.S. is trapped in a pandemic spiral, and so is Donald Trump.
Science values replication—repeated experiments that verify whether the same outcome occurs. But in this case, that work is unnecessary. The U.S. has now clearly seen what happens when a pandemic occurs under Trump. It is an experiment that no one should ever want to rerun.
Related Podcast
Listen to Ed Yong discuss this story on an episode of Social Distance, The Atlantic’s guide to the pandemic:


theatlantic--2020-10-29--Donald Trump, Coronavirus Hero

Donald Trump, Coronavirus Hero

In academic terms , this is called “ my-side bias ” —objective reality looks different through the lens of your home team .
( Sometimes literally : A famous 1954 psychology study found that undergraduates at Dartmouth and Princeton Universities had completely different perceptions of a football game played between the rival schools . )
In fact , this tendency to approve of one ’ s own side might become self-reinforcing .
If someone doesn ’ t support Trump and all that he does , they might stop considering themselves a Republican , and thus stop showing up as one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sociologist at Stanford University .
Other wrinkles of our current political moment could further explain why so many Trump supporters approve of the president ’ s pandemic response .
Katherine Cramer , a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison , says the most consistent theme on the right-wing talk-radio shows she ’ s been listening to is a desire to trust people to make their own decisions , rather than trusting the government to make decisions for people .
Shana Kushner Gadarian , a political scientist at Syracuse University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Trump ’ s pandemic response might require intimate knowledge of other countries ’ public-health systems—a tall order for the average person .
But another prominent scholar of the American right believes Trump support among men , in particular , is rooted in something more psychological .
Many white men feel that their gender and race has been vilified , says the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild .
Their economic prospects are bad , and American culture tells them that their gender is too .
So they ’ ve turned to Trump as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can restore their sense of former glory .
Exposing themselves and others to the coronavirus is part of that heroism .
Or as Kurtis told me when I asked him how he felt about Trump getting the coronavirus , “ Trump ’ s willing to accept that risk to win for the American people .
And Joe Biden is sitting in his basement.
” his hero theory of Trump is a continuation of Hochschild ’ s earlier work .
A professor at UC Berkeley , Hochschild soared to the best-seller lists with her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which came out before the election but proved timely in its focus on the minds of Trump voters .
For the book , Hochschild interviews an array of characters across Louisiana in an attempt to unearth what she calls their “ deep story ” : the emotional , feels-as-if truth of their lives .
Hochschild describes her subjects ’ deep story in a metaphor of a long line of Americans standing on a hill , waiting to get over the top , to the American dream .
But as they stand there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that certain people are cutting the line in front of them .
Women , African Americans , and immigrants are getting ahead , boosted by the government and its affirmative-action programs .
As Hochschild writes , they feel “ your money is running through a liberal sympathy sieve you don ’ t control or agree with .
”

More than 80 percent of Republicans think the president is doing a great job with the pandemic. Here’s why.
The far-right group Super Happy Fun America protests in Boston on October 18. (Mark Peterson / Redux)
Kurtis, a young accountant in McKinney, Texas, likes the thing that many people hate about Donald Trump: that the president has left the pandemic response almost entirely up to local officials.
“He left it up to each state to make their own decision on how they wanted to proceed,” Kurtis told me recently. Most experts think the absence of a national strategy for tackling the coronavirus has been a disaster. But Kurtis argues that North Dakota, for example, shouldn’t have to follow the same rules as New York City. Kurtis voted for Trump in 2016, and he plans to do so again this year.
Some 82 percent of Republicans approve of Trump’s coronavirus response—a higher percentage than before the president was diagnosed with the virus. This is despite the fact that more than 220,000 Americans have died, and virtually every public-health expert, including those who have worked for Republican administrations, says the president has performed abysmally.
Experts offer a few different explanations for the spell that Trump has cast over his supporters. The simplest is that Trump voters like Trump, and as is often the case with people we like, he can do no wrong in their eyes. “We might just as easily ask why Trump opponents think he is doing a horrible job with the pandemic,” says Richard Harris, a political scientist at Rutgers University.
In academic terms, this is called “my-side bias”—objective reality looks different through the lens of your home team. (Sometimes literally: A famous 1954 psychology study found that undergraduates at Dartmouth and Princeton Universities had completely different perceptions of a football game played between the rival schools.) In fact, this tendency to approve of one’s own side might become self-reinforcing. If someone doesn’t support Trump and all that he does, they might stop considering themselves a Republican, and thus stop showing up as one in surveys, says Robb Willer, a sociologist at Stanford University.
Ibram X. Kendi: The violent defense of white male supremacy
Other wrinkles of our current political moment could further explain why so many Trump supporters approve of the president’s pandemic response. Katherine Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, says the most consistent theme on the right-wing talk-radio shows she’s been listening to is a desire to trust people to make their own decisions, rather than trusting the government to make decisions for people. Shana Kushner Gadarian, a political scientist at Syracuse University, pointed out that understanding the failures of Trump’s pandemic response might require intimate knowledge of other countries’ public-health systems—a tall order for the average person.
But another prominent scholar of the American right believes Trump support among men, in particular, is rooted in something more psychological. Many white men feel that their gender and race have been vilified, says the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. Their economic prospects are bad, and American culture tells them that their gender is too. So they’ve turned to Trump as a type of folk hero, one who can restore their sense of former glory. Exposing themselves and others to the coronavirus is part of that heroism.
Or as Kurtis told me when I asked him how he felt about Trump getting the coronavirus, “Trump’s willing to accept that risk to win for the American people. And Joe Biden is sitting in his basement.”
Mark Peterson / Redux
T
his hero theory of Trump is a continuation of Hochschild’s earlier work. A professor at UC Berkeley, Hochschild soared to the best-seller lists with her 2016 book Strangers in Their Own Land, which came out before the election but proved timely in its focus on the minds of Trump voters.
For the book, Hochschild interviews an array of characters across Louisiana in an attempt to unearth what she calls their “deep story”: the emotional, feels-as-if truth of their lives.
Hochschild describes her subjects’ deep story in a metaphor of a long line of Americans standing on a hill, waiting to get over the top, to the American dream. But as they stand there, tired and eager, they see that certain people are cutting the line in front of them. Women, African Americans, and immigrants are getting ahead, boosted by the government and its affirmative-action programs. As Hochschild writes, they feel “your money is running through a liberal sympathy sieve you don’t control or agree with.”
Many white men, in particular, feel “shoved back in line,” she writes. Unable to draw confidence from their wealth, which is in many cases nonexistent, or their jobs, which are steadily being moved offshore, they turn to their pride in being American. “Anyone who criticizes America—well, they’re criticizing you,” she writes.
Trump, meanwhile, has allowed his male supporters “to feel like a good moral American and to feel superior to those they considered ‘other’ or beneath them,” she writes. Trump might not always represent his supporters’ economic self-interest, but he feeds their emotional self-interest. Trump is, in essence, “the identity politics candidate for white men.”
For a new book, Hochschild is talking with people in eastern Kentucky, another heavily conservative area. One trend she’s noticed is local white men’s lost sense of pride, and how they turn to Trump to restore it. To them, Trump seems to say, “I’m taking the government back and having it serve you,” she told me. “I’m your rescuer.”
Adam Serwer: The nationalist’s delusion
In Strangers, some of the Louisianans Hochschild interviewed were upset that women were competing for men’s jobs and that the federal government “wasn’t on the side of men being manly.” Some of her male Kentucky interviewees, especially those who have a family history in coal, feel even more strongly that men’s rightful place in the world is slipping away.
Men in this community, she told me, “are starved for a sense of heroism. They don’t feel good about themselves. They feel like they haven’t done as well as their fathers, that they’re on a downward slope.” Coal jobs have evaporated, and liberals, they feel, are making enemies of white men. “Their source of heroism, of status, is humming; it’s fragile,” Hochschild says. This analysis comports with some polls of Trump voters. An Atlantic/PRRI poll conducted in 2016 found that Trump supporters were more likely than Hillary Clinton supporters to feel that society “punishes men just for acting like men.”
As far as their leader’s pandemic response, Hochschild’s Kentuckians feel that Trump is doing the best he can, and as good of a job as possible under the circumstances. Though her subjects are worried about catching COVID-19, many see it as one of the unfortunate but acceptable risks of life. Confronting the coronavirus is a way to show stoicism and to feel heroic again. “I’ve heard it said that ‘This is hitting older people, and I’m an older person, but it’s really important to get back to work, and I’ll take the hit,’” Hochschild said. Her subjects think they can handle the virus just like Trump handles everything. “He’s a two-hamburger-a-meal guy,” she said. “He’s kind of a bad boy, and they relate to that.”
This part of Trump resonated with Kurtis, who told me he likes that the president “comes off as a man. He doesn’t come off as weak.” Trump’s strength is a benefit in the foreign-policy arena, Kurtis feels.
Joe Biden doesn’t give these men the same sense of restored pride. They feel the Democratic nominee is a Trojan horse liberal women and minorities are using to advance their own interests. Biden doesn’t present himself as a defender of white men, and they don’t see him that way.
Hochschild sees her new work as an extension of the deep story she began probing in Strangers. In that book, her interview subjects found their guy in Trump. Now her interviewees are coming to realize their hero is surrounded by enemies. He’s battling evil forces such as the liberal media, the impeachment, the Democrats in Congress, and the lawyers who indicted his advisers. But Trump is fighting all of those enemies—the left, the deep state, the pandemic—and he’s fighting them for his constituents.
The final chapter of this story, she said, is Trump becoming an almost Christlike figure to these men. “‘Look how I suffer,’” is how Trump presents himself, Hochschild told me. “‘I am suffering for you.’ And they say, ‘Thank you.’”
Mark Peterson / Redux
I first met Kurtis in 2018, when I traveled to McKinney, my hometown, for research for my book about outsiders. I wanted to try to figure out why Californians were moving to the Dallas suburb. Before they relocated, Kurtis and Crystal had been living in Long Beach, paying $1,500 a month for an apartment the size of a bouncy castle. Kurtis found himself constantly at odds with his fellow Californians, who would yell at him for saying that he didn’t believe in global warming or that he was voting for Trump. “It’s like I couldn’t walk around with my ideas,” Kurtis told me for the book.
Now that he’s in McKinney, Kurtis feels much more at home. Kurtis and Crystal bought a $325,000 house with a wraparound deck. They don’t get sneered at for their views, and they don’t have to recycle anymore. Their extended families have since moved out from California to join them there.
And Kurtis wishes people would see the side of Trump that appeals to him: No apologies, what you see is what you get. Trump speaks the way people do at a barbecue, not at a dissertation defense. Sure, Kurtis reasons, the pandemic has killed a lot of people, but what was Trump supposed to do? Besides, the left called him a xenophobe for shutting down travel from China and for dubbing it the “China virus.”
Kurtis’s father recently caught COVID-19 at church, which Kurtis saw as just another example of people knowing the risks but doing what they feel they need to do anyway.
I asked Kurtis what he thought about Hochschild’s idea, that Trump supporters feel like white men are unfairly vilified these days.
Kurtis deflected a little. “I don’t think it has to do with being white,” he said. He has other reasons, such as taxes and a possible repeal of the Affordable Care Act, for supporting Trump.
At the same time, he was tired of “white men [being] looked at as the cause of everybody’s problems. I’m not gonna apologize that I’m white. I shouldn’t have to go around feeling like I have this great debt of reparations.”
Tom Nichols: Donald Trump, the most unmanly president
It’s been good to have a leader like Trump, he added, who takes no B.S. and is there to kick ass. “I’m proud to be an American again,” Kurtis said.
Not all experts agree with Hochschild’s theory. Scott Winship, a sociologist and Director of Poverty Studies at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, says “it’s very questionable to explain overwhelming support among Republicans for Trump’s coronavirus response by pointing to whatever Hochschild’s white Kentuckians told her.” The income element, in particular, doesn’t hold up, he says: “Trump’s coalition in 2016 had higher incomes, on average, than the typical American.”
But other experts’ research generally supports Hochschild’s thesis. “People look down on us, and now is our time to win,” says Jonathan Metzl, a professor of sociology and medicine at Vanderbilt University, summarizing what he has found is the attitude of some Trump voters. Given that the pandemic has disproportionately killed people of color, some white Trump supporters may write it off as a “them problem, not an us problem,” he says.
Trump’s supposed heroism and sacrifice aren’t typically the reasons his supporters offer when asked about his pandemic performance. Other explanations—the freedom to not wear a mask, the corporate tax rate, disdain for the leftward shift in the Democratic party—are more easily quotable.
But the central wound remains: “Ban men” is a socially acceptable thing to say. And men who attend Trump’s rallies sometimes tell journalists that they’re willing to risk their lives to show up for Trump. “If I die, I die. We got to get this country moving,” these men tell reporters. Or: “If I catch COVID, that’s the consequences of my actions, so I’m willing to take that risk and have a good time today.” They’re bravely confronting COVID-19, just like the president.


theatlantic--2020-10-29--Why Many White Men Love Trump’s Coronavirus Response

In academic terms , this is called “ my-side bias ” —objective reality looks different through the lens of your home team .
( Sometimes literally : A famous 1954 psychology study found that undergraduates at Dartmouth and Princeton Universities had completely different perceptions of a football game played between the rival schools . )
In fact , this tendency to approve of one ’ s own side might become self-reinforcing .
If someone doesn ’ t support Trump and all that he does , they might stop considering themselves a Republican , and thus stop showing up as one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a sociologist at Stanford University .
Other wrinkles of our current political moment could further explain why so many Trump supporters approve of the president ’ s pandemic response .
Katherine Cramer , a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison , says the most consistent theme on the right-wing talk-radio shows she ’ s been listening to is a desire to trust people to make their own decisions , rather than trusting the government to make decisions for people .
Shana Kushner Gadarian , a political scientist at Syracuse University @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Trump ’ s pandemic response might require intimate knowledge of other countries ’ public-health systems—a tall order for the average person .
But another prominent scholar of the American right believes Trump support among men , in particular , is rooted in something more psychological .
Many white men feel that their gender and race have been vilified , says the sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild .
Their economic prospects are bad , and American culture tells them that their gender is too .
So they ’ ve turned to Trump as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can restore their sense of former glory .
Exposing themselves and others to the coronavirus is part of that heroism .
Or as Kurtis told me when I asked him how he felt about Trump getting the coronavirus , “ Trump ’ s willing to accept that risk to win for the American people .
And Joe Biden is sitting in his basement.
” his hero theory of Trump is a continuation of Hochschild ’ s earlier work .
A professor at UC Berkeley , Hochschild soared to the best-seller lists with her @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which came out before the election but proved timely in its focus on the minds of Trump voters .
For the book , Hochschild interviews an array of characters across Louisiana in an attempt to unearth what she calls their “ deep story ” : the emotional , feels-as-if truth of their lives .
Hochschild describes her subjects ’ deep story in a metaphor of a long line of Americans standing on a hill , waiting to get over the top , to the American dream .
But as they stand there @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that certain people are cutting the line in front of them .
Women , African Americans , and immigrants are getting ahead , boosted by the government and its affirmative-action programs .
As Hochschild writes , they feel “ your money is running through a liberal sympathy sieve you don ’ t control or agree with .
”


theatlantic--2020-10-29--It Ain’t Over in Wisconsin

It Ain’t Over in Wisconsin

Wikler , though , remains nervous , even as polls show Biden with a sizable lead in the state .
Between trying to do pandemic organizing , overseeing events that have made Wisconsin Democratic Party live-streams the hottest virtual ticket in Hollywood , and recovering from a string of losses at the Supreme Court in cases that tried to facilitate ballot counting , Wikler said he ’ s still not sure whether Wisconsin will decide the election again or whether the state will be one of several “ cherries on top of a democracy sundae.
” What follows is a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been lightly edited for clarity .
Edward-Isaac Dovere : Joe Biden hasn ’ t been to Wisconsin much , though he ’ s coming Friday .
Harris hasn ’ t either .
Aren ’ t they making the same mistake that Hillary Clinton did by not spending enough time in the state ?
Ben Wikler : Biden and Harris prioritized Wisconsin as their first long-distance trips once the general election started after the conventions .
They have come here in person ; they ’ ve come here virtually ; they ’ ve poured @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to 2016 isn ’ t apples and oranges ; it ’ s grapes to watermelons .
At this point , any potential Biden-Harris voter in Wisconsin is getting text messages , phone calls , mailers in their mailbox , door hangers , literature , television ads , Facebook ads , Instagram ads , radio ads—a constant drumbeat of reminders , information , support , and every possible kind of encouragement to cast a ballot and cast it early .
Wisconsin is experiencing a horrific and tragic coronavirus explosion .
We are setting grim @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and new infections .
Trump ’ s super-spreader rallies are profoundly irresponsible , and the Biden-Harris ticket and the whole campaign have been deeply careful about not creating conditions that could worsen the pandemic during the year during in-person visits .
Read : The coronavirus surge that will define the next 4 years Dovere : There ’ s a new poll out that shows Biden 17 points up in Wisconsin .
Is he ?
Wikler : I am organizing and operating as though it ’ s neck and neck .
It would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ margin in that territory .
The truth is that no one really knows how to model an electorate in the midst of this pandemic , plus a deeply not-normal Trump operation and the intensity of people ’ s reaction to it .
Dovere : Are we even able to tell what a likely voter is at this point , for Biden or for Trump ?
Wikler : We ’ re talking to people who are very likely by the supporters .
We ’ re also reaching out to people who our data suggest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ often they ’ re turning out to be enthusiastically ready to vote for Biden and Harris .
Dovere : The lesson that reporters were supposed to learn from 2016 was to get out and talk to people more .
Now the lesson is “ Don ’ t talk to people , or you might die.
” That makes it hard for reporters to have a sense of what ’ s going on .
Do you feel like you have a sense of where things stand ?

The Badger State could decide the presidency again. Or it could be “one of a bunch of cherries on top of a democracy sundae.”
Political organizing in a swing state in the final days of this election is like “riding the hurricane,” Ben Wikler told me when I called him up yesterday morning. When I noted that this isn’t a very apt reference for the Wisconsin Democratic Party chairman to make, he instead offered “speed-skating in a blizzard on a frozen lake.”
Wikler, a Wisconsin native, was living in New York in 2016, working in a top position for the Democratic organizing group MoveOn. Donald Trump’s 22,748-vote win in Wikler’s home state, combined with Hillary Clinton’s famous failure to ever campaign in the state during the general election—part of a widespread collapse in Democratic operations there—convinced him to move back and run for the traditionally unglamorous job of state-party chair.
Wisconsin leads the nation in farm bankruptcies. Jobs lost to trade deals haven’t come back. Economic anxiety still dominates in the state, but it’s translating differently after nearly four years of a Trump presidency. “People were excited that someone was talking to something they cared about,” and Trump “showed up,” Mark Pocan, who represents Wisconsin in the U.S. House and is a committed progressive, told me recently. But “this time it’s very clear. He didn’t bring those jobs. Now he actually has to live on a record.” Trump’s play for “law and order” after the tension in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake and 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse’s alleged killing of two protesters, Pocan told me, had backfired: “People in suburban areas who live on cul-de-sacs are less worried about a protest breaking out in their cul-de-sac than a kid who’s 17 coming down the street with a rifle.”
Wikler, though, remains nervous, even as polls show Biden with a sizable lead in the state. Between trying to do pandemic organizing, overseeing events that have made Wisconsin Democratic Party live-streams the hottest virtual ticket in Hollywood, and recovering from a string of losses at the Supreme Court in cases that tried to facilitate ballot counting, Wikler said he’s still not sure whether Wisconsin will decide the election again or whether the state will be one of several “cherries on top of a democracy sundae.”
What follows is a transcript of our conversation. It has been lightly edited for clarity.
Edward-Isaac Dovere: Joe Biden hasn’t been to Wisconsin much, though he’s coming Friday. Harris hasn’t either. Aren’t they making the same mistake that Hillary Clinton did by not spending enough time in the state?
Ben Wikler: Biden and Harris prioritized Wisconsin as their first long-distance trips once the general election started after the conventions. They have come here in person; they’ve come here virtually; they’ve poured resources into the state. Comparing 2020 to 2016 isn’t apples and oranges; it’s grapes to watermelons. At this point, any potential Biden-Harris voter in Wisconsin is getting text messages, phone calls, mailers in their mailbox, door hangers, literature, television ads, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, radio ads—a constant drumbeat of reminders, information, support, and every possible kind of encouragement to cast a ballot and cast it early.
Wisconsin is experiencing a horrific and tragic coronavirus explosion. We are setting grim records every day for deaths, hospitalizations, and new infections. Trump’s super-spreader rallies are profoundly irresponsible, and the Biden-Harris ticket and the whole campaign have been deeply careful about not creating conditions that could worsen the pandemic during the year during in-person visits.
Read: The coronavirus surge that will define the next 4 years
Dovere: There’s a new poll out that shows Biden 17 points up in Wisconsin. Is he?
Wikler: I am organizing and operating as though it’s neck and neck. It would be an ahistorical stunner to have a margin in that territory. The truth is that no one really knows how to model an electorate in the midst of this pandemic, plus a deeply not-normal Trump operation and the intensity of people’s reaction to it.
Dovere: Are we even able to tell what a likely voter is at this point, for Biden or for Trump?
Wikler: We’re talking to people who are very likely by the supporters. We’re also reaching out to people who our data suggest might be Biden supporters, and very often they’re turning out to be enthusiastically ready to vote for Biden and Harris.
Dovere: The lesson that reporters were supposed to learn from 2016 was to get out and talk to people more. Now the lesson is “Don’t talk to people, or you might die.” That makes it hard for reporters to have a sense of what’s going on. Do you feel like you have a sense of where things stand?
Wikler: We have a lot of data points to mull over. We have the results of a huge number of conversations on the phones and interactions of text messages. We have polling in state legislative races, as well as the presidential race—a greater volume of public polling. There’s qualitative indicators like yard signs and volunteers handing out flyers outside of grocery stores. There’s what’s blowing up; people feed on social media. All those tell stories. One is that Democrats are not taking things for granted or viewing this as spectators. We’re often seeing more people show up than RSVP’d, which is the opposite of how things work in normal times.
There’s a hunger for buttons and yard signs and everything with a Biden-Harris logo on it, in rural areas as well as urban areas, which is definitely not always the case. We have a lot of information about how our side is energized. I don’t have clear indicators on the level of energy on the Republican side. How much of that is driven by the fact that hardcore Trump supporters just aren’t the voters that we’re talking to, and in fact, they are fired up? Or is their level of energy lower on the Trump side than we think? Part of the uncertainty is greater in Wisconsin because we have same-day voter registration, which is between a 10th and an eighth of the total electorate in a typical year. People show up to cast their ballots, and they were not on any voter file before that moment.
Dovere: So will it all come down to Wisconsin?
Wikler: If this race gets unexpectedly close in the final moments, if Trump could contest the balance one way or the other, then yes. If it’s a blowout, then Wisconsin is one of a bunch of cherries on top of a democracy sundae.
Dovere: Wisconsin Democrats keep ending up in front of the Supreme Court challenging election rulings. The latest this week, with an opinion written by Justice Kavanaugh, barred counting ballots received after Election Day. How much have the decisions changed what’s going to happen in Wisconsin?
Wikler: We’ve been planning for the unfortunate scenarios that are now playing out. Our message to voters has been to turn their ballots in by hand now, as opposed to waiting and putting them in the mail on November 3rd. I think we are going to get a ton of absentee ballots in during this final stretch. Kavanaugh had a choice between democracy and Donald Trump. And he chose Donald Trump.
Dovere: How worried are you about things going wrong on Election Day?
Leah Litman: The Supreme Court’s Wisconsin decision is a terrible sign for November
Wikler: Because there are so many people who are voting absentee and voting early in person, the opportunity for a convenient and smooth Election Day goes up and up. When half the ballots are cast beforehand, it cuts the Election Day wait times down, to pop in and out of the polling place.
Dovere: What happens if people claiming to be observers or poll watchers show up at, say, a polling location in Milwaukee to try to complicate voting there?
Wikler: Voter intimidation is a felony in the state of Wisconsin.
Dovere: The state party has hosted virtual reunions of the casts of The Princess Bride, Veep, Parks & Recreation, Superbad, Happy Days, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and a star-studded comedy show. How did Wisconsin Democrats become a nexus for Hollywood activism?
Wikler: This all started with Bradley Whitford—who is from Madison, went to Madison East High School here, and then became a superstar. Bradley’s been involved in Wisconsin politics for decades. But this year, during the Democratic National Convention, he gathered his West Wing alumni friends and did a reunion of the West Wing Weekly podcast as a virtual event during the DNC. To that point, that had been our most successful grassroots-fundraising event ever. Once it was over, we started brainstorming what events like that could be possible. Someone on our team was childhood friends with someone who’d moved to Los Angeles and gotten deeply involved in the entertainment world. And that person was a friend of Carey Elwes, from The Princess Bride. The brainstorm on our team led to that chain of phone calls; Carey Elwes was only too excited and started calling his fellow cast members with the idea of having a script read. Suddenly, my favorite movie of my entire life was being re-created on a videoconference in front of 100,000 people for a supercharger organizing event in the Badger State. That event captured the public’s imagination and has led to similar events for other states—for the Biden campaign and certainly a string of events for Wisconsin. The Biden campaign had Hamilton and The Avengers. The Pennsylvania party had This Is Spinal Tap. There’s a Dazed and Confused script-reading reunion in Texas. This is now an official, capital-T Thing. And it’s one of the silver linings of a very dark coronavirus cloud: People are home, and they’re ready to jump on video-chat events in a way that would have been unimaginable a year ago.
Dovere: Which did the best?
Wikler: The Princess Bride. It blew everything out of the water.