newrepublic--2020-04-07--The Brands Feel Your Pain

The Brands Feel Your Pain

Last week , the famously stoic Anna Wintour said she “ broke down ” upon hearing from her friend Ralph Lauren , the designer and businessman worth approximately $ 6 billion , that the philanthropic wing of the Ralph Lauren Corporation had pledged $ 10 million to organizations undertaking coronavirus relief efforts .
As the pandemic continues to spread and medical supplies around the globe run low , a number of luxury and mass market brands have pledged money to charities fighting the outbreak or even pivoted their production to manufacturing hospital garments and other medical supplies .
New Balance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and gowns ; Louis Vuitton ’ s perfume department and Kylie Jenner ’ s skincare line are manufacturing hand sanitizer .
“ I have never been more proud of our industry , ” Wintour wrote in Vogue .
In a similar effort , Sweetgreen and Starbucks pledged to donate free salad bowls and coffee , respectively , to hospital workers , while Chipotle , Popeyes , and KFC said they would temporarily waive delivery fees to accommodate people under stay-at-home orders .
For their part , the eight largest banks , which include @ @ @ @ @ @ @ graciously promised to halt the controversial and self-serving practice of stock buybacks , at least through the end of June , to free up more funds for individual and business loans .
These initiatives and others have been accompanied by a deluge of brands blasting coronavirus updates to customers , including somewhat maladroit dispatches like the one from 1-800-Contacts that read , “ A combination of excitement and solemn responsibility rested upon us all : during these uncertain times , you decided to turn to us for contact lenses.
” According to several @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an uneasy balancing act when it comes to their marketing and public relations efforts as the coronavirus death toll continues to climb .
“ They ’ re not sure what to do because this is unprecedented and there ’ s a need to strike a tone between being very sensitive to what is a very scary time [ and making money ] , ” one P.R .
consultant told Vox .
Reception to such efforts can vary , often depending on whether a given brand was considered , even in myopically capitalist terms @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For instance , Los Angeles Apparel , an American Apparel spin-off launched by ousted CEO and sexual predator Dov Charney in 2016 , announced in March that it would start manufacturing surgical masks and gowns for hospital workers .
But on Instagram , the company said it would also sell the same masks to consumers ( $ 30 for a pack of 3 ) and subsequently came under fire both for its perceived coronavirus profiteering and for its ads , which displayed models posing in cloth masks and little else , true @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
( “ So tasteful , ” grumbled one Instagram commenter . )
The retailer Everlane also attracted criticism for announcing a jeans sale with the message “ We ’ re all in this together ” shortly after laying off its “ customer experience ” team , which recently announced a union drive and has called the layoffs illegal retaliation .
In the current economic freeze , with unemployment claims at nearly 10 million , the retail sector has suffered a serious shock that ’ s unlikely to abate soon .
Those in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ low-wage retail workforce who have been furloughed or laid off .
On the other hand , it ’ s difficult to muster much sympathy for the brands themselves , which often seem to display levels of sensitivity inversely proportional to their profits .
( McDonald ’ s , for instance , unveiled a new logo that depicted its golden arches separated in a nod to social distancing , while also fighting sick leave for its workers . )

CSR took off in the early 2000s after a string of high-profile P.R. disasters in the previous decade, including protests over Nike’s labor abuses and Shell’s controversial attempt to sink an oil rig in the North Sea. “Rather than shrink away from the battle,” Deborah Doane, a writer who covers civil society and philanthropy, wrote in 2006, “corporations emerged brandishing CSR as the friendly face of capitalism.” Today, CSR initiatives range from MAC’s Viva Glam program, which donates proceeds from lipstick sales to charities (and recently pledged $10 million to coronavirus relief funds) to the charitable foundations established by tech giants like Google and Facebook. Of course, though such projects do provide welcome aid in some cases, they’re usually also convenient opportunities for P.R. boosts without much sacrifice to companies’ bottom lines. And in many cases, corporate do-good measures serve as a distraction from their most egregious practices. As author and environmentalist Bill McKibben once wrote of Walmart’s much-publicized introduction of an organic line, “It makes scant difference whether Wal-Mart starts stocking organic food or not, because the real problem is the imperative to ship products all over the world, sell them in vast, downtown-destroying complexes, and push prices so low that neither workers nor responsible suppliers can prosper.” It’s also obvious enough at this point that while corporations talk a good game about serving their communities and the public, their lobbying and political donations tell a very different story.
The CSR boom is also the result of decades of free-market policies in which the government has increasingly declined to intervene on climate change, poverty, and economic inequality and left such problems to be “solved” by the market. When it comes to the pandemic, the absence of a coherent or consistent federal response—let alone a well-functioning safety net or an adequate national stockpile of medical supplies—has created a void that leaves us at the mercy of corporations’ goodwill to procure protective equipment for health care professionals and other essential workers. The absurdity is that there are still other more sustainable and holistic options, including the proper use of the Defense Production Act, which Trump has only half-heartedly and sporadically invoked so far. As national security expert James E. Baker wrote in The New York Times last Friday, “The federal government has all the authority it needs to close the supply gap, allocate resources among states, and prepare for the production and distribution of the vaccine to come.” It just won’t, is all.
In the meantime, brands and their marketing schemes will continue to serve as an insufficient backstop to the medical supply shortage and lack of national social and economic safeguards. Last week, Levi’s announced it would host an online concert series featuring artists like Questlove and Jaden Smith to provide some joy in the midst of the pandemic. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking, pondering how we all contribute every day to making the world a place we want to inhabit,” Levi’s chief marketing officer wrote. “And so, in this frame of mind, I’ve been challenging myself and my team: What can we do? How can we help?” It’s a nice thought. One might have asked the same question of the company in 2018, when it paid an effective federal tax rate of zero percent.


newrepublic--2020-04-06--In The Mirror and the Light, Hilary Mantel Finally Takes Cromwell to the Block

It is also an abstract way of looking at the world .
In Bring Up the Bodies , Mantel folds that abstraction into Cromwell ’ s emotional character .
As his riches and stature grow , Cromwell starts “ buying land in the lusher parts of England , but he has no leisure to visit it.
” He owns a Shakespearean vision of old Albion , “ these farms , these ancient manors in their walled gardens , these watercourses with their little quays , these ponds with their gilded fish rising to the hook ; these vineyards , flower @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he is too busy to see them , they must remain to him “ flat , each one a paper construct , a set of figures on a page of accounts.… His acres are notional acres , sources of income , sources of dissatisfaction in the small hours , when he wakes up and his mind explores their geography.
” This alternative England made of text is ruled by Cromwell , not Henry—Henry can only think in terms of heirs and battlefields .
Throughout the shocking events of his career , Cromwell uses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engineer murder at a distance , provoking inquiries into traitors and rebels who sometimes are only guilty of needing to get out of his way .
As he thinks to himself while interrogating the ill-fated courtier Sir Henry Norris , “ He needs guilty men .
So he has found men who are guilty .
Though perhaps not guilty as charged.
” The England of Cromwell ’ s imagination becomes many things .
It is an engine of progress , to the mind of an Englishman proud of the Tudors ’ legacy .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ itself , with its center occupied not by a monarch but by systems .
Trade , laws , diplomacy : all kinds of power that happen on paper , on deeds and treaties .
It is also , crucially , a tool of Cromwell ’ s conscience , which he uses to keep his actions at a comfortable remove from his own soul .
They ’ re not crimes , to him—just functions of a system that end with heads rolling across their own puddles of gore .
The Mirror and the Light @ @ @ @ @ @ @ predecessors .
At 784 pages , it doesn ’ t have the taut energy of the first two books , but then neither does an old man have the taut energy of his youth .
In Wolf Hall , there were long passages of contemplation and memory , but here they swell and almost edge out the events at court , even though those events have turned lewder and more violent : more deaths , more blood , more sex .

There are moments when it is difficult to tell whether Mantel is reflecting the vaguer state of her hero’s mind, or simply writing baggily. For example, she uses the adjective “jaundiced” six times in The Mirror and the Light. Is this because cynical old men are more jaundiced, or because ploughing through the same material over and over again has caused the sixteenth century to close over Mantel’s head, blocking out the light and causing her to reach for tools closest to hand?
On the whole, I think the former is right: Cromwell missteps in The Mirror and the Light, ultimately losing his head himself. Mantel has to set him up to get lost in that paper jungle of his own design. One night, we see Cromwell dream. “History inks the skin,” his dreaming mind says, “it writes on the hide of sheep long slaughtered, or calves who never breathed; the dead cut away the ground beneath us.” Mantel has told critics that her books are ghost stories, and those ghosts crowd around her protagonist as time goes on, messing with his neat filing systems and diplomatic tricks. In his dream, he descends the stairs at his home, but “the tread falls away under his foot,” and below him the stairs now lead to “the city where the legions of Rome left their ashes beneath the earth, their glass in the soil, their bones in the river.”
The dream plunges down, “into the subsoil of himself, through France and Italy,” where he lived as a young man, “through the lowlands and the quicksands, by the marshes and meadows estuarine, through the floodplains of his dreams to where he wakes, shocked into a new day.” His mind is the unlucky place where the ink and earth mix. Cromwell loses control. Dazzled by his own reflected glory, he turns out to be as mortal as any other courtier.


newrepublic--2020-04-06--The Vanishing Public Square

The Vanishing Public Square

As the Great Pandemic takes hold of our world and forces all of us to separate ourselves from our closest family and friends , does politics become impossible ?
As I write , states are postponing their primaries .
The most recent Democratic presidential debate was held without an audience .
Even Donald Trump has halted his public rallies .
And party officials may scratch the Democratic National Convention in Milwaukee .
We are entering a new era , of politics without bodies , of empty auditoriums and virtual voting .
At the most visceral level , this hurts .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans have taken to the streets in hundreds of cities to advocate for gun control , environmental reform , the rights of immigrants , women , and others .
“ Nothing can replace the bodily experience of being in a mass march of 100,000 people or more , ” L.A. Kauffman , the author of two books on American protest movements and a veteran organizer herself , told me .
I still remember how my own heart started pounding , as I stood in the middle of the first big Climate March in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like a jet engine come roaring down from the north end of Central Park West—the front edge of a human sound wave , triggered from the back of the march and propelled forward as 400,000 people heard it and joined in , venting their collective fury at the status quo .
The coronavirus is shutting down other forms of organizing as well .
People will no longer be able to sit shoulder to shoulder in a church basement , or huddle with co-workers around the coffee machine , or look into the eyes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ve knocked on and smell their cooking as they talk to them about kitchen table issues .
Many organizations need to be able to meet together to make decisions or to build community .
Larger organizations , like labor unions , interest groups , and professional associations , whose national gatherings bring together thousands of members annually to elect their leaders and determine policy priorities , are wondering what they will do to replace those events .
Unlike the first crisis created by the Trump administration , the proposed Muslim travel ban , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of airports to demonstrate against its idiotic handling of the coronavirus .
Our public square will have to change ; that much is certain .
For at least as long as the virus spreads unchecked , the old-fashioned pressing-the-flesh forms of political engagement are dead .
But how devastating is this , really ?
Can ’ t we just move organizing online ?

Some answers were percolating even before the virus arrived. Since 2016, Collective Agency, a consultancy of digital strategists that came together after the election, has been helping campaigns and organizations host national livestream events with tens of thousands of viewers. Its founder, Kathryn Jones, said, “Online streaming, when done right, is more like the video version of a selfie than an online TV show. The community comes to literally see themselves ‘reflected’ in the stream via on air callouts, chat rooms, and graphics. The interactivity of a great livestream builds a superstrong community that will come back over and over again to see you, but also to see all their friends in the chat room.” There’s going to be an explosion of innovation in multimodal video, as people and organizations look for ways to reproduce meetings, conventions, and rallies in cyberspace. See you in the chat room, comrade!
Some old forms of organizing are still happening, of course. A group of Amazon workers walked out of their warehouse in Queens, New York, after they learned that a colleague had tested positive for Covid-19. In Israel, organizers built a protest convoy of hundreds of cars after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu abruptly closed the courts. Graduate students at UC Berkeley, who are now expected to shoulder the burden of shifting to virtual teaching, went on a wildcat strike demanding a pay bump. After Instacart food delivery workers walked off their jobs last Monday, the company quickly promised to provide them with face marks, thermometers, and hand sanitizers. Coworker.org, an online hub for all kinds of worker organizing, is experiencing a huge surge in usage as more workers discover the utility of making their demands more visible through its petition platform. And Mayor Bill de Blasio agreed to close the New York City public schools after teachers promised to stage a sick-out and parents kept their children home. These people couldn’t flex their power with mass protests, standing shoulder to shoulder in Union Square or marching down Fifth Avenue; but nor did they need to. Especially now, there is power in withdrawing consent and participation.
Looking ahead, we need to think bigger about how we “do” virtual politics together, beyond remapping old political functions onto digital formats. On sites such as Facebook and Twitter, we have an oversupply of people expressing themselves and aggregating their voices where they already agree. For the digital public square of the future, we need new systems that do the opposite: managing discordant demands and enabling people to find consensus. The market cannot solve these problems for us. And giving people money to spend won’t miraculously create the massive public works we need to fortify ourselves against the virus, be they in public health, education, or democracy itself.


Bailing Out

Neither camp supports the status quo .
Both abolitionists and reformers believe that money bail is medieval and due for the scrap heap—but some in the latter camp propose to replace jail and bail with predictive algorithms , ankle monitors , or a maze of supervision and check-in measures that opponents say would be tantamount to home arrest .
“ If you are just stuck on ending money bail , what you ’ re going to end up with a system that will adapt to that , end cash bail altogether , giving people no way out , ” said @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Now you have more incarceration , not less .
We should be saying , ‘ End cash bond and pretrial detention , ’ always in the same paragraph .
That helps slow down the co-optation.
” It ’ s not that abolitionists are determined to burn it all down rather than ever compromise on an incremental reform , Kaba said .
“ Of course we will engage in reform work , ” she said .
“ We just don ’ t engage in reformist reforms .
We engage in reforms that are not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way of what we ’ re trying to dismantle and rebuild.
” Some of the same tensions run through the debate in New York City about what to do with Rikers , the city ’ s island jail complex .
For decades , city officials turned a blind eye to the Rikers gulag , whose crumbling buildings housed a culture of chaos and violence .
In 2014 , Preet Bharara , the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York , issued a statement to accompany a report from his office condemning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ force is the first impulse , ” a realm of officially sanctioned beatdown crews , retaliatory beatings by guards , and deadly medical neglect “ more inspired by Lord of the Flies than any legitimate philosophy of humane detention.
” Yet even then , few believed the city ’ s government could be motivated to meaningfully confront the true scale of malign state-sanctioned neglect at Rikers .
In 2017 , a combination of popular organizing and some shrewd political maneuvering by the City Council finally forced Mayor Bill de Blasio to commit to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all .
Many regarded de Blasio ’ s announcement as nothing short of miraculous—one of those rare moments when the wished-for thing at the far edge of the possible actually comes into being .
But in the years since , the political environment has shifted dramatically .
Last fall , when the City Council finally passed the plan to shutter Rikers and replace it with a network of smaller , more humane jails distributed throughout the city in closer proximity to courthouses , the council did so over the near-fatal objections of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not come , for the most part , from NIMBY burghers fretting over the effect of the new jails on their property values ( though those voices were heard , too ) .
Instead , the main opponents were allied with No New Jails NYC , a coalition organized around the abolitionist credo that any cages constructed will be cages filled .
These activists insist that building any new jail space is incompatible with the goal of ending mass incarceration—and will only serve to extend rather than to roll back decades of misguided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to control every social problem .
In the space of a few short years , the plan to close Rikers Island has gone from a radical pipe dream to an initiative loudly booed from the gallery of City Hall by anti-carceral activists .
Advocates of the Close Rikers campaign—especially the formerly incarcerated people who fought so hard for its passage—have been baffled to find themselves cast as revanchist perpetuators of mass incarceration by a radical cohort concerned that the closure of one jail complex is being used to justify the creation of four @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the city for generations .
“ There ’ s definitely a similar thing happening with the conversation around Rikers and the conversation around bail , ” said Jack , the public defender .
“ It ’ s about the tension between the short-term goal and the underlying long-term goal .
If you build new jails , they ’ re going to get filled .
If you rely on bail funds , they ’ ll be used to pay bail.
” But things are happening fast .
Even as the leaders of the Brooklyn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most productive role the fund could play in the new environment , the ground continued to move beneath them .
In December , Governor Cuomo vetoed the legislation expanding the ability of bail funds to pay bail .
The veto meant that even if charitable bail funds wanted to work within the new system , in most instances , they wouldn ’ t be able to .
The bails they used to post had largely been abolished—but the bails that will continue to exist under the carve-outs will almost entirely be the kind @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Most people held on money bail in the new system will have to come up with their own money , or pay commercial bondsmen—or go to jail .
The hits kept coming : When the reforms kicked in on January 1 , 2020 , dramatically reducing the number of people who can be held on bail , the same coalition of prosecutors , police unions , and conservative news media that had opposed the legislation in the first place launched an attack on the law with a level of fury and coordination that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ community .
The changes were rushed and ill-considered , opponents claimed .
In the name of safety , judges should have more power to detain people before they ’ ve been found guilty , not less .
This after-the-buzzer counterattack found traction , much to the dismay of the opponents of pretrial detention .
Democratic leaders waffled , declaring their willingness to reconsider the laws , and polling showed a majority of respondents opposing the new compromise reforms .
Activists who had been intending to build on their recent victories in the new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protect the incremental gains they wrested out of Albany lawmakers last year .
It proved a losing fight .
As the coronavirus swept New York in March , lawmakers fell sick and the state legislature fell into disarray , unable to physically convene , caucus , or debate .
Cuomo proposed legislation that would give judges the power to jail defendants based on a prediction of their future dangerousness .
After tense negotiations , defenders of the previous year ’ s bail laws managed to kill that proposal , but the compromise forced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Shortly after two in the morning on April 3 , lawmakers passed a budget that greatly expanded the list of offenses and circumstances for which money bail could be set .
Cuomo signed the budget later that day , and opponents of decarceration immediately called the expansion inadequate , setting the stage for battles over yet further expansion of bail in coming years .
For some observers , this backlash serves regrettably to confirm the dangers of incremental reform .
“ The press has mostly been like ‘ Bail reform is amazing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” said Weiss before last week ’ s events .
“ But politicians only have a limited appetite for this ; we didn ’ t end money bail .
We ended money bail for some people .
The carve-outs created a hole , and now they can try to push more people into the hole.
” For the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund , the revival of bail in New York has provoked further soul-searching , as its leadership and allies revisit familiar questions : Should the fund resume posting bail for criminal defendants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be enabling the state ’ s intransigent insistence on maximal pre-trial detention ?
“ The need to free people now is more urgent than ever , ” Goldberg said .
“ The situation has changed , and we have to adapt .
It ’ s back to the drawing board ; all options are on the table.
” That ’ s the nature of this kind of work , Simonson , the law professor , said .
“ Politics , movements , the legal landscape , all shift over time in ways that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” she said .
“ Movements have to switch tactics as that happens .
It ’ s moves and countermoves.
” As the incremental progress of the movements to end mass incarceration inevitably meets with overt counterattacks and subtle co-optation , the trick for criminal justice advocates will be not to get caught in countermoves that lead them away from their ultimate goal .
This article was updated from the print version to reflect recent events in New York .

Uncertain victory: Protesters at a vote to shutter Rikers Island last year opposed the construction of new jails to house displaced Rikers inmates. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis/Getty
But things are happening fast. Even as the leaders of the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund were gaming out the most productive role the fund could play in the new environment, the ground continued to move beneath them.
In December, Governor Cuomo vetoed the legislation expanding the ability of bail funds to pay bail. The veto meant that even if charitable bail funds wanted to work within the new system, in most instances, they wouldn’t be able to. The bails they used to post had largely been abolished—but the bails that will continue to exist under the carve-outs will almost entirely be the kind they are legally barred from posting. Most people held on money bail in the new system will have to come up with their own money, or pay commercial bondsmen—or go to jail.
The hits kept coming: When the reforms kicked in on January 1, 2020, dramatically reducing the number of people who can be held on bail, the same coalition of prosecutors, police unions, and conservative news media that had opposed the legislation in the first place launched an attack on the law with a level of fury and coordination that surprised everyone in the criminal justice reform community. The changes were rushed and ill-considered, opponents claimed. In the name of safety, judges should have more power to detain people before they’ve been found guilty, not less.
This after-the-buzzer counterattack found traction, much to the dismay of the opponents of pretrial detention. Democratic leaders waffled, declaring their willingness to reconsider the laws, and polling showed a majority of respondents opposing the new compromise reforms. Activists who had been intending to build on their recent victories in the new legislative session suddenly found themselves fighting to protect the incremental gains they wrested out of Albany lawmakers last year.
It proved a losing fight. As the coronavirus swept New York in March, lawmakers fell sick and the state legislature fell into disarray, unable to physically convene, caucus, or debate. Cuomo proposed legislation that would give judges the power to jail defendants based on a prediction of their future dangerousness. After tense negotiations, defenders of the previous year’s bail laws managed to kill that proposal, but the compromise forced on them was hardly cause for celebration. Shortly after two in the morning on April 3, lawmakers passed a budget that greatly expanded the list of offenses and circumstances for which money bail could be set. Cuomo signed the budget later that day, and opponents of decarceration immediately called the expansion inadequate, setting the stage for battles over yet further expansion of bail in coming years.
For some observers, this backlash serves regrettably to confirm the dangers of incremental reform. “The press has mostly been like ‘Bail reform is amazing! They ended money bail,’” said Weiss before last week’s events. “But politicians only have a limited appetite for this; we didn’t end money bail. We ended money bail for some people. The carve-outs created a hole, and now they can try to push more people into the hole.”
For the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund, the revival of bail in New York has provoked further soul-searching, as its leadership and allies revisit familiar questions: Should the fund resume posting bail for criminal defendants? If it does, will it be enabling the state’s intransigent insistence on maximal pre-trial detention?
“The need to free people now is more urgent than ever,” Goldberg said. “The situation has changed, and we have to adapt. It’s back to the drawing board; all options are on the table.”
That’s the nature of this kind of work, Simonson, the law professor, said. “Politics, movements, the legal landscape, all shift over time in ways that can’t always be predicted,” she said. “Movements have to switch tactics as that happens. It’s moves and countermoves.” As the incremental progress of the movements to end mass incarceration inevitably meets with overt counterattacks and subtle co-optation, the trick for criminal justice advocates will be not to get caught in countermoves that lead them away from their ultimate goal.
This article was updated from the print version to reflect recent events in New York.


newrepublic--2020-04-06--Karl Marx’s Prophetic Longing

Karl Marx’s Prophetic Longing

Karl Marx was born more than two centuries ago , in 1818 , and , given the enormous impact of his ideas , it should hardly surprise us that we are still trying to make sense of his life and legacy .
In the English language alone , at least three major biographies have appeared since the turn of the millennium : Karl Marx : A Life by the British journalist Francis Wheen ( 2000 ) , Karl Marx : A Nineteenth-Century Life by the historian Jonathan Sperber ( 2013 ) , and Karl Marx : Greatness and Illusion by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2016 ) .
And then there is the massive , multivolume biography Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society by the German political scientist Michael Heinrich , of which only the first volume has appeared in an English translation , just last year .
With such a crowded field of contenders , even an enthusiast for Marx might be excused for asking if there is room for yet another biography , and what it could contribute to the fractious debates that surround his work .
The new biography is by Shlomo Avineri @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whose study The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx first appeared in 1968 and has long enjoyed the ambivalent status of a classic .
Moderate in its arguments , and written at a moment in the Cold War when the topic of Marx seldom inspired moderation , the book bore out the crucial point that Marx never intended his theories to assume the status of unbending , timeless laws ; he was always responsive to historical contingency , a talent that shines through most of all in his correspondence with contemporaries .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the crosscurrents of history : A stalwart of Labor Zionism , he has played a major role in both Israeli and international politics .
In the 1970s , he served as director-general of Israel ’ s Foreign Ministry under Yitzhak Rabin and headed the Israeli delegation to the UNESCO general assembly .
He has not ceased writing important works on the history of political thought , including a study of Hegel , and another work on the German-Jewish proto-Zionist philosopher Moses Hess , who was one of Marx ’ s interlocutors .
A @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appeared , and in the interim we have witnessed both the dissolution of the Soviet Union and , since the 1967 war ( if not before ) , the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land .
Both Zionism and Marxism were originally utopian movements , inspired by a longing for a future without oppression .
But neither has survived without tragic compromise .
To read a new work by Avineri is an experience tinged with melancholy , not least because the attempt to salvage something from the ruins of Labor Zionism today seems no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Messiah .
Still , we are permitted to wonder how Marx might have judged the stirrings of nationalist sentiment that were to transform Jewish history after his death , and it is Avineri ’ s concern for the complex question of Marx ’ s identity as a Jew that makes his new biography truly distinctive .
The book appears in the “ Jewish Lives ” series from Yale , a large and ongoing project of monographs on Jewish luminaries , some heroic ( Emma Goldman ) , some inspired ( Marcel Proust ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The series descends into American popular culture ( Barbra Streisand ) and ascends to what is arguably the most Jewish topic of them all : humor ( Groucho Marx , no relation ) .
Marx seldom wished to identify himself as a Jew , nor did he often write with sympathy about the general fortunes of the Jewish people .
All the more impressive , then , is Avineri ’ s skillful treatment of a theme that other biographers of Marx have rarely addressed without embarrassment .
Avineri is too sober to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ essential “ Jewishness ” of Marx ’ s thinking , nor does he distort the historical record to make his protagonist conform to the dubious template of a Jewish life .
His biography is a model of restraint , interlacing what is by now the rather familiar story of Marx ’ s career with concise but discerning insights into Marx ’ s achievements as a social theorist .
Along the way , he casts new light on the controversial question of Marx ’ s place in Jewish history—a task that may , however @ @ @ @ @ @ @ compelled to leave that history behind .
That Marx refused to be defined by any national identity may turn out to be the deepest lesson of his life .

It was also a matter of happenstance that Marx was born to parents who were still Jewish and not yet converts to Christianity. In 1815, the Rhineland’s new Prussian rulers revoked the rights that Jews there had enjoyed under Napoleonic rule. Those Jews in the Rhineland who had been practicing as lawyers or civil servants were now informed that they could retain their posts only if they converted to Christianity. Heinrich petitioned the state more than once for an exemption to this requirement, but to no avail, and at last he converted as a matter of necessity. It should be noted (though Avineri does not mention the fact) that Heinrich had little interest in his family’s faith: He placed his trust in the French Enlightenment and was even known to sing the “Marseillaise.” The actual date of Heinrich’s conversion remains a matter of debate: Avineri suggests that it occurred in 1819, which means that both Heinrich and his wife were still Jewish in the official sense when their son Karl was born. Henriette Marx, Karl’s mother, did not convert until 1825, at which point she also saw to it that her children, including Karl, were baptized.
None of these details should be taken as evidence that Karl Marx cared deeply about his Jewish heritage, if he cared at all. Avineri, to his credit, does not place undue stress on these matters, though one can imagine that for Marx the memory of communal discrimination would have enhanced his objections to the Prussian state as the embodiment of political reaction. It is perhaps relevant to note that Marx showed scant concern for marrying within the tribe. His father was friends with Ludwig von Westphalen, a liberal member of the Prussian nobility who served as an official in Trier, and the young Marx became engaged to and eventually married his daughter, Jenny von Westphalen, an intellectually gifted woman who shared his political passions and with whom he raised three daughters.
Though Marx went to the university in Bonn with the intention of studying law, he soon moved to Berlin, where he was drawn into the “Doktoren-Klub,” a group of students that ignited his enthusiasm for Hegelianism as the leading philosophy of the time. Though Hegel himself had died in 1831, his philosophical doctrines were still in vogue at the University of Berlin when Marx began his studies there in the later 1830s. He took a special interest in lectures by Hegel’s student Eduard Gans, the main exponent of Hegelianism in Berlin and also, as it happens, a Jewish convert to Christianity. As Avineri notes, Gans could not have secured his professorship without taking this step, which became a subject of some controversy among Berlin’s intellectuals. The poet Heinrich Heine even made it the topic of a poem: “you crawled towards the cross / That same cross which you detested... / Yesterday you were a hero / But today you’re just a scoundrel.”


newrepublic--2020-04-06--Could the Coronavirus End Jair Bolsonaro’s Presidency?

As state and local authorities attempt to ban all large gatherings , Bolsonaro has continued to undermine their efforts .
On March 29 , he visited a shopping mall and open-air market in Brasília to suggest that there was no danger .
He has stepped in to keep churches open , deeming them “ essential services , ” despite their high risk of spreading contagion through mass assemblies .
His “ Brazil Can not Stop ” social media campaign urged people back to work—before a federal judge barred further promotion at the end of March .
On Thursday , he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus lacked courage .
In an April 2 interview , in which he sought to defend the blasé attitude of Brazil ’ s federal government in the face of rising international condemnation , foreign minister Ernesto Araújo feigned respect for the WHO while subtly downplaying its standing : “ I think it is important that people bear this in mind , that the WHO is formed by its member states , and that the recommendations of its secretariat , headed by the director general ( Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus ) , while certainly relevant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I think that the Director-General himself presents them as mandatory , he does not intend to tell the countries exactly what the measures of each should be .
It would be impossible for a body to have the capacity to determine measures for 200 different countries.
” Araújo posited a lack of global consensus around containment strategies , asserting that “ there does not seem to be a single approach .
The approaches of each country are also changing daily , evolving in different ways .
Everyone recognizes the seriousness of the challenge.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s strategy so far : erring on the side of doing too little rather than too much , and , when questioned about this approach , exaggerating the uncertainty about how to stop the spread of the virus .
In addressing the pandemic , Bolsonaro ’ s government has drawn from the repertoire of dissimulation it has resorted to when facing prior public relations crises , whether over allegations of corruption or its apparent countenance of deforestation in the Amazon .
To parry criticism from abroad , the administration calls it an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ duly elected president .
Domestically , he casts any attack as a boon to an opposition that , in reality , remains fragmented and unpopular .
More than anything , Bolsonaro ’ s political fortunes have thrived on a diet of conspiracy theories and siege mentality .
First , his party insisted that the moderate leftism of the PT , a party whose luminaries have been applauded by the likes of George W. Bush and Barack Obama , would inevitably and intentionally turn Latin America ’ s largest country into Maduro ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was supported by voters and voices from the center to the far right of the political spectrum .
Then came the idea that foreign leaders and international organizations were playing up the damage caused by fires in the Amazon as a way of ultimately wresting the rain forest out of Brazilian hands .
On this point , Bolsonaro also drew considerable if decidedly less support .
Now , casting doubt on the propriety of WHO prescriptions , the government has found itself appealing solely to its most fervent base—Pentecostal pastors with megachurches in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clear : Covid-19 is not an abstract threat that can be invoked with little consequence and manipulated to fit immediate political needs .
It is real , it is here , and it is killing people .
His political strategy of diminishing returns , confronted with reality , appears on its last legs .
The most glaring evidence that Bolsonaro ’ s discursive strategy has hit a wall is the fact that governors who until recently were vocal supporters have refused to join his crusade against social distancing .
The turning point came @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the risk of contagion , encouraged his supporters to take to the streets to strengthen his hand in ongoing negotiations over a tax reform bill , among other issues .
Ronaldo Caiado , the conservative governor of Goiás who ran for president in 1989 , turned up at one of these rallies .
Caiado began his speech by presenting his anti-left credentials to enthusiastic applause from the crowd .
He reiterated his support for the president , garnering even more cheers from the faithful .
“ But before anything else , I ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the crowd cooling as it became clear where Caiado was headed .
In the end , boos rained down on him as he shouted for protesters to go home .
By the end of the month , Caiado , an influential voice with deep ties to the powerful agricultural lobby , had broken with the president .
The governor of São Paulo , João Doria , who rode the Bolsonaro wave to higher office in 2018 , has also turned on him .
“ It ’ s not rational to make [ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lives political , especially those who are poor and vulnerable , ” Doria said , criticizing Bolsonaro for politicizing the crisis .

In an April 2 interview, in which he sought to defend the blasé attitude of Brazil’s federal government in the face of rising international condemnation, foreign minister Ernesto Araújo feigned respect for the WHO while subtly downplaying its standing: “I think it is important that people bear this in mind, that the WHO is formed by its member states, and that the recommendations of its secretariat, headed by the director general (Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus), while certainly relevant, are not mandatory. Nor do I think that the Director-General himself presents them as mandatory, he does not intend to tell the countries exactly what the measures of each should be. It would be impossible for a body to have the capacity to determine measures for 200 different countries.” Araújo posited a lack of global consensus around containment strategies, asserting that “there does not seem to be a single approach. The approaches of each country are also changing daily, evolving in different ways. Everyone recognizes the seriousness of the challenge.” The quote neatly encapsulates the administration’s strategy so far: erring on the side of doing too little rather than too much, and, when questioned about this approach, exaggerating the uncertainty about how to stop the spread of the virus.
In addressing the pandemic, Bolsonaro’s government has drawn from the repertoire of dissimulation it has resorted to when facing prior public relations crises, whether over allegations of corruption or its apparent countenance of deforestation in the Amazon. To parry criticism from abroad, the administration calls it an attempt to undermine the legitimacy of a duly elected president. Domestically, he casts any attack as a boon to an opposition that, in reality, remains fragmented and unpopular. More than anything, Bolsonaro’s political fortunes have thrived on a diet of conspiracy theories and siege mentality. First, his party insisted that the moderate leftism of the PT, a party whose luminaries have been applauded by the likes of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, would inevitably and intentionally turn Latin America’s largest country into Maduro’s Venezuela. On this point, Bolsonaro was supported by voters and voices from the center to the far right of the political spectrum. Then came the idea that foreign leaders and international organizations were playing up the damage caused by fires in the Amazon as a way of ultimately wresting the rain forest out of Brazilian hands. On this point, Bolsonaro also drew considerable if decidedly less support. Now, casting doubt on the propriety of WHO prescriptions, the government has found itself appealing solely to its most fervent base—Pentecostal pastors with megachurches in particular. The problem for Bolsonaro is clear: Covid-19 is not an abstract threat that can be invoked with little consequence and manipulated to fit immediate political needs. It is real, it is here, and it is killing people. His political strategy of diminishing returns, confronted with reality, appears on its last legs.
The most glaring evidence that Bolsonaro’s discursive strategy has hit a wall is the fact that governors who until recently were vocal supporters have refused to join his crusade against social distancing. The turning point came last month when the president, despite the risk of contagion, encouraged his supporters to take to the streets to strengthen his hand in ongoing negotiations over a tax reform bill, among other issues. Ronaldo Caiado, the conservative governor of Goiás who ran for president in 1989, turned up at one of these rallies. Caiado began his speech by presenting his anti-left credentials to enthusiastic applause from the crowd. He reiterated his support for the president, garnering even more cheers from the faithful. “But before anything else, I’m a doctor,” he declared, the crowd cooling as it became clear where Caiado was headed. In the end, boos rained down on him as he shouted for protesters to go home. By the end of the month, Caiado, an influential voice with deep ties to the powerful agricultural lobby, had broken with the president. The governor of São Paulo, João Doria, who rode the Bolsonaro wave to higher office in 2018, has also turned on him. “It’s not rational to make [public] health and people’s lives political, especially those who are poor and vulnerable,” Doria said, criticizing Bolsonaro for politicizing the crisis.


newrepublic--2020-04-06--On Being White and Broke in America

On Being White and Broke in America

The term “ white working class ” itself is a political fiction meant to carve out white workers as an exception to the strains and stresses of working-class experience , permitting certain self-appointed defenders of their alleged cultural birthright to pretend that their needs and concerns are somehow distinct from those of other workers .
Jolie cuts through the noise by referring to herself and her family as “ white trash ” —another phrase with a complex and visceral political history .
That history was brilliantly elucidated in 2016 in Nancy Isenberg ’ s White Trash : The 400-Year Untold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the media elite and a newly influential white nationalist pundit class alike seized upon the rhetoric of white working-class exclusion as a rationale for Donald Trump ’ s bogus calling card as a populist political leader .
Jolie adopts Dolly Parton as her muse as she finds gradual recognition within Cleveland ’ s queer femme community ; she describes this particular state of trashiness as a rejection of respectability , a beautiful sort of grotesquerie that is “ overabundant in everything but cash.
” She pays tribute to the big hair and loud @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and to her own defiant penchant for spangles and high heels .
Her use of “ white trash ” —like the kindred adoption of “ queer ” in LGBTQ+ activist circles—is a reclamation of identity through a term long employed as a stigma , even if it may potentially provoke some outrage from within the broader community she ’ s describing .
The stories of the white working class and those of other folks living in poverty don ’ t always overlap , but oftentimes—and especially in this cruel country—they are one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ make the universal quality of such struggles resonate powerfully for their readers by describing how rapidly a brief respite of comfort can plunge into hopeless despair .
As she recounts it , her sense of well-being as she came of age depended entirely upon the dates on the calendar between her family ’ s last paycheck and next rent payment—and could evaporate entirely in the wake of an unexpected financial hit .
Jolie , describing a lecture she gave on the spatial and temporal nature of class to her own students at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ My mom lives in a trailer in Ohio now , she ’ s on welfare , but a long time she wasn ’ t , but before that we were.
” She continues , “ My grandparents were fine though .
And so that ’ s one reason I ’ m here—because for a period we had enough money to not be on welfare , and because when my mom didn ’ t have the money , my grandparents gave me a $ 500 check to reserve a dorm room.
” Jolie ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a piece with the other recent memoirs by white working-class writers finding a perch , and a voice , for themselves in a social order designed to render them invisible and unheard .
Linda Tirado , a proudly foul-mouthed writer and political activist who wrote her 2014 poor person ’ s polemic , Hand to Mouth : Living in Bootstrap America , after an essay she wrote called “ Why I Make Terrible Decisions , or , Poverty Thoughts ” went massively viral in 2013 .
In her book , Tirado breaks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of living in poverty and working multiple low-wage jobs to scrape by .
Sizing up her own pariah status in a culture fetishizing upward mobility and professional-managerial success , she is understandably pissed off about all of it—the cockroaches , the fatigue , the glib judgments of her character based on small signifiers of class belonging , such as the “ bad teeth ” that hinder her job opportunities in a society that expects women to look shiny and perfect 24/7 .
Her writing is personal , and she pulls no punches ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s doled out a few ) .
As she wrote then , “ If the average rich person had to walk around for a day wearing a polyester work uniform , they ’ d need a Xanax .
Poverty , or poor , or working class—whatever level of not enough you ’ re at—you feel it in a million tiny ways .
Sometimes it ’ s the condescension ; sometimes it ’ s that you ’ re itchy.
” In contrast , Maid : Hard Work , Low Pay , and a Mother @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Land ’ s riveting , often heartbreaking 2019 account of her time as a house cleaner , offsets the drudgery with small rays of hope .
There ’ s even a happy ending—a luxury that so few working-class people ever get to enjoy without scraping their fingers down to the bone .
( Though even then , the book ’ s closing moment of uplift seems uncertain and provisional . )
Like Jolie , Land finds herself navigating complicated , unfulfilling dead-end relationships with men who care little about her inner life .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ pregnancy and , later , a daughter , Land ’ s world shrinks , and her top priority becomes the struggle to keep her child safe , no matter how much government red tape she has to scissor through or how many filthy toilets she has to scrub .
Once again , survival is the goal ; the happy ending is a footnote .

The stories of the white working class and those of other folks living in poverty don’t always overlap, but oftentimes—and especially in this cruel country—they are one and the same. Writers like Jolie make the universal quality of such struggles resonate powerfully for their readers by describing how rapidly a brief respite of comfort can plunge into hopeless despair. As she recounts it, her sense of well-being as she came of age depended entirely upon the dates on the calendar between her family’s last paycheck and next rent payment—and could evaporate entirely in the wake of an unexpected financial hit. Jolie, describing a lecture she gave on the spatial and temporal nature of class to her own students at the University of Minnesota, writes, “My mom lives in a trailer in Ohio now, she’s on welfare, but a long time she wasn’t, but before that we were.” She continues, “My grandparents were fine though. And so that’s one reason I’m here—because for a period we had enough money to not be on welfare, and because when my mom didn’t have the money, my grandparents gave me a $500 check to reserve a dorm room.”
Jolie’s saga of hard-won personal reclamation is of a piece with the other recent memoirs by white working-class writers finding a perch, and a voice, for themselves in a social order designed to render them invisible and unheard. Linda Tirado, a proudly foul-mouthed writer and political activist who wrote her 2014 poor person’s polemic, Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America, after an essay she wrote called “Why I Make Terrible Decisions, or, Poverty Thoughts” went massively viral in 2013. In her book, Tirado breaks down myths and questions about the realities of living in poverty and working multiple low-wage jobs to scrape by. Sizing up her own pariah status in a culture fetishizing upward mobility and professional-managerial success, she is understandably pissed off about all of it—the cockroaches, the fatigue, the glib judgments of her character based on small signifiers of class belonging, such as the “bad teeth” that hinder her job opportunities in a society that expects women to look shiny and perfect 24/7. Her writing is personal, and she pulls no punches (though one gets the impression she’s doled out a few). As she wrote then, “If the average rich person had to walk around for a day wearing a polyester work uniform, they’d need a Xanax. Poverty, or poor, or working class—whatever level of not enough you’re at—you feel it in a million tiny ways. Sometimes it’s the condescension; sometimes it’s that you’re itchy.”
In contrast, Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay, and a Mother’s Will to Survive, Stephanie Land’s riveting, often heartbreaking 2019 account of her time as a house cleaner, offsets the drudgery with small rays of hope. There’s even a happy ending—a luxury that so few working-class people ever get to enjoy without scraping their fingers down to the bone. (Though even then, the book’s closing moment of uplift seems uncertain and provisional.) Like Jolie, Land finds herself navigating complicated, unfulfilling dead-end relationships with men who care little about her inner life. When one such relationship results in a pregnancy and, later, a daughter, Land’s world shrinks, and her top priority becomes the struggle to keep her child safe, no matter how much government red tape she has to scissor through or how many filthy toilets she has to scrub. Once again, survival is the goal; the happy ending is a footnote.


newrepublic--2020-04-05--The Republican Plot Against Voting Turns Deadly

Universal voting by mail , I noted last month , is essential to maintain the integrity of state , local , and federal elections during the pandemic .
Without it , tens of millions of Americans could be compelled to stand in line at polling places in close proximity to one another just to participate in the democratic process .
The nation ’ s ersatz army of poll workers , many of whom are old enough to fall within the highest-risk groups for Covid-19 , would be placing themselves at risk for constant exposure .
Many of these poll workers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to put themselves in danger , which could potentially grind the electoral system to a halt .
That ’ s what ’ s happening in Wisconsin right now .
A federal judge rejected a legal bid to delay the election on Thursday night but agreed to extend absentee voter registration and take other steps after hearing testimony about the looming crisis .
“ In the city of Madison , 67 percent of poll workers are over 60 years of age , falling within the at-risk category for COVID-19 , and 32 percent of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in-person voting shifts , ” he wrote .
“ Madison also limited in-person absentee voting to curbside voting and eliminated voting at other early voting locations .
Similarly , the city of Milwaukee has reported that it no longer has sufficient staff to operate its three , in-person early voting locations , also eliminating the ability to register in-person before the election , although as the intervening defendants point out , drive-up early voting remains available through April 5.
” Those intervening defendants—the state and national Republican Party—said they would appeal the ruling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t seem to interest Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald or House Speaker Robin Vos .
Instead they seemed more eager to pin the blame on Evers ’ s “ feckless leadership , ” a fairly ironic criticism given the underlying circumstances .
“ Our Republic must continue to function , and the many local government positions on the ballot must be filled so that municipalities can swiftly respond to the crisis at hand , ” they said in a joint statement shortly after Evers ’ s announcement of a special session .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Evers has supported for weeks : the election should continue as planned on Tuesday.
” The most charitable explanation for this behavior would be a bizarre form of muscle memory .
Perhaps 10 years of relentless voter suppression have now left the Republican Party ill-equipped to reckon with the pandemic ’ s looming threat to elections .
Maybe they have too thoroughly trained themselves to see the false specter of voter fraud in even the most justified expansions of voter access .
But the likelier explanation is that conservatives are so constitutionally incapable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ system that isn ’ t rigged in their favor that they ’ re willing to risk the lives of others to maintain the status quo .

That’s what’s happening in Wisconsin right now. A federal judge rejected a legal bid to delay the election on Thursday night but agreed to extend absentee voter registration and take other steps after hearing testimony about the looming crisis. “In the city of Madison, 67 percent of poll workers are over 60 years of age, falling within the at-risk category for COVID-19, and 32 percent of poll workers have canceled their assigned, in-person voting shifts,” he wrote. “Madison also limited in-person absentee voting to curbside voting and eliminated voting at other early voting locations. Similarly, the city of Milwaukee has reported that it no longer has sufficient staff to operate its three, in-person early voting locations, also eliminating the ability to register in-person before the election, although as the intervening defendants point out, drive-up early voting remains available through April 5.”
Those intervening defendants—the state and national Republican Party—said they would appeal the ruling. Preventing this impending disaster also doesn’t seem to interest Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald or House Speaker Robin Vos. Instead they seemed more eager to pin the blame on Evers’s “feckless leadership,” a fairly ironic criticism given the underlying circumstances. “Our Republic must continue to function, and the many local government positions on the ballot must be filled so that municipalities can swiftly respond to the crisis at hand,” they said in a joint statement shortly after Evers’s announcement of a special session. “We continue to support what Governor Evers has supported for weeks: the election should continue as planned on Tuesday.”
The most charitable explanation for this behavior would be a bizarre form of muscle memory.
The most charitable explanation for this behavior would be a bizarre form of muscle memory. Perhaps 10 years of relentless voter suppression have now left the Republican Party ill-equipped to reckon with the pandemic’s looming threat to elections. Maybe they have too thoroughly trained themselves to see the false specter of voter fraud in even the most justified expansions of voter access. But the likelier explanation is that conservatives are so constitutionally incapable of tolerating the possibility of an election system that isn’t rigged in their favor that they’re willing to risk the lives of others to maintain the status quo.


newrepublic--2020-04-04--Keeping Up With the Cuomos

Keeping Up With the Cuomos

Culture is in a deep freeze .
Streaming TV may be gleefully releasing bingeable properties at a pre-crisis clip , but even Netflix will , at some point , run out of shows , since nothing is being produced .
Movie theaters are closed .
Every book release that can be delayed is being delayed .
No one will see any live music until summer , at the absolute earliest .
Cable news has rushed into the void .
The president ’ s daily briefings have a lot in common with Donald Trump ’ s pre-presidency gig , The Apprentice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for all its dead-serious subject matter , the program has developed the structure , rhythm , and characters of a weekly reality show , ” The New York Times ’ television critic James Poniewozik wrote earlier this week .
“ The briefings allow him to turn his pandemic response from a serial narrative , in which he ’ s held accountable for his cumulative action or inaction over time , into an episodic production , in which all that matters is what happened in the latest installment.
” Counter-programming has emerged , however @ @ @ @ @ @ @ New York , has taken the role as the president ’ s foil .
With Joe Biden perpetually restarting his modem in Delaware , and with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer spending their energy amassing tax breaks for the upper-middle class , Cuomo has been the Democrats ’ closest thing to a leader .
Cuomo has his own supporting cast .
His daughters make cameos in his own daily briefings , offering teachable moments about the importance of family .
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is both antagonist and comic relief @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laugh track .

Culture is in a deep freeze. Streaming TV may be gleefully releasing bingeable properties at a pre-crisis clip, but even Netflix will, at some point, run out of shows, since nothing is being produced. Movie theaters are closed. Every book release that can be delayed is being delayed. No one will see any live music until summer, at the absolute earliest.
Cable news has rushed into the void. The president’s daily briefings have a lot in common with Donald Trump’s pre-presidency gig, The Apprentice. “In its short life, for all its dead-serious subject matter, the program has developed the structure, rhythm, and characters of a weekly reality show,” The New York Times’ television critic James Poniewozik wrote earlier this week. “The briefings allow him to turn his pandemic response from a serial narrative, in which he’s held accountable for his cumulative action or inaction over time, into an episodic production, in which all that matters is what happened in the latest installment.”


newrepublic--2020-04-03--A Death Toll That Cannot Be Forgotten

A Death Toll That Cannot Be Forgotten

On Tuesday , the number of American coronavirus casualties reached a grim milestone .
Over 4,000 deaths had been recorded , officially surpassing the number of Americans killed on September 11 .
The shock of those nearly 3,000 dead led to nearly 20 years of war , which killed hundreds of thousands abroad and reordered politics and the habits of daily life here at home .
As of today , April 3 , the pandemic has taken over 6,000 American lives , more than double that number .
The most influential projection of American coronavirus casualties remains last month ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which estimated that 2.2 million Americans would die if nothing at all was done to slow the spread of the virus and that over a million would die if , as the president proposed as recently as last week , American life proceeded mostly as normal with limited mitigation efforts aimed at protecting the most vulnerable .
In recent days , those figures have been cited by the White House less to illustrate how grave the situation is than to anchor rhetoric about how well the administration has handled the response .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2.2 million people if we did nothing , ” Trump said at Sunday ’ s press briefing .
“ If we didn ’ t do the distancing , if we didn ’ t do all of the things that we ’ re doing.
” Trump went on to mention a lower potential death toll repeated by Drs .
Deborah Birx and Anthony Fauci : Given the measures already taken , the White House believes America could see 100,000 to 200,000 deaths before the virus runs its course .
“ If we can hold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saying , to 100,000 , ” the president said , “ maybe even less , but to 100,000 ; so we have between 100 and 200,000—we all , together , have done a very good job.
” A similar projection of 100,000 to 240,000 dead appeared on a chart that outlined the administration ’ s “ goals of community mitigation ” at Tuesday ’ s press conference .
“ We don ’ t accept that number , that that ’ s what it ’ s going to be , ” Fauci stressed .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ everything we can to get it even significantly below that.
” But the president characterized the estimate differently .
“ When you see 100,000 people , ” he said , “ that ’ s a minimum number.
” Trump ’ s public attitude now is miles from his attitude in late February , when he tweeted that the coronavirus was “ very much under control in the USA ” and claimed at a press briefing that the then 15 active cases in the country would soon decline “ down to close to zero.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cases has exploded to over a quarter of a million .
Casualties will continue to mount , partially as a consequence of the administration ’ s mismanagement of the crisis—from the catastrophic testing failures to the White House ’ s inability and outright refusals to provide states with equipment .
On Thursday , Jared Kushner chided those expecting a distribution of resources from strategic federal stockpiles .
“ The notion of the federal stockpile was , it ’ s supposed to be our stockpile , ” he said .
“ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they then use .
”

War is always the natural metaphor because war is the only kind of existential threat comprehensible to the public mind.
Belatedly, Trump is now trying to rustle the skeptics into a different frame of mind. He’s calling himself a wartime president. Even his critics have utilized this frame, evaluating him on how well or how poorly he’s managed to put the nation on a war footing against the virus. War is always the natural metaphor because war is the only kind of existential threat comprehensible to the public mind. As climate activists have learned, there is great rhetorical power in framing diffuse, complex problems and systemic failures in these terms. A pandemic and the dynamics underpinning climate change are categorically different kinds of threats than those signaled by a Pearl Harbor or a 9/11. But this is the way you get the public’s attention. In this particular case, the war metaphor has both elevated the president’s stature, however briefly, in the eyes of American voters and extended further the extraordinary amount of respectful deference already granted him by certain members of the press, who noted his shift to a more presidential register in recent days.
It was reported this week that the Biden campaign is setting up a call with the White House to offer Trump more pointers on how he might better manage the crisis. On Thursday, Biden explained his reasoning to attendees of a virtual fundraiser. “The president is the commander in chief,” he said. “He should act like a commander in chief now. He can in fact make the whole federal government function and help the states coordinate everything.” It’s unlikely that Biden would actually say anything to Trump that he doesn’t already know or isn’t being told. But the intent, on Biden’s part, seems clear. The pitch for a return to normalcy will not be as convincing if the campaign doesn’t have the normal, expected interactions with Trump—interactions that in themselves imply that Trump is a normal president.
As difficult as it is to remember now, all the energy expended by Democrats early in the administration—the days of safety pins and pussy hats—was spent to avoid exactly this, and one struggles to imagine how anyone back then would have accepted the state of things now: a political situation in which the president can concede 100,000 or more Americans will die on his watch without his resignation being seriously discussed. Whatever happens in November, Trump has won, even in what ought to be his darkest hour, at least a meaningful amount of acquiescence. And this, perhaps more than any other reason, is cause for pessimism about the aftermath of all this—a cause for suspicion that things will recover without being remade.


newrepublic--2020-04-16--Is This the End of the Indie Bookstore?

Is This the End of the Indie Bookstore?

Now , like many small businesses , bookstores are on life support .
Closed to the public , they can ’ t do the thing that they do best : bring people together .
Some are still holding events on Zoom , but they lack the commercial and cultural benefits of in-person events .
( There is a sense in the industry that the streaming events are a waste of time , requiring a fair amount of labor for little reward . )
“ I don ’ t know if we ’ re going to have an event again for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ We ’ re not a bookstore that ’ s reliant on events to stay open like so many are—for them it ’ s going to be particularly tough.
” Many are rapidly transitioning to online retail .
“ We effectively now are a fulfillment center , ” said Brad Johnson , owner of Oakland , California ’ s East Bay Booksellers .
“ We ’ re learning .
We ’ re better at it than we were three works ago .
Some of those early orders I ’ m sure we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , some days you feel like you get a handle on it .
It ’ s pretty monotonous .
It doesn ’ t really resemble at all what we were doing.
” Tom Roberge , who owns the Provide , Rhode Island–based Riffraff , talked to me while waiting to hear from a web designer .
In lieu of a functional online store , he has been taking orders via email .
Approximating the in-person experience is key he claimed .
“ You process every single order yourself , you thank everyone effusively @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do everything you can to let your customers know you appreciate it—all those little things .
I don ’ t want to make it out like I ’ m doing some community service but people being able to email a business and talk to somebody—even if it ’ s just email—and interact when they ’ re otherwise just shut up in their apartments ?
That is valuable.
” The emergence of Bookshop.org , a new website that connects independent bookstores with consumers , has been a boon to many stores without online shopping @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bookstores in the country and only 150 of them have good online shopping platforms , ” Andy Hunter , the company ’ s CEO , told Inside Hook .
“ That leaves a lot of stores that haven ’ t adapted and Amazon ’ s kind of eating their lunch.
” Stores that participate collect 30 percent of profits , about two-thirds of what they would receive selling directly to consumers .

Tom Roberge, who owns the Providence, Rhode Island–based Riffraff, talked to me while waiting to hear from a web designer. In lieu of a functional online store, he has been taking orders via email. Approximating the in-person experience is key, he claimed. “You process every single order yourself, you thank everyone effusively,” Roberge said. “You do everything you can to let your customers know you appreciate it—all those little things. I don’t want to make it out like I’m doing some community service but people being able to email a business and talk to somebody—even if it’s just email—and interact when they’re otherwise just shut up in their apartments? That is valuable.”
The emergence of Bookshop.org, a new website that connects independent bookstores with consumers, has been a boon to many stores without online shopping capabilities. “There are almost 2,000 bookstores in the country and only 150 of them have good online shopping platforms,” Andy Hunter, the company’s CEO, told Inside Hook. “That leaves a lot of stores that haven’t adapted and Amazon’s kind of eating their lunch.” Stores that participate collect 30 percent of profits, about two-thirds of what they would receive selling directly to consumers.
For stores without online shopping capabilities, these are particularly dire times. Last week, City Lights, which does not do internet sales and has been closed since March 18, turned to GoFundMe. It raised more than $450,000, a figure that CEO Elaine Katzenberger told me still might not be enough. The store has to “build a bridge to get us to the place where we could have some capital to pay the bills that are coming due,” she said. “There is some relief happening but it’s temporary. We still have to pay for things that are coming due. We haven’t furloughed employees, so there’s wages and health care.” Raising money “was an attempt to stabilize us while we hope to access to whatever federal and local funds become available—and those aren’t guaranteed to become available.”


newrepublic--2020-04-16--Breaking the Grip of White Grievance

Breaking the Grip of White Grievance

Until the mid-1960s , the party of Lincoln was a favorite of black America .
Republican lawmakers helped craft and pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 .
Then the party failed a test of character .
The breakup of the erstwhile Democratic Solid South over passage of the civil rights laws opened the region to Republican opportunism .
In fairly short order , the Republicans forgot Lincoln and became the new home of aggrieved Southern whites .
Of the 22 U.S. senators now representing states of the old Confederacy , only three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hard to tell if the Republicans captured the South , or the South captured the Republicans .
The moderate and/or Northern wing of the party has withered .
It once produced lions like Jacob Javits of New York , Mark Hatfield of Oregon , Richard Nixon of California , and Warren Rudman of New Hampshire .
Today , of the 22 senators from the West Coast and Northeast , only one—Senator Susan Collins of Maine—is a Republican .
There ’ s another recent parable in the politics of white grievance that the national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ heart as it seeks to adapt to broader demographic shifts in the country .
In 1994 , California Republicans—most notably Governor Pete Wilson—leaned hard into an anti-immigrant platform .
They embraced Proposition 187 , a successful ballot measure that aimed to curtail state services for undocumented immigrants .
This was a dramatic reversal of GOP tactics .
It seemed smart at the time , as Wilson coasted to reelection in 1994 .
Reagan ’ s America had appealed to Hispanic voters , and Reagan himself signed a landmark reform law that granted amnesty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In 1988 , I went door to door in Orange County , California—then the home of Republican conservatism—with two young Reagan-era congressmen , Representatives Dana Rohrabacher and Christopher Cox .
They targeted , and were warmly welcomed by , Hispanic and Asian American working families , homeowners , and small businesspeople .
They bonded with such supporters over shared family values and conservative beliefs about work and opportunity .
Back in Washington , Republicans like conservative strategist and anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist strove to secure their allegiance , and that of other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the years after Reagan left office .
But Proposition 187 was a wake-up call to California ’ s slumbering Hispanic community that it needed to get politically active—and it signaled just as strongly that the Democrats were more welcoming than Republicans .
The anti-immigration movement was different from an environmental referendum or a tax cut—it was about taking things away and hurting people because their skin was darker , their accent was different , and their parents came from another place .
There is no bigger prize in presidential politics than California , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ culture and economy .
In the late twentieth century , as Republicans put Californians on all but two national tickets from 1952 to 1984 , the state went Republican in nine of 11 presidential elections that preceded Proposition 187 .
Since 1992 , and the advent of anti-immigration politics , it ’ s gone to the Democrats in every single election .
There are signs that Texas , due to changing demographics , may be the next Electoral College giant to turn from red , if not to blue , then at least @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is competitive is , for Democrats , a potential harbinger of broader shifts in the electorate : No Democrat has been elected to statewide office in Texas since 1994 ; no Democratic presidential candidate has carried the state since Jimmy Carter .
It ’ s not outlandish to think that the Texas electorate could change dramatically this year .
Though former Democratic Congressman Beto O ’ Rourke ultimately lost the Senate race against Republican Ted Cruz in 2018 , he came within 3 points of upsetting the incumbent , and Democrats nurture hope @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Virginia—where another bookend of the Confederacy has traveled from red to purple to blue .
Turnout in the Democratic primary was up , the state and national parties are targeting half a dozen suburban congressional districts , and two of every five Texans is now under 30 .
At the very least , a competitive Texas will force Republicans to spend money in defense of their base , instead of carrying the fight exclusively to the Great Lakes battlegrounds .
Given such opportunities before , however , the Democrats failed to capitalize @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for navigating out of the worst parts of the 2008 financial crash , the passage of the Affordable Care Act , and his dignified and ethical performance as president .
But presidents are politicians , and in the politics of succession , Obama failed miserably .
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean had a 50-state strategy to build the party ’ s grassroots organization and to mount competitive races throughout the country .
In his first term as president , Obama made scores of trips to the swing states he would need @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ohio , Nevada , and Colorado .
He was a fixture in Wisconsin , Michigan , and Pennsylvania .
But by my count , over his eight years as president , he visited Kentucky , Oklahoma , Mississippi , Nebraska , Kansas , Montana , Arkansas , and South Dakota but once .
He went twice to South Carolina , twice to Oklahoma , and just three times to West Virginia and Alabama .
He went to Utah once , Idaho once , and Wyoming not at all .
He visited Texas 15 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The result was predictable—and devastating to the party ’ s longer-term standing and organizing efforts .
On Obama ’ s watch , the Democratic Party lost a dozen U.S. Senate seats , 13 governorships , 816 seats in state legislatures—and the White House to Donald Trump .
Obama ’ s election seemed , for an interlude , to have borne out the old abolitionist axiom that the arc of the moral universe bends slowly , but it bends inevitably toward justice .
The 2008 financial crisis gave the Democrats control of the White @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and they did great things with that power : saving the U.S. auto industry , passing the ACA , expanding Medicaid , and making the tax code fairer .
But Democrats are generally better at palliatives—at easing your pain than at curing the malady .
The archives of the Clinton presidency , of Robert Reich ’ s Labor Department , and leaders of Congress like Ted Kennedy are filled with forgotten plans for worker retraining programs and other remedies for globalization and the decline of American manufacturing .
The Democrats supported two booming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ donors in both industries favored free-trade deals like NAFTA , and the low wages brought by legal , and illegal , immigration .
Obama ’ s cool was an asset as he campaigned for the presidency during the fall of 2008 .
His advisers—mostly Wall Street types—waved him off any response to the crisis that might frighten fellow investors , let alone come off as populist .
The Tea Party Republicans exploited that lapse .
He may well have done better , in the larger political picture , to have thrown a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to say what Trump would have done , had he been in the White House in that chaotic season when Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed and the other Wall Street investment banks seemed next .
With the arrival of the coronavirus , we may now find out .
The front pages carry warnings of recession—and Trump has mostly sought to stave off that specter with a series of tax cuts and Fed rate cuts aimed at calming a jittery investment sector .
But we know what Trump did on the outside of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Exploiting nativist fears , calling for black protesters to be beaten up , Trump was able to ignite latent feelings—to “ activate long-standing sentiments , ” as Sides and his fellow authors put it—that other groups were getting favored treatment over white Americans .
Already Trump and several prominent conservatives are starting a similar scapegoating campaign around the coronavirus crisis , making it appear to be the handiwork of sinister geopolitical rivals in China and North Korea .
Such efforts have a long-standing pedigree in American politics , especially on the right .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and anxieties that were already present and even well established within the party .
His support was hiding in plain sight , ” Sides and his colleagues wrote .
“ The importance of economic insecurity was most apparent when economic sentiments were refracted through group identities .
Worries about losing a job were less strongly associated with Trump support than were concerns about whites losing jobs to minorities.
” The authors call this “ racialized economics.
” Can Trump make this tactic work again ?
Will rank scapegoating suffice to dispel Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on his watch that critics are saying he ’ s exacerbated via his negligent preparation for the coronavirus pandemic ?
We ’ ll know the answer by November .
There are two kinds of elections , says Tad Devine : change elections , and referenda on incumbents .
“ Last time out was a change election .
It is all about Trump this time , ” says Devine , the chief strategist for the Sanders 2016 campaign .
“ The president is vulnerable .
Look at his reelect number—the percentage of people who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is the one that fascinates me .
He consistently has not been able to reach 50 percent—while the number of people who say they will absolutely , under no condition vote to reelect him is 50 percent or above.
” “ On the other hand , ” says Devine , “ the guy is ferocious .
He has no boundaries—including that which got him impeached—using his office for his political advantage .
And he has enormous financial resources this time.
” Gathered around the long oval table , munching on chips and veggie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a dozen of the brightest students at Vanderbilt University were asked to name the most important challenge confronting their generation .
No .
These were all concerns , but the biggest threat to their happiness , these fourth-year students said , was maintaining their humanity in the face of sweeping technological change .
They jostled to offer examples : Employers buying robots to replace human workers .
Truth challenged by counterfeit imagery .
Smartphones wrecking their attention spans .
Estrangement from the natural environment .
Social media sites that harvest and sell @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Internet pornography recasting desire .
Political discourse twisted by bots and trolls .
Commercial apps mining online sessions and using the findings to manipulate their longings .
How would they seek to meet these challenges ?
They shrugged and shook their heads .
It was all so overwhelming .
Technological transformation seemed ungovernable .
March has brought us verities , data , and a plague—together with a new set of questions that are already reshaping the 2020 campaign .
How many Never Trump Republicans will stay home , or pull the lever @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in November ?
Will black and Hispanic and Asian American voters be motivated by their distaste for Trump to turn out on Election Day with the zeal they displayed in the Obama years ?
Will the chaos in the stock market caused by the coronavirus crisis rouse formerly complacent voters who had otherwise been disinclined to change horses in Washington ?
Are we headed for a recession that will , as in 2008 , bring white voters back into the Democratic fold ?
Even as a referendum on Trump and his presidency , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the future—about the prospect of deep and abiding change .
And , in the actions of younger voters on Election Day , we will likely get a strong sign of whether Trumpism is an aberration , or a new and permanent addition to our politics .
So far , the auguries are mixed .
In the opening round of contests , Biden was quite weak among Democrats under the age of 45 , as the website FiveThirtyEight notes , and he finished with single digits among them in Iowa , New Hampshire , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cause for despair among Democrats .
Other candidates have bounced back from such showings .
In 2016 , Clinton lost to Sanders among young voters in New Hampshire by even greater margins than Biden lost to the Vermont senator in 2020 .
She went on to beat Trump in the popular vote in the fall in part because voters under 30—percentage-wise—were her strongest backers , handing him a 20-point defeat .
For Democrats , the problem with younger supporters is not their allegiance , but their commitment .
Many can ’ t be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 30 who went for Clinton by a huge margin made only 13 percent of the electorate .
Even in 2008 , when Obama ran a campaign of hope pitched at a growing demographic of younger voters , senior citizens were three times more likely to vote than voters under 30 .
Some Sanders backers have warned that the senator ’ s younger voters will stay home in November if the senator should lose the nomination fight , and if his left-leaning platform is dismissed by the party establishment .
Devine , the 2016 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worried .
“ I think there is always a concern that people who feel strongly about a losing candidate will stay home , ” he said , “ but I don ’ t think it will be anywhere where it was last time .
People want to defeat Donald Trump.
” Joel Benenson , who was a Clinton pollster and strategist in 2016 , agrees with his former rival .
Stock in Sanders is overvalued , he says .
“ When Obama ran against Hillary [ in 2008 ] , they were both @ @ @ @ @ @ @ votes ” in the Democratic primaries .
“ In 2016 , Hillary got 17 million votes , and Bernie got 13.5 million votes.
” This year , Sanders has failed to expand his 2016 coalition .
“ Where is the revolution ?
” Benenson asks .
Meanwhile , activists in the party ’ s progressive wing have seen , in the first three years of Trump , the price of failure , or apathy , in November .
“ The second time around , people won ’ t feel so cavalier , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ high because of Donald Trump .
If he gets elected to a second term because they sit out the general election—well , that ’ s on them .
”

Given such opportunities before, however, the Democrats failed to capitalize. Historians may give Obama high marks for navigating out of the worst parts of the 2008 financial crash, the passage of the Affordable Care Act, and his dignified and ethical performance as president. But presidents are politicians, and in the politics of succession, Obama failed miserably.
Former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean had a 50-state strategy to build the party’s grassroots organization and to mount competitive races throughout the country. In his first term as president, Obama made scores of trips to the swing states he would need for reelection: Virginia, Florida, Ohio, Nevada, and Colorado. He was a fixture in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. But by my count, over his eight years as president, he visited Kentucky, Oklahoma, Mississippi, Nebraska, Kansas, Montana, Arkansas, and South Dakota but once. He went twice to South Carolina, twice to Oklahoma, and just three times to West Virginia and Alabama. He went to Utah once, Idaho once, and Wyoming not at all. He visited Texas 15 times, but generally for fundraisers.
The result was predictable—and devastating to the party’s longer-term standing and organizing efforts. On Obama’s watch, the Democratic Party lost a dozen U.S. Senate seats, 13 governorships, 816 seats in state legislatures—and the White House to Donald Trump.
Obama’s election seemed, for an interlude, to have borne out the old abolitionist axiom that the arc of the moral universe bends slowly, but it bends inevitably toward justice. The 2008 financial crisis gave the Democrats control of the White House, House, and Senate, and they did great things with that power: saving the U.S. auto industry, passing the ACA, expanding Medicaid, and making the tax code fairer.
But Democrats are generally better at palliatives—at easing your pain than at curing the malady. The archives of the Clinton presidency, of Robert Reich’s Labor Department, and leaders of Congress like Ted Kennedy are filled with forgotten plans for worker retraining programs and other remedies for globalization and the decline of American manufacturing.
The Democrats supported two booming sectors—finance and tech—but many of the big donors in both industries favored free-trade deals like NAFTA, and the low wages brought by legal, and illegal, immigration. Obama’s cool was an asset as he campaigned for the presidency during the fall of 2008. His advisers—mostly Wall Street types—waved him off any response to the crisis that might frighten fellow investors, let alone come off as populist. The Tea Party Republicans exploited that lapse. He may well have done better, in the larger political picture, to have thrown a few bankers in jail.
It is difficult to say what Trump would have done, had he been in the White House in that chaotic season when Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers failed and the other Wall Street investment banks seemed next. With the arrival of the coronavirus, we may now find out. The front pages carry warnings of recession—and Trump has mostly sought to stave off that specter with a series of tax cuts and Fed rate cuts aimed at calming a jittery investment sector.
But we know what Trump did on the outside of power, striving to get in. Exploiting nativist fears, calling for black protesters to be beaten up, Trump was able to ignite latent feelings—to “activate long-standing sentiments,” as Sides and his fellow authors put it—that other groups were getting favored treatment over white Americans. Already Trump and several prominent conservatives are starting a similar scapegoating campaign around the coronavirus crisis, making it appear to be the handiwork of sinister geopolitical rivals in China and North Korea.
Such efforts have a long-standing pedigree in American politics, especially on the right. “Trump tapped into beliefs, ideas, and anxieties that were already present and even well established within the party. His support was hiding in plain sight,” Sides and his colleagues wrote. “The importance of economic insecurity was most apparent when economic sentiments were refracted through group identities. Worries about losing a job were less strongly associated with Trump support than were concerns about whites losing jobs to minorities.” The authors call this “racialized economics.”
Can Trump make this tactic work again? Will rank scapegoating suffice to dispel Trump’s responsibility for an economic downturn on his watch that critics are saying he’s exacerbated via his negligent preparation for the coronavirus pandemic?
We’ll know the answer by November. There are two kinds of elections, says Tad Devine: change elections, and referenda on incumbents. “Last time out was a change election. It is all about Trump this time,” says Devine, the chief strategist for the Sanders 2016 campaign.
“The president is vulnerable. Look at his reelect number—the percentage of people who will vote for another term. That is the one that fascinates me. He consistently has not been able to reach 50 percent—while the number of people who say they will absolutely, under no condition vote to reelect him is 50 percent or above.”
“On the other hand,” says Devine, “the guy is ferocious. He has no boundaries—including that which got him impeached—using his office for his political advantage. And he has enormous financial resources this time.”
Gathered around the long oval table, munching on chips and veggie sandwiches in a noontime political science seminar, a dozen of the brightest students at Vanderbilt University were asked to name the most important challenge confronting their generation.
Was it Islamic fundamentalism? Mass shootings? Global warming? Donald Trump?
No. These were all concerns, but the biggest threat to their happiness, these fourth-year students said, was maintaining their humanity in the face of sweeping technological change.
They jostled to offer examples: Employers buying robots to replace human workers. Truth challenged by counterfeit imagery. Smartphones wrecking their attention spans. Estrangement from the natural environment. Social media sites that harvest and sell their thoughts, robbing them of privacy. Internet pornography recasting desire. Political discourse twisted by bots and trolls. Commercial apps mining online sessions and using the findings to manipulate their longings.
How would they seek to meet these challenges? They shrugged and shook their heads. It was all so overwhelming. Technological transformation seemed ungovernable.
Trump “has no boundaries—including that which got him impeached—using his office for his political advantage. And he has enormous financial resources this time.”
March has brought us verities, data, and a plague—together with a new set of questions that are already reshaping the 2020 campaign. How many Never Trump Republicans will stay home, or pull the lever in their voting booths for Democratic candidates in November? Will black and Hispanic and Asian American voters be motivated by their distaste for Trump to turn out on Election Day with the zeal they displayed in the Obama years? Will the chaos in the stock market caused by the coronavirus crisis rouse formerly complacent voters who had otherwise been disinclined to change horses in Washington? Are we headed for a recession that will, as in 2008, bring white voters back into the Democratic fold?
Even as a referendum on Trump and his presidency, the 2020 election will say much about the future—about the prospect of deep and abiding change. And, in the actions of younger voters on Election Day, we will likely get a strong sign of whether Trumpism is an aberration, or a new and permanent addition to our politics.
So far, the auguries are mixed. In the opening round of contests, Biden was quite weak among Democrats under the age of 45, as the website FiveThirtyEight notes, and he finished with single digits among them in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada.
This is not yet cause for despair among Democrats. Other candidates have bounced back from such showings. In 2016, Clinton lost to Sanders among young voters in New Hampshire by even greater margins than Biden lost to the Vermont senator in 2020. She went on to beat Trump in the popular vote in the fall in part because voters under 30—percentage-wise—were her strongest backers, handing him a 20-point defeat.
For Democrats, the problem with younger supporters is not their allegiance, but their commitment. Many can’t be bothered to vote. Those voters under 30 who went for Clinton by a huge margin made only 13 percent of the electorate.
Even in 2008, when Obama ran a campaign of hope pitched at a growing demographic of younger voters, senior citizens were three times more likely to vote than voters under 30.
Some Sanders backers have warned that the senator’s younger voters will stay home in November if the senator should lose the nomination fight, and if his left-leaning platform is dismissed by the party establishment.
Devine, the 2016 Sanders strategist, isn’t so worried. “I think there is always a concern that people who feel strongly about a losing candidate will stay home,” he said, “but I don’t think it will be anywhere where it was last time. People want to defeat Donald Trump.”
Joel Benenson, who was a Clinton pollster and strategist in 2016, agrees with his former rival. Stock in Sanders is overvalued, he says. “When Obama ran against Hillary [in 2008], they were both 100,000 or so shy of 18 million votes” in the Democratic primaries. “In 2016, Hillary got 17 million votes, and Bernie got 13.5 million votes.” This year, Sanders has failed to expand his 2016 coalition. “Where is the revolution?” Benenson asks.
Meanwhile, activists in the party’s progressive wing have seen, in the first three years of Trump, the price of failure, or apathy, in November. “The second time around, people won’t feel so cavalier,” said Benenson. “The stakes are high because of Donald Trump. If he gets elected to a second term because they sit out the general election—well, that’s on them.”