thenation--2020-11-04--California Chooses Criminal Justice Reform

On the surface , California ’ s Election Day was politics as usual in the state that Trump so frequently lambasts for its liberal tendencies .
When more than 15 million Californians voted on Tuesday , the state ’ s choice for the president was a foregone conclusion .
Biden has from the outset led Trump by at least a two-to-one margin , and with the votes being tallied into Wednesday , that margin has actually grown .
When the dust settles , California will have favored Biden by perhaps as many as 5 million votes .
( As of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was already nearly 4 million , with only 73 percent of the vote tallied . )
As in 2016 , Biden ’ s national popular-vote margin over Trump will be due in large part to the Golden State .
In 2016 , California helped give Clinton a nearly 3 million-strong lead in the national vote ; this year , it looks like Biden will end with a buffer of roughly 5 million , not far shy of what many of the final polls predicted—but , of course , this huge majority has no @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a genuinely democratic system , Biden ’ s comfortable national majority would have been game , set , and match for the Democrat ; in our Electoral College system , those 5 million additional votes count for naught .
Californians knew this would be the case from the get-go , which is perhaps why activists here channeled so much energy into a slew of ballot measures and congressional and local races .
They pushed for affirmative action to be reinstated , for progressive “ split roll ” property taxes that would undo at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the notorious Prop 13 , passed by angry voters in 1978 as the opening shot in a national tax revolt .
And they sought to codify a range of criminal justice reforms , from ending cash bail to allowing parolees to vote .
For Angelenos , there was the added interest of a competitive DA race between incumbent Jackie Lacey and ex-DA of San Francisco George Gascón .
Whatever Happens , It Should Not Be This Close By Ignoring Latino Voters , Biden Has Made the Election Too Close Biden : ‘ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vote Is Counted , Every Ballot Is Counted ’ There are many votes still to be counted in these various races , and results haven ’ t been finalized in most of the propositions .
But some trends are emerging .
On criminal justice , California continues to turn away from the tough-on-crime course that it set in the 1990s , when it passed the country ’ s strictest “ three strikes ” law , opened up many new high-security prisons , and catapulted the prison guards ’ union to a place of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ time around , it looks like voters have chosen to re-enfranchise parolees and reject an initiative that would have reimposed harsh felony charges for a range of crimes that reformers had managed to recategorize as misdemeanors last year .
In LA County , voters appear to have chosen Gascón over Lacey , meaning that the country ’ s second-most-populous city will have a reform-minded DA , whose views on crime and social justice align him with other progressive DAs , such as Philadelphia ’ s Larry Krasner .
But not all the California @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It looks like the bail-bond industry , which poured tens of millions of dollars into a campaign to reinstate cash bail , may have secured a victory on that proposition ( though the result has not yet been finalized ) .
On the most expensive proposition , into which Uber and Lyft poured hundreds of millions of dollars , Californians voted to continue to treat gig workers as contractors , voiding a state law that aimed to make companies treat them as employees , and thus obligated their employers to provide benefits @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And on the proposition to create a “ split roll ” property tax—intended to tax commercial properties based on current real-market value rather than the value when the property was last bought and sold—the anti-tax movement looks like it has eked out a win , thus depriving California of urgently needed dollars for shoring up schools and other vital public institutions .
And finally , the affirmative action initiative was soundly defeated .
California voters ’ embrace of a number of conservative propositions , or opposition to some of the progressive ones @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
A number of the Central Valley and Southern California congressional seats that Democrats won as part of the 2018 blue wave are likely to be won back by the GOP—though in several of those seats , current tallies are within a couple percentage points , with many ballots still to be counted .
Depending on what happens elsewhere in the country , however , the underperformance of California congressional candidates this November could prove significant in shaping the contours of the Democratic majority that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is likely to retain .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of a sleeper story , but as the breakdown of the new Congress becomes clearer , these battleground seats in the West will grow in importance .
How California fits into the national political conversation is always complicated .
On many issues , it is now driving a progressive agenda that , increasingly , voters throughout the West are embracing .
Yet it has also at times in the past spearheaded deeply conservative movements on a range of policies , and those conservative legacies can be seen in the views of many Californians @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tuesday ’ s vote was a reminder of just how volatile California politics can be , even in this age of overwhelming statewide dominance by progressive Democrats .

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On the surface, California’s Election Day was politics as usual in the state that Trump so frequently lambasts for its liberal tendencies.
When more than 15 million Californians voted on Tuesday, the state’s choice for the president was a foregone conclusion. Biden has from the outset led Trump by at least a two-to-one margin, and with the votes being tallied into Wednesday, that margin has actually grown. When the dust settles, California will have favored Biden by perhaps as many as 5 million votes. (As of this writing, Biden’s margin was already nearly 4 million, with only 73 percent of the vote tallied.)
As in 2016, Biden’s national popular-vote margin over Trump will be due in large part to the Golden State. In 2016, California helped give Clinton a nearly 3 million-strong lead in the national vote; this year, it looks like Biden will end with a buffer of roughly 5 million, not far shy of what many of the final polls predicted—but, of course, this huge majority has no effect on the swing states. In a genuinely democratic system, Biden’s comfortable national majority would have been game, set, and match for the Democrat; in our Electoral College system, those 5 million additional votes count for naught.
Californians knew this would be the case from the get-go, which is perhaps why activists here channeled so much energy into a slew of ballot measures and congressional and local races. They pushed for affirmative action to be reinstated, for progressive “split roll” property taxes that would undo at least some of the harmful fiscal legacy of the notorious Prop 13, passed by angry voters in 1978 as the opening shot in a national tax revolt. And they sought to codify a range of criminal justice reforms, from ending cash bail to allowing parolees to vote. For Angelenos, there was the added interest of a competitive DA race between incumbent Jackie Lacey and ex-DA of San Francisco George Gascón. More on Election 2020 Whatever Happens, It Should Not Be This Close Joan Walsh By Ignoring Latino Voters, Biden Has Made the Election Too Close Jeet Heer Biden: ‘It Ain’t Over Till Every Vote Is Counted, Every Ballot Is Counted’ John Nichols A Bumpy Night in Berks County, Pennsylvania D.D. Guttenplan
There are many votes still to be counted in these various races, and results haven’t been finalized in most of the propositions. But some trends are emerging.
On criminal justice, California continues to turn away from the tough-on-crime course that it set in the 1990s, when it passed the country’s strictest “three strikes” law, opened up many new high-security prisons, and catapulted the prison guards’ union to a place of extraordinary influence in state politics. This time around, it looks like voters have chosen to re-enfranchise parolees and reject an initiative that would have reimposed harsh felony charges for a range of crimes that reformers had managed to recategorize as misdemeanors last year. In LA County, voters appear to have chosen Gascón over Lacey, meaning that the country’s second-most-populous city will have a reform-minded DA, whose views on crime and social justice align him with other progressive DAs, such as Philadelphia’s Larry Krasner. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
But not all the California votes tended in as progressive a direction. It looks like the bail-bond industry, which poured tens of millions of dollars into a campaign to reinstate cash bail, may have secured a victory on that proposition (though the result has not yet been finalized). On the most expensive proposition, into which Uber and Lyft poured hundreds of millions of dollars, Californians voted to continue to treat gig workers as contractors, voiding a state law that aimed to make companies treat them as employees, and thus obligated their employers to provide benefits such as health care and unemployment insurance. And on the proposition to create a “split roll” property tax—intended to tax commercial properties based on current real-market value rather than the value when the property was last bought and sold—the anti-tax movement looks like it has eked out a win, thus depriving California of urgently needed dollars for shoring up schools and other vital public institutions. And finally, the affirmative action initiative was soundly defeated.
California voters’ embrace of a number of conservative propositions, or opposition to some of the progressive ones, was also reflected in congressional races. A number of the Central Valley and Southern California congressional seats that Democrats won as part of the 2018 blue wave are likely to be won back by the GOP—though in several of those seats, current tallies are within a couple percentage points, with many ballots still to be counted. Depending on what happens elsewhere in the country, however, the underperformance of California congressional candidates this November could prove significant in shaping the contours of the Democratic majority that Speaker Nancy Pelosi is likely to retain. So far, this has been something of a sleeper story, but as the breakdown of the new Congress becomes clearer, these battleground seats in the West will grow in importance.
How California fits into the national political conversation is always complicated. On many issues, it is now driving a progressive agenda that, increasingly, voters throughout the West are embracing. Yet it has also at times in the past spearheaded deeply conservative movements on a range of policies, and those conservative legacies can be seen in the views of many Californians on such issues as property taxation. Tuesday’s vote was a reminder of just how volatile California politics can be, even in this age of overwhelming statewide dominance by progressive Democrats.


thenation--2020-11-04--‘It’s Just a Slaughter’: Montana Goes From Purple to Deep Red

For years , Montanans have sneered at out-of-state pundits and journalists who characterized the state as “ deep red , ” ignoring its century-old purple hue due to a legacy of union activism and general ticket-splitting pragmatism .
That changed Tuesday .
Red now glows as brightly in Montana as it does in the surrounding states of Idaho , Wyoming , and the Dakotas .
Republican Senator Steve Daines fended off a challenge from Governor Steve Bullock to help keep the US Senate in Republican hands .
Representative Greg Gianforte ( infamous for body-slamming a reporter on the eve of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defeated Lieutenant Governor Mike Cooney , ending 16 years of Democratic tenancy of the governor ’ s office .
Matt Rosendale , the Republican state auditor , defeated Democrat Kathleen Williams , who lost to Gianforte when seeking the same seat two years earlier .
Republicans increased their majorities in the both houses of the Legislature .
And , with 76 percent of the vote counted Wednesday morning , the GOP claimed all the statewide down-ballot races—attorney general , auditor , secretary of state , and state schools superintendent .
“ I don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ complete sweep ] has ever happened before , ” said Chuck Johnson , a longtime Montana political journalist , now retired .
Pages rustled as he searched a Montana elections atlas , through year after year of split-ticket results , until he came to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936 , a Democratic mirror image of Tuesday night ’ s Republican rout .
Montana didn ’ t just go Republican on Tuesday .
It went deeply conservative Republican .
Through the last several every-other-year legislative sessions , Democrats have successfully wrangled @ @ @ @ @ @ @ help of a group of moderate Republicans known as the Solutions Caucus .
But the Solutions Caucus saw its ranks thinned in the June primary , some of its members losing out to more conservative candidates who bill themselves as the 38 Special , complete with name tags adorned with the trademark ammunition .
“ This is not the Republican Party of Marc Racicot and Bob Brown , ” said University of Montana political science professor Rob Saldin .
Racicot , who served as Montana ’ s governor from 1993 to 2001 and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , declared his intention shortly before the election to vote for Biden .
Brown , a former Montana secretary of state and Senate president , issued a “ Declaration of Independence ” from the Montana Republican Party in a July op-ed , in which he termed Trump a “ deadly prankster ” and “ scoundrel ” and Daines and Gianforte the president ’ s “ puppets.
” Saldin said Democrats also suffer from the loss of “ cult-of-personality ” candidates such as former Senator Max Baucus and Representative Pat Williams , who served @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , in those positions before retiring ; as well as former governor Brian Schweitzer , whose outsize personality featured prominently in news coverage .
Baucus launched his successful 1974 congressional campaign by walking 630 miles across Montana ; he was elected to the Senate four years later , rose to chair the Senate Finance Committee , and later served as ambassador to China .
Williams championed labor and the arts , the latter via his support for the National Endowment for the Arts , earning him the nickname “ Porno Pat ” from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ political dynasty : his wife , Carol Williams , was Montana ’ s first woman Senate majority leader , and their daughter , Whitney , waged an unsuccessful campaign this year for the Democratic nomination for governor .
“ These people had their own personal brands that were at least somewhat different than the party brand , ” Saldin said .
But when a candidate is more of a generic Republican or Democrat , “ it ’ s just a slaughter , ” he said .
“ This election in Montana was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ state ’ s finally set a course where we ’ re 100 percent moving in the right direction with officeholders.… We ’ ve been hoping and praying for a long time , and now it ’ s finally happened.
” Just as Democratic governors and lawmakers teamed up with the Solutions Caucus to pass legislation , Democratic governors wielded their veto pen—or , in the case of Schweitzer , governor from 2005 to ’ 13 , a sizzling “ veto ” branding iron that set paper copies of doomed Republican-backed bills aflame—to defeat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ restrictions .
Vetoes won ’ t be necessary now .
Gianforte ’ s 16-page Montana Comeback Plan includes measures such as stricter eligibility requirements for the Medicare expansion enacted in 2016 that now covers nearly one in 10 Montanans .
In 2019 , the Legislature , with votes from the Solutions Caucus , voted to continue Medicaid expansion , albeit with the addition of work requirements .
Gianforte , a software entrepreneur and the wealthiest member of the House , campaigned on a vow to boost the state ’ s economy by cutting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reduce the burden on our hardworking families so they can thrive and prosper again , ” he said in declaring victory .
Thomas said the Legislature ’ s first order of business will be to take a hard look at the state budget .
“ Most everybody in the public has had to take a haircut one way or the other , and now so will the government , ” Thomas said .
Thomas , just as Gianforte did during the campaign , cited the effect on Montana ’ s economy of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in Montana .
The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers “ It seems like a lot of politics was played with the Covid-19 virus epidemic and the emergency rules , ” Thomas said .
Bullock eased those restrictions in June , and in recent weeks the rate of infection in Montana has soared , with the state now ranked fourth in the nation in terms of per capita cases .
Thomas used another measure .
“ In terms of mortality , the virus ended in Montana in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Wednesday , Montana had seen 35,955 cases and 404 deaths from the virus—and all but 16 of those deaths have occurred since the end of May .
Veteran Montana political reporter Mike Dennison received a draft of a legislative agenda , more detailed than Gianforte ’ s outline , drawn up by House Republicans in anticipation of his victory .
Among its goals : curtailing health boards ’ authority to impose Covid-19 restrictions , expanding public assistance to private schools , and eliminating same-day voter registration .
The Montana Democratic Party ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terse statement in response to Tuesday ’ s results : Williams , the former representative , took the long view .
“ When we have a big Democratic victory , my political friends whoop and holler and blow their horns , [ saying ] , ‘ Now the Republican Party is dead , and the Democratic Party will rule forever .
So [ on Tuesday ] the Republicans had a very good night .
But there are more nights to come .
”

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For years, Montanans have sneered at out-of-state pundits and journalists who characterized the state as “deep red,” ignoring its century-old purple hue due to a legacy of union activism and general ticket-splitting pragmatism.
That changed Tuesday. Red now glows as brightly in Montana as it does in the surrounding states of Idaho, Wyoming, and the Dakotas.
Republican Senator Steve Daines fended off a challenge from Governor Steve Bullock to help keep the US Senate in Republican hands. Representative Greg Gianforte (infamous for body-slamming a reporter on the eve of his 2017 special election victory) handily defeated Lieutenant Governor Mike Cooney, ending 16 years of Democratic tenancy of the governor’s office. Matt Rosendale, the Republican state auditor, defeated Democrat Kathleen Williams, who lost to Gianforte when seeking the same seat two years earlier.
Republicans increased their majorities in the both houses of the Legislature. And, with 76 percent of the vote counted Wednesday morning, the GOP claimed all the statewide down-ballot races—attorney general, auditor, secretary of state, and state schools superintendent.
“I don’t know that [such a complete sweep] has ever happened before,” said Chuck Johnson, a longtime Montana political journalist, now retired. Pages rustled as he searched a Montana elections atlas, through year after year of split-ticket results, until he came to the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1936, a Democratic mirror image of Tuesday night’s Republican rout.
Montana didn’t just go Republican on Tuesday. It went deeply conservative Republican. Through the last several every-other-year legislative sessions, Democrats have successfully wrangled legislation such as Medicaid expansion with the help of a group of moderate Republicans known as the Solutions Caucus.
But the Solutions Caucus saw its ranks thinned in the June primary, some of its members losing out to more conservative candidates who bill themselves as the 38 Special, complete with name tags adorned with the trademark ammunition. Current Issue View our current issue
“This is not the Republican Party of Marc Racicot and Bob Brown,” said University of Montana political science professor Rob Saldin. Racicot, who served as Montana’s governor from 1993 to 2001 and headed the Republican National Committee in 2002–03, declared his intention shortly before the election to vote for Biden. Brown, a former Montana secretary of state and Senate president, issued a “Declaration of Independence” from the Montana Republican Party in a July op-ed, in which he termed Trump a “deadly prankster” and “scoundrel” and Daines and Gianforte the president’s “puppets.” Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Saldin said Democrats also suffer from the loss of “cult-of-personality” candidates such as former Senator Max Baucus and Representative Pat Williams, who served 36 years and 18 years, respectively, in those positions before retiring; as well as former governor Brian Schweitzer, whose outsize personality featured prominently in news coverage.
Baucus launched his successful 1974 congressional campaign by walking 630 miles across Montana; he was elected to the Senate four years later, rose to chair the Senate Finance Committee, and later served as ambassador to China. Williams championed labor and the arts, the latter via his support for the National Endowment for the Arts, earning him the nickname “Porno Pat” from conservatives. The family is its own political dynasty: his wife, Carol Williams, was Montana’s first woman Senate majority leader, and their daughter, Whitney, waged an unsuccessful campaign this year for the Democratic nomination for governor.
“These people had their own personal brands that were at least somewhat different than the party brand,” Saldin said.
But when a candidate is more of a generic Republican or Democrat, “it’s just a slaughter,” he said.
State Senate majority leader Fred Thomas chose a different term.
“This election in Montana was a landmark election for this state. The state’s finally set a course where we’re 100 percent moving in the right direction with officeholders.… We’ve been hoping and praying for a long time, and now it’s finally happened.”
Just as Democratic governors and lawmakers teamed up with the Solutions Caucus to pass legislation, Democratic governors wielded their veto pen—or, in the case of Schweitzer, governor from 2005 to ’13, a sizzling “veto” branding iron that set paper copies of doomed Republican-backed bills aflame—to defeat Republican-backed legislation on issues such as abortion restrictions.
Vetoes won’t be necessary now. Gianforte’s 16-page Montana Comeback Plan includes measures such as stricter eligibility requirements for the Medicare expansion enacted in 2016 that now covers nearly one in 10 Montanans. In 2019, the Legislature, with votes from the Solutions Caucus, voted to continue Medicaid expansion, albeit with the addition of work requirements.
Gianforte, a software entrepreneur and the wealthiest member of the House, campaigned on a vow to boost the state’s economy by cutting taxes and regulations.
“We need to reduce the burden on our hardworking families so they can thrive and prosper again,” he said in declaring victory.
Thomas said the Legislature’s first order of business will be to take a hard look at the state budget. “Most everybody in the public has had to take a haircut one way or the other, and now so will the government,” Thomas said.
Thomas, just as Gianforte did during the campaign, cited the effect on Montana’s economy of statewide shutdown imposed by Bullock at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic in Montana. Related Article The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers Gwen Florio
“It seems like a lot of politics was played with the Covid-19 virus epidemic and the emergency rules,” Thomas said. Bullock eased those restrictions in June, and in recent weeks the rate of infection in Montana has soared, with the state now ranked fourth in the nation in terms of per capita cases.
Thomas used another measure. “In terms of mortality, the virus ended in Montana in May,” he said. As of Wednesday, Montana had seen 35,955 cases and 404 deaths from the virus—and all but 16 of those deaths have occurred since the end of May.
Veteran Montana political reporter Mike Dennison received a draft of a legislative agenda, more detailed than Gianforte’s outline, drawn up by House Republicans in anticipation of his victory. Among its goals: curtailing health boards’ authority to impose Covid-19 restrictions, expanding public assistance to private schools, and eliminating same-day voter registration.
The Montana Democratic Party’s executive director Sandi Luckey issued a terse statement in response to Tuesday’s results:
Creating good jobs has never been more important. Protecting access to quality, affordable health care has never been more important. Making sure our public schools are equipped to meet the challenges of our time has never been more important. Montana faces serious challenges, and Montana Democrats will continue to meet them head-on—as we always have.
Williams, the former representative, took the long view. “When we have a big Democratic victory, my political friends whoop and holler and blow their horns, [saying], ‘Now the Republican Party is dead, and the Democratic Party will rule forever. So [on Tuesday] the Republicans had a very good night. But there are more nights to come.”


thenation--2020-11-04--A Walk in the Woods During a Season of Uncertainty

ondon , alloween—Secretive , indifferent , they erupt from the shadow world beneath our feet .
They whisper risk ; promise delight , delirium , or death .
Their names are magical : crowded parchment , club-like tuning fork , hairy curtain crust .
Candlesnuff , fragrant funnel , collared parachute , coral spot .
Destroying angel .
Dead man ’ s fingers .
There ’ s respect in the stretch for connection in those names , that effort to domesticate without denying mystery .
‘ Why Tell Me That We ’ re Safer Here ?
’ Labor , Land @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We Grow in the Shell of the Old ?
More in this series I live on the edge of a wild London park , so big that after a lifetime of wandering there I can still get lost in its woods .
My housemate is a senior hound of stubborn habits and profound emotional intelligence .
Together we walk every morning , rain or shine ; this is my sanity in the long season of uncertainty .
I alternate between looking up at the trees and down at the packed dirt paths and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ I ’ ve searched for shards of broken china—flashes of blue or pink against the grey , debris from Victorian middens used to fill the ground .
Now I look for fungi too .
As darkness presses hard against our flimsy human arrangements , I find their quiet persistence , their getting on with it , comforting .
Mostly they come in shades of white or beige or gray .
Pale tentacles poke out of rotting stumps ; dull frills edge fallen logs ; white domes like flying saucers lurk under the grass @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the dog and I discovered a spreading patch of amanita muscaria , or fly agaric—the bright red , white-spotted toadstools native to fairyland .
They took my breath away : their unlikely brightness pushing up through dead leaves , the presence of something I ’ d associated only with the world of imagination .
I ’ d also always thought that they were deadly poison—a loud scarlet warning .
In fact , in measured quantities they are hallucinogenic .
( They will also make you very , very sick . )
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the West was not the fly agaric but psilocybe semilanceata , the common liberty cap , so named by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for its resemblance to the Phrygian cap worn by the sans-culottes of the French Revolution .
But it was the flashier ( and more dangerous ) fly agaric , encountered in Kamchatka by a Polish traveler named Joseph Kopek around 1797 , that penetrated European folklore and became the official mushroom of Victorian phantasmagoria , a parasol for elves and pixies in children ’ s picture books , the kitsch accoutrement @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suburbia .
The dog didn ’ t deign to sniff my fly agaric patch ; probably just as well .
But those toadstools spoke to me of things that seem especially precious on this weird Halloween , as the pandemic rages across Europe , and our incompetent , blustering , disconnected disaster of a prime minister announces a four-week lockdown too late to save thousands of lives : imagination , risk , rebellion , wildness , mystery ; dangerous beauty erupting from the darkness underground .
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind , who from 1982–94 was the magazine ’ s chief political writer and analyst .
This series of dispatches from Kopkind ’ s far-flung network of participants , advisers , guests , and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski , and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org .

L ondon, H alloween—Secretive, indifferent, they erupt from the shadow world beneath our feet. They whisper risk; promise delight, delirium, or death. Their names are magical: crowded parchment, club-like tuning fork, hairy curtain crust. Candlesnuff, fragrant funnel, collared parachute, coral spot. Destroying angel. Dead man’s fingers. There’s respect in the stretch for connection in those names, that effort to domesticate without denying mystery. Scenes From a Pandemic Untethered, or The Year of Living Virtually Patricia J. Williams The Art of the Meal Mary Lewis Maybe We Shouldn’t Go Back to Normal Bri M.
I live on the edge of a wild London park, so big that after a lifetime of wandering there I can still get lost in its woods. My housemate is a senior hound of stubborn habits and profound emotional intelligence. Together we walk every morning, rain or shine; this is my sanity in the long season of uncertainty. I alternate between looking up at the trees and down at the packed dirt paths and layers of fallen leaves. For years I’ve searched for shards of broken china—flashes of blue or pink against the grey, debris from Victorian middens used to fill the ground. Now I look for fungi too. As darkness presses hard against our flimsy human arrangements, I find their quiet persistence, their getting on with it, comforting.
Mostly they come in shades of white or beige or gray. Pale tentacles poke out of rotting stumps; dull frills edge fallen logs; white domes like flying saucers lurk under the grass. But today, in the woods, the dog and I discovered a spreading patch of amanita muscaria, or fly agaric—the bright red, white-spotted toadstools native to fairyland. They took my breath away: their unlikely brightness pushing up through dead leaves, the presence of something I’d associated only with the world of imagination.
I’d also always thought that they were deadly poison—a loud scarlet warning. In fact, in measured quantities they are hallucinogenic. (They will also make you very, very sick.) The first mushroom known to produce visions in the West was not the fly agaric but psilocybe semilanceata, the common liberty cap, so named by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for its resemblance to the Phrygian cap worn by the sans-culottes of the French Revolution. But it was the flashier (and more dangerous) fly agaric, encountered in Kamchatka by a Polish traveler named Joseph Kopek around 1797, that penetrated European folklore and became the official mushroom of Victorian phantasmagoria, a parasol for elves and pixies in children’s picture books, the kitsch accoutrement of garden gnomes in the fantasyland of suburbia.
The dog didn’t deign to sniff my fly agaric patch; probably just as well. But those toadstools spoke to me of things that seem especially precious on this weird Halloween, as the pandemic rages across Europe, and our incompetent, blustering, disconnected disaster of a prime minister announces a four-week lockdown too late to save thousands of lives: imagination, risk, rebellion, wildness, mystery; dangerous beauty erupting from the darkness underground.
Scenes From a Pandemic is a collaboration between The Nation and Kopkind, a living memorial to radical journalist Andrew Kopkind, who from 1982–94 was the magazine’s chief political writer and analyst. This series of dispatches from Kopkind’s far-flung network of participants, advisers, guests, and friends is edited by Nation contributor and Kopkind program director JoAnn Wypijewski, and appears weekly on thenation.com and kopkind.org.


thenation--2020-11-04--Whatever Happens, It Should Not Be This Close

Former vice president Joe Biden was the overwhelming favorite , according to the best polls .
And the best polls of polls .
All the polls corrected their mistakes from 2016 , they said .
Biden was even given a decent chance to take Texas , Georgia , and North Carolina—three states that , demographically , are going blue , but have wallowed in red for too long .
I believed all of it .
Wednesday , we ’ re all hoping Biden will gut out a win in the so-called “ blue wall ” states that Donald Trump took @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and looking away from the Southern states that were supposed to swing left .
It still seems very possible , but it ’ s still very scary .
So what happened ?
Right now , I honestly have no idea .
By Ignoring Latino Voters , Biden Has Made the Election Too Close I believed in the idea of a landslide , because it should have been a landslide .
I thought the ultimate tally would reflect the grief of losing 235,000 people to Covid .
I hoped it would reflect our shame @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at the border .
I thought there would be a multiracial uprising against the police violence that killed George Floyd , Breonna Taylor , Jacob Blake , and , going back through the years , hundreds and probably thousands more unarmed black people .
And four years later , I still thought women would grab this alleged rapist by the ballot , and throw him out into the streets—even if we didn ’ t four years ago .
Some of that may still happen .
But my heart is broken that it wasn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we should all pause , and breathe , no matter what time it is where you are .
Biden is gaining votes .
I wrote last month that we wouldn ’ t know the winner election night—I talked about “ Election Month.
” I still believe that .
Right now , I think Biden will ultimately win—but I ’ m not sure .
I ’ m not here to claim victory .
I ’ m here to say : I ’ m ashamed of our country .
It also seems , as I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ win the Senate , as they were mostly projected to do .
And even lost seats in the House ?
That could change too .
But I ’ m not even thinking about it yet .
What I do know is that Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris went , repeatedly , to the states Hillary Clinton was accused ( not entirely fairly ) of neglecting .
Biden went hard in support of unions , everywhere .
Harris went hard on criminal justice reform—and the economic injustice the pandemic has put on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neglected either states or issues this year .
They will probably outdo Clinton—but not by the margins to be expected , given their time in Wisconsin , Michigan , and Pennsylvania .
I ’ m sure there are folks who will blame Biden and Harris for real and imagined campaign flaws .
Right now , I can ’ t .
I blame us .
Way too much of our country consists of racists who prefer white supremacy to equality .
I can ’ t see this any other way right now .

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Former vice president Joe Biden was the overwhelming favorite, according to the best polls. And the best polls of polls. All the polls corrected their mistakes from 2016, they said. Biden was even given a decent chance to take Texas, Georgia, and North Carolina—three states that, demographically, are going blue, but have wallowed in red for too long.
I believed all of it.
Wednesday, we’re all hoping Biden will gut out a win in the so-called “blue wall” states that Donald Trump took from Hillary Clinton four years ago, and looking away from the Southern states that were supposed to swing left. It still seems very possible, but it’s still very scary. So what happened?
Right now, I honestly have no idea. Related Article By Ignoring Latino Voters, Biden Has Made the Election Too Close Jeet Heer
I believed in the idea of a landslide, because it should have been a landslide. I thought the ultimate tally would reflect the grief of losing 235,000 people to Covid. I hoped it would reflect our shame about the thousands of families torn apart at the border. I thought there would be a multiracial uprising against the police violence that killed George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, and, going back through the years, hundreds and probably thousands more unarmed black people.
And four years later, I still thought women would grab this alleged rapist by the ballot, and throw him out into the streets—even if we didn’t four years ago.
Some of that may still happen. But my heart is broken that it wasn’t a landslide. Current Issue View our current issue
I think we should all pause, and breathe, no matter what time it is where you are. Biden is gaining votes. I wrote last month that we wouldn’t know the winner election night—I talked about “Election Month.” I still believe that. Right now, I think Biden will ultimately win—but I’m not sure. I’m not here to claim victory. I’m here to say: I’m ashamed of our country.
It also seems, as I write, that Democrats didn’t win the Senate, as they were mostly projected to do. And even lost seats in the House? That could change too. But I’m not even thinking about it yet.
What I do know is that Biden and vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris went, repeatedly, to the states Hillary Clinton was accused (not entirely fairly) of neglecting. Biden went hard in support of unions, everywhere. Harris went hard on criminal justice reform—and the economic injustice the pandemic has put on display. I cannot say they neglected either states or issues this year. They will probably outdo Clinton—but not by the margins to be expected, given their time in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
I’m sure there are folks who will blame Biden and Harris for real and imagined campaign flaws. Right now, I can’t. I blame us. Way too much of our country consists of racists who prefer white supremacy to equality. I can’t see this any other way right now.


thenation--2020-11-04--Save the Whale, Save Ourselves

Save the Whale, Save Ourselves

In June 27 , 2019 , the writer Ed Yong published a story in The Atlantic with an anguishing statistic : Five North Atlantic right whales had been found dead in less than a month .
Five dead represented more than 1 percent of a quickly vanishing population .
Within hours of publication the story was updated to include a sixth dead whale , spotted on a surveillance flight earlier that day .
Five days later , too late then to update the story , a seventh whale went missing .
By the end of the summer , eight North @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tragedy was outpacing the news cycle , our attention , and our appetite for grief .
Fathoms : The World in the Whale No creature more perfectly encapsulates the obsessive relationship between humans and cetaceans than the North Atlantic right whale .
They were hunted to the brink of extinction by the turn of the 20th century , and what remained of the species has been summarily decimated in macabre fashion—by fishing gear , vessel strikes , and the roar of ships .
There are more researchers studying the whales than there are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ To write about these whales is less a matter of current events than it is a notch in an archival history that people in some near and possible future—the whales may go extinct as soon as 2040—will consult to understand where it all went wrong .
In Rebecca Giggs ’ s searching debut , Fathoms : The World in the Whale , she displays a keen awareness of what it means to write about a creature whose future is just as uncertain as our own .
After describing a 2019 hearing in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demonstrate how a North Atlantic right whale might perceive seismic testing , Giggs notes in a parenthetical remark that “ 411 such whales remain alive as of this writing.
” The statistic almost apologizes for its inclusion , knowing too well it will soon be rendered moot .
Fathoms is a book concerned less with whales in the wild than it is with our refusal to leave them alone .
Our relationship with whales is , and has always been , as Giggs sees it , a “ one-sided intimacy.
” They do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we may wish they did .
In the book ’ s opening scene , Giggs finds herself in a crowd , watching a whale die .
It is a baby humpback , beached near Perth , Australia , and she and the group have toiled for days to push it back out to sea .
As she draws closer to listen to the whale ’ s shuddering gasps , she stares at the animal ’ s lashless , midnight-colored eye .
She is hoping for some kind of recognition , perhaps of its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or of her own human presence .
But the whale refuses .
“ I could not catch its gaze , ” she writes .
“ It showed no sign of apprehending the presence of people , our effort or our grief.
” Before delving into the series of meditations and rabbit holes that make up Fathoms , Giggs states that her aim was to give whales a “ new story , ” one “ that overrode the narrative of success [ she ’ d ] long been told.
” The narrative in question @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 1980s , when activists rallied to save the animals from commercial whaling , and , by extension , extinction .
“ Save the Whales , ” the bumper stickers told us , and so we did , or so Giggs thought .
Perhaps it is my age—I was born in the 1990s—but this claim about the ubiquity of this victorious narrative did not resonate with me .
When I read about whales in the news , it is often because they are in danger , caught in netting , or choking with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , I do not consider them saved .
Fathoms offers a richly sourced , complex evaluation of the modern state of whales in the hopes that we might again be inspired to save them .
This project , though certainly deserving , is not groundbreaking .
Philip Hoare ’ s Leviathan or , The Whale considers our history of exploiting the sperm whale .
( Even Hoare ’ s book , written in 2009 , memorializes an extinction that occurred in the time it took to write it : not of a whale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ River dolphin . )
Nick Pyenson ’ s Spying on Whales , though more concerned with natural history and technological monitoring , focuses on the intertwined fates of human and whale .
And then there are the suite of books about killer whales—which are technically dolphins but seem to be honorary whales in the ways we have wronged them—including , but not limited to David Neiwert ’ s Of Orcas and Men , Jason M. Colby ’ s Orca , and Mark Leiren-Young ’ s The Killer Who Changed the World .
Although @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the whale ’ s history , it is ultimately concerned with its future .
Giggs is a luminous nature writer grappling with an increasingly unnatural world , deploying a sense of wonder to great success as she paints the grim present and grimmer future of the world ’ s whales .
But wonder—in its most uncertain , astonished definition—has its limits , and an ode can quickly morph into an obituary .
Fathoms is a book about whales that includes very few of them alive and in the water .
The only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mother humpback Giggs ogles on a trip off the coast of Eden , Australia .
The absence of up-close , wild encounters is not an elision but a conscientious choice in a book that asks us to “ remain compassionately engaged with distant , unmet things.
” What more would be gained by taking a boat out to trespass into some whale sanctuary in order to look another whale in the eye ?
Once is enough , Giggs seems to reason , and I agree .
It is in these distant encounters , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of pesticides or forays into the back issues of the International Journal for Parasitology , that Giggs breathes new life into the oft-considered beast .
Her wide-ranging observations are relentlessly curious and scaffolded in important research : She delves into scientific papers and 19th century newspapers , speaks with countless researchers , traces aboriginal hieroglyphs , even draws on Sianne Ngai ’ s theory that we may feel moved toward violence regarding things we find cute , as she analyzes a photo of tourists who killed a baby dolphin by taking selfies with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agony of loving the disappearing , ” Giggs writes of the incident .
But this might be said of Fathoms itself , in which Giggs ’ s descriptions sway between astonishment and grief .
Fathoms is suffused with this sickly kind of wonder , reckoning with the terrible beauty of the whale taken , used , and disassembled in history .
Giggs marvels at how a glossy melon in a Victorian painting may have gained its gleam from an insecticide made with humpback oil .
She tracks the sublimation of whale oil into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a soap bubble .
This awe is uncomfortable to sit with , to contemplate how much of our world was once and is still reliant on whale death .
Fathoms ’ s rigorous confrontation with destruction peaks in her description of a dead sperm whale found on a Spanish coast that had swallowed an entire flattened plastic greenhouse .
The dead whale ’ s stomach contained everything one might need to garden out of season : tarps , burlap , hosepipes , rope , two flowerpots .
Considering a greenhouse ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the swallowing of one could have been a kind of protest if it hadn ’ t killed the poor whale .
Throughout Fathoms , Giggs ’ s line of thought frequently returns to the greenhouse , which functions as a refrain for the worst we could do to the whale ( perhaps ironic , considering that the worst may be yet to come , in the gaseous sense of the word ) .
Watching the baby humpback die , Giggs thinks of the greenhouse and wonders what we might owe the whale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ?
” She begins to address the humpback as she considers what might become of all this wonder : “ The duty of awe was—wasn ’ t it—care ?
” she asks herself , shortly before she begins to talk to the whale , offering earnest words of comfort that she knows a whale ’ s ear will transmute to babble , if it can hear her at all .
Wonder can serve as a useful lens in writing about anything that we do not fully understand , treading the line between a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and an abstraction of the animal into metaphor .
Giggs uses this lens to particular success in her examination of parts of the whale many of us have never seen before , such as the parasitic lice that form in sherbet-colored clusters around the whale ’ s callosities to feed on flakes of flesh .
“ There is deathliness and irascible vigor , and plurality and plunder , pushing and pulsing within each creature , ” she writes .
But wonder has diminishing returns in a world increasingly devoid of it , where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and more and more people see the environment as something volatile .
Mystery holds less excitement when the creatures and places we hope to understand will change irrevocably , if not vanish entirely , before we can study them .
In the decades before 1985 , industrial whaling stripped so many cetaceans from the sea that scientists speculate this biomass removal must have resulted in the extinctions of the creatures that rely on whale falls , boneless worms and dark clams starving from the scarcity of corpses .
“ No one saw this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Things were lost , that is , before they were ever found.
” It is poetic to wonder at how a sperm whale could have swallowed most of a greenhouse .
We might wonder how its jaws could open wide enough to swallow the gridded walls , wonder how the shards of plastic lacerated its body , or wonder which plastic ultimately killed it—the sheeting , the rope , or the flowerpot .
But we do not need to wonder how a greenhouse wound up in the ocean , or rather , what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fresh tomatoes could be grown in a desert and sold year-round at supermarkets .
A more rigorous , fulfilling lens here may not be wonder , but blame .
Or perhaps , the wonder 2020 requires is a wonder turned explicitly toward a kind of care that goes beyond wishing the whale well , but that can be acted upon .
If we owe , how can we repay ?
This is not to say that Fathoms should have petered out from poetry into something like solutions journalism , but wonder seems to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the people working to save them .
Isn ’ t organizing awe-inspiring , teeming crowds of protests as spectacular as a whale fall ?
Near the end of the book , Giggs divulges that as she put final touches on Fathoms , the whale-watching town of Eden evacuated and took shelter on the wharf as eastern Australia experienced its worst-ever bushfire season .
She notes her shock at how one billion animals died in the weeks of the bushfire , compared with the hundred years it took to kill 3 million cetaceans in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ become a book of its own .
We should still hold out hope for the whale , Giggs argues , because it “ reminds us of our collective ability to control ourselves , and our part in a planetary ecology.
” This reasoning is simplistic .
It places undue weight on “ ourselves , ” recalling marketing campaigns in the early 2000s that blamed each of us for our personal carbon footprint , shifting public blame away from the oil giants .
The whale is dying not because we individuals use plastic straws @ @ @ @ @ @ @ machinations of capital created an unsustainable world that is punishing the whale , and many of us as well .
The organizer and abolitionist Mariame Kaba has described hope as a discipline , something that does not come easy and must be practiced .
Unlike us , whales are conscious breathers .
They breathe when they decide to .
In this way , each ballooning of colossal lungs that allow them to stay submerged for hours is a sign of intent .
Giggs asks us to remember to hope the way whales remember @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , so must be the work of unraveling the destruction we have wrought on the world , and on the whale .
There are moments when Giggs comes close to mobilizing the reader toward action , but she favors the generation of knowledge over the prescriptive .
“ Could you act on behalf of the whale ?
” she asks , and suggests that “ you identify a part of the problem that you might see change in , using the talents and the resources that you possess.
” There is no one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ there are many ways to try , and I found myself yearning for more concrete examples of the people who untangle whales or throw them salmon or fight against the pollution that muddies waters that people rely on too .
When Giggs describes , in two lines , how the Lummi Nation fed Chinook salmon to an ailing population of orcas , this act of care seemed to me one of the most wondrous parts of the book .
Perhaps there is less poetry in prescription .
But it would be a shame @ @ @ @ @ @ @ beauty of Fathoms to revel in the majesty of the whale , mourn its long suffering , and go on living life as usual , perhaps with a reusable tote .

In June 27, 2019, the writer Ed Yong published a story in The Atlantic with an anguishing statistic: Five North Atlantic right whales had been found dead in less than a month. Five dead represented more than 1 percent of a quickly vanishing population. Within hours of publication the story was updated to include a sixth dead whale, spotted on a surveillance flight earlier that day. Five days later, too late then to update the story, a seventh whale went missing. By the end of the summer, eight North Atlantic right whales were dead. The tragedy was outpacing the news cycle, our attention, and our appetite for grief. Books in Review Fathoms: The World in the Whale By Rebecca Giggs Buy this book
No creature more perfectly encapsulates the obsessive relationship between humans and cetaceans than the North Atlantic right whale. They were hunted to the brink of extinction by the turn of the 20th century, and what remained of the species has been summarily decimated in macabre fashion—by fishing gear, vessel strikes, and the roar of ships. There are more researchers studying the whales than there are North Atlantic right whales alive today. To write about these whales is less a matter of current events than it is a notch in an archival history that people in some near and possible future—the whales may go extinct as soon as 2040—will consult to understand where it all went wrong.
In Rebecca Giggs’s searching debut, Fathoms: The World in the Whale, she displays a keen awareness of what it means to write about a creature whose future is just as uncertain as our own. After describing a 2019 hearing in which a congressman blasted an air horn to demonstrate how a North Atlantic right whale might perceive seismic testing, Giggs notes in a parenthetical remark that “411 such whales remain alive as of this writing.” The statistic almost apologizes for its inclusion, knowing too well it will soon be rendered moot.
Fathoms is a book concerned less with whales in the wild than it is with our refusal to leave them alone. Our relationship with whales is, and has always been, as Giggs sees it, a “one-sided intimacy.” They do not seek us out, however much we may wish they did. In the book’s opening scene, Giggs finds herself in a crowd, watching a whale die. It is a baby humpback, beached near Perth, Australia, and she and the group have toiled for days to push it back out to sea. As she draws closer to listen to the whale’s shuddering gasps, she stares at the animal’s lashless, midnight-colored eye. She is hoping for some kind of recognition, perhaps of its pain, of its imminent death, or of her own human presence. But the whale refuses. “I could not catch its gaze,” she writes. “It showed no sign of apprehending the presence of people, our effort or our grief.”
Before delving into the series of meditations and rabbit holes that make up Fathoms, Giggs states that her aim was to give whales a “new story,” one “that overrode the narrative of success [she’d] long been told.” The narrative in question is the whale’s comeback in the 1980s, when activists rallied to save the animals from commercial whaling, and, by extension, extinction. “Save the Whales,” the bumper stickers told us, and so we did, or so Giggs thought. Perhaps it is my age—I was born in the 1990s—but this claim about the ubiquity of this victorious narrative did not resonate with me. When I read about whales in the news, it is often because they are in danger, caught in netting, or choking with plastic. When I think of whales, I do not consider them saved. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Fathoms offers a richly sourced, complex evaluation of the modern state of whales in the hopes that we might again be inspired to save them. This project, though certainly deserving, is not groundbreaking. Philip Hoare’s Leviathan or, The Whale considers our history of exploiting the sperm whale. (Even Hoare’s book, written in 2009, memorializes an extinction that occurred in the time it took to write it: not of a whale but of another cetacean, the Yangtze River dolphin.) Nick Pyenson’s Spying on Whales, though more concerned with natural history and technological monitoring, focuses on the intertwined fates of human and whale. And then there are the suite of books about killer whales—which are technically dolphins but seem to be honorary whales in the ways we have wronged them—including, but not limited to David Neiwert’s Of Orcas and Men, Jason M. Colby’s Orca, and Mark Leiren-Young’s The Killer Who Changed the World.
Although Fathoms devotes a great deal of space to the whale’s history, it is ultimately concerned with its future. Giggs is a luminous nature writer grappling with an increasingly unnatural world, deploying a sense of wonder to great success as she paints the grim present and grimmer future of the world’s whales. But wonder—in its most uncertain, astonished definition—has its limits, and an ode can quickly morph into an obituary. Related Article The Inescapable Politics of Climate Change Alyssa Battistoni
Fathoms is a book about whales that includes very few of them alive and in the water. The only exceptions are two beached ones and a mother humpback Giggs ogles on a trip off the coast of Eden, Australia. The absence of up-close, wild encounters is not an elision but a conscientious choice in a book that asks us to “remain compassionately engaged with distant, unmet things.” What more would be gained by taking a boat out to trespass into some whale sanctuary in order to look another whale in the eye? Once is enough, Giggs seems to reason, and I agree.
It is in these distant encounters, musings on a stomach’s accretion of pesticides or forays into the back issues of the International Journal for Parasitology, that Giggs breathes new life into the oft-considered beast. Her wide-ranging observations are relentlessly curious and scaffolded in important research: She delves into scientific papers and 19th century newspapers, speaks with countless researchers, traces aboriginal hieroglyphs, even draws on Sianne Ngai’s theory that we may feel moved toward violence regarding things we find cute, as she analyzes a photo of tourists who killed a baby dolphin by taking selfies with it. “This must be the agony of loving the disappearing,” Giggs writes of the incident. But this might be said of Fathoms itself, in which Giggs’s descriptions sway between astonishment and grief.
Fathoms is suffused with this sickly kind of wonder, reckoning with the terrible beauty of the whale taken, used, and disassembled in history. Giggs marvels at how a glossy melon in a Victorian painting may have gained its gleam from an insecticide made with humpback oil. She tracks the sublimation of whale oil into something as mundane as margarine or intangible as a soap bubble. This awe is uncomfortable to sit with, to contemplate how much of our world was once and is still reliant on whale death.
Fathoms’s rigorous confrontation with destruction peaks in her description of a dead sperm whale found on a Spanish coast that had swallowed an entire flattened plastic greenhouse. The dead whale’s stomach contained everything one might need to garden out of season: tarps, burlap, hosepipes, rope, two flowerpots. Considering a greenhouse’s purpose as an unnatural manipulation of climate, the swallowing of one could have been a kind of protest if it hadn’t killed the poor whale.
Throughout Fathoms, Giggs’s line of thought frequently returns to the greenhouse, which functions as a refrain for the worst we could do to the whale (perhaps ironic, considering that the worst may be yet to come, in the gaseous sense of the word). Watching the baby humpback die, Giggs thinks of the greenhouse and wonders what we might owe the whale, “greater distance or more intervention?” She begins to address the humpback as she considers what might become of all this wonder: “The duty of awe was—wasn’t it—care?” she asks herself, shortly before she begins to talk to the whale, offering earnest words of comfort that she knows a whale’s ear will transmute to babble, if it can hear her at all.
Wonder can serve as a useful lens in writing about anything that we do not fully understand, treading the line between a dry, scientific description of whale anatomy and an abstraction of the animal into metaphor. Giggs uses this lens to particular success in her examination of parts of the whale many of us have never seen before, such as the parasitic lice that form in sherbet-colored clusters around the whale’s callosities to feed on flakes of flesh. “There is deathliness and irascible vigor, and plurality and plunder, pushing and pulsing within each creature,” she writes.
But wonder has diminishing returns in a world increasingly devoid of it, where contemplating nature has become a luxury, and more and more people see the environment as something volatile. Mystery holds less excitement when the creatures and places we hope to understand will change irrevocably, if not vanish entirely, before we can study them. In the decades before 1985, industrial whaling stripped so many cetaceans from the sea that scientists speculate this biomass removal must have resulted in the extinctions of the creatures that rely on whale falls, boneless worms and dark clams starving from the scarcity of corpses. “No one saw this happen,” Giggs writes. “Things were lost, that is, before they were ever found.”
It is poetic to wonder at how a sperm whale could have swallowed most of a greenhouse. We might wonder how its jaws could open wide enough to swallow the gridded walls, wonder how the shards of plastic lacerated its body, or wonder which plastic ultimately killed it—the sheeting, the rope, or the flowerpot. But we do not need to wonder how a greenhouse wound up in the ocean, or rather, what conditions the plastics industry created to ensure fresh tomatoes could be grown in a desert and sold year-round at supermarkets. A more rigorous, fulfilling lens here may not be wonder, but blame.
Or perhaps, the wonder 2020 requires is a wonder turned explicitly toward a kind of care that goes beyond wishing the whale well, but that can be acted upon. If we owe, how can we repay? This is not to say that Fathoms should have petered out from poetry into something like solutions journalism, but wonder seems to me a fitting lens to turn toward the people working to save them. Isn’t organizing awe-inspiring, teeming crowds of protests as spectacular as a whale fall?
Near the end of the book, Giggs divulges that as she put final touches on Fathoms, the whale-watching town of Eden evacuated and took shelter on the wharf as eastern Australia experienced its worst-ever bushfire season. She notes her shock at how one billion animals died in the weeks of the bushfire, compared with the hundred years it took to kill 3 million cetaceans in the 20th century—a devastation that likely will become a book of its own.
We should still hold out hope for the whale, Giggs argues, because it “reminds us of our collective ability to control ourselves, and our part in a planetary ecology.”
This reasoning is simplistic. It places undue weight on “ourselves,” recalling marketing campaigns in the early 2000s that blamed each of us for our personal carbon footprint, shifting public blame away from the oil giants. The whale is dying not because we individuals use plastic straws or plastic shopping bags but because the machinations of capital created an unsustainable world that is punishing the whale, and many of us as well.
The organizer and abolitionist Mariame Kaba has described hope as a discipline, something that does not come easy and must be practiced. Unlike us, whales are conscious breathers. They breathe when they decide to. In this way, each ballooning of colossal lungs that allow them to stay submerged for hours is a sign of intent. Giggs asks us to remember to hope the way whales remember to breathe. If breathing is conscious, so must be the work of unraveling the destruction we have wrought on the world, and on the whale.
There are moments when Giggs comes close to mobilizing the reader toward action, but she favors the generation of knowledge over the prescriptive. “Could you act on behalf of the whale?” she asks, and suggests that “you identify a part of the problem that you might see change in, using the talents and the resources that you possess.” There is no one way to save the whale. But there are many ways to try, and I found myself yearning for more concrete examples of the people who untangle whales or throw them salmon or fight against the pollution that muddies waters that people rely on too. When Giggs describes, in two lines, how the Lummi Nation fed Chinook salmon to an ailing population of orcas, this act of care seemed to me one of the most wondrous parts of the book.
Perhaps there is less poetry in prescription. But it would be a shame for readers who will drink in the beauty of Fathoms to revel in the majesty of the whale, mourn its long suffering, and go on living life as usual, perhaps with a reusable tote.


thenation--2020-11-04--Homeland Security Thinks Everything Looks Like Terrorism

A concerned law enforcement source provided The Nation with this Department of Homeland Security intelligence report about alleged violent threats associated with this summer ’ s protests against police brutality and mass incarceration .
Its use of counterterrorism terminology shows the DHS ’ s tendency to see terrorism threats where they may not exist .
❶ “ TTPs ” ( tactics , techniques , and procedures ) This term is common in counterterrorism and refers to patterns of behavior characteristic of certain terrorist groups .
Use of a term associated with terrorism so prominently in this document is noteworthy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out , may not even hold violent extremist beliefs .
❷ “ VOs ” ( violent opportunists ) This document later states that the DHS defines VOs as “ illicit actors who may or may not hold violent extremist ideological beliefs , but seek to exploit opportunities in non-violent protests to engage in unlawful violence.
” ❸ “ protestors in Hong Kong ” Since 2019 , Hong Kong residents have demonstrated against mainland China ’ s attempts to impose its extradition laws on them .
US law enforcement often looks for foreign ties @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them to take greater liberties in surveillance .
❹ “ JRIC ” ( Joint Regional Intelligence Center ) One of the many fusion centers established by the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 to respond to terrorism threats .
Fusion centers are designed to facilitate intelligence sharing between federal agencies and local law enforcement .
❺ “ LES ” ( law enforcement sensitive ) A designation for internal law enforcement records not to be shared publicly .
❻ “ anarchists ” Term often used by law enforcement as synonymous with “ antifa ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
President Trump vowed this summer to formally designate antifa a terrorist group , which would allow for far more intrusive forms of surveillance commonly employed against foreign terrorist groups like ISIS .
His FBI director , however , has asserted that antifa is not a formal group but an ideology .
❼ “ secure communication apps ” Apps that use encryption to enhance the privacy of the user ’ s correspondence .
Federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI have inveighed against the increasingly widespread use of such apps and their effect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going dark .
”

This article appears in the November 16/23, 2020 issue.
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A concerned law enforcement source provided The Nation with this Department of Homeland Security intelligence report about alleged violent threats associated with this summer’s protests against police brutality and mass incarceration. Its use of counterterrorism terminology shows the DHS’s tendency to see terrorism threats where they may not exist.
❶ “TTPs” (tactics, techniques, and procedures) This term is common in counterterrorism and refers to patterns of behavior characteristic of certain terrorist groups. Use of a term associated with terrorism so prominently in this document is noteworthy, since many suspects, as it points out, may not even hold violent extremist beliefs.
❷ “VOs” (violent opportunists) This document later states that the DHS defines VOs as “illicit actors who may or may not hold violent extremist ideological beliefs, but seek to exploit opportunities in non-violent protests to engage in unlawful violence.”
❸ “protestors in Hong Kong” Since 2019, Hong Kong residents have demonstrated against mainland China’s attempts to impose its extradition laws on them. US law enforcement often looks for foreign ties in domestic protest movements, which allows them to take greater liberties in surveillance. making threats Homeland Security Is Quietly Tying Antifa to Foreign Powers Ken Klippenstein
❹ “JRIC” (Joint Regional Intelligence Center) One of the many fusion centers established by the Department of Homeland Security after 9/11 to respond to terrorism threats. Fusion centers are designed to facilitate intelligence sharing between federal agencies and local law enforcement.
❺ “LES” (law enforcement sensitive) A designation for internal law enforcement records not to be shared publicly.
❻ “anarchists” Term often used by law enforcement as synonymous with “antifa” (short for “anti-fascist”). President Trump vowed this summer to formally designate antifa a terrorist group, which would allow for far more intrusive forms of surveillance commonly employed against foreign terrorist groups like ISIS. His FBI director, however, has asserted that antifa is not a formal group but an ideology.
❼ “secure communication apps” Apps that use encryption to enhance the privacy of the user’s correspondence. Federal law enforcement agencies like the FBI have inveighed against the increasingly widespread use of such apps and their effect on thwarting surveillance—a phenomenon it calls “going dark.”


thenation--2020-11-04--Biden: ‘It Ain’t Over Till Every Vote Is Counted, Every Ballot Is Counted’

On a night of close contests and inconclusive results in the most bitterly contested presidential contest of the modern era , Joe Biden spoke to his supporters and counseled , “ We ’ re gon na to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is finished .
It ain ’ t over till every vote is counted , every ballot is counted.
” While Trump made a false claim of victory based on incomplete returns , the former vice president spoke shortly after midnight to encourage supporters to “ keep the faith.
” Trump was running @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the count was far from finished in key battleground states ; the race was too close to call .
Around the time that Biden spoke , he led the popular vote by roughly 1.5 million ballots , though that margin was sure to grow as the count continued in West Coast states that he was winning by overwhelming margins .
The Democrat was ahead 223-174 in the Electoral College race , and he scoped out a scenario where he could secure the undecided states of Michigan , Pennsylvania , and Wisconsin and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But at the end of the night , he was not on the way to the landslide victory that the most optimistic of his supporters had imagined possible .
One state Trump won in 2016 , Arizona , and one congressional district , Nebraska ’ s 2nd , were trending toward Biden when the former vice president spoke .
But Democratic hopes for victories in Florida , North Carolina , Ohio , and Texas—states Trump won in 2016—faded as the long night unfolded .
And Trump was leading in the three Great Lakes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Only hours later , on the cusp of dawn , would the counting of absentee ballots from industrial cities tip the balance toward the Democrat in Wisconsin and Michigan and reveal that Pennsylvania was very much in play .
Biden Is Piling Up a Popular-Vote Mandate for Ending Trumpism The Democrat Who Could Prevent Democrats From Winning a Georgia Senate Seat When Biden spoke around midnight , Democrats were wrestling with the daunting prospect of a second Trump term .
And Trump was feeding into the waking nightmare .
Shortly after midnight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tweeted , “ I will be making a statement tonight .
A big WIN !
” And he displayed the desperate dishonesty that Democrats feared : “ We are up BIG , but they are trying to STEAL the Election .
We will never let them do it .
Votes can not be cast after the Polls are closed !
” Twitter flagged the statement with a warning : “ Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ to counter fiction peddled via social media and from the White House bully pulpit where Trump would , in the wee hours of the morning , assert that “ we already have won , ” claim victories in states where ballots were still being counted , threaten to seek an intervention by his allies on the US Supreme Court , and foster the fantasy that “ a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise [ his supporters ] and we won ’ t stand for it.
” Biden had to speak @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the opportunity to deliver a necessary reminder : Tens of millions of votes had yet to be counted nationwide—and hundreds of thousands needed to be counted in Michigan , Pennsylvania , and Wisconsin .
A lot of those votes were being tabulated in Detroit , Philadelphia , and Milwaukee—cities where Democrats invariably win big , and that often provide a late-stage boost for the party ’ s presidential nominees .
During an anxious night , it fell to Biden to explain the obvious : that counting a lot of votes takes time .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Democratic cities might yet yield Democratic victories .
“ We ’ re feeling real good about Wisconsin and Michigan , ” counseled the former vice president .
“ And by the way , it ’ s going to take time to count the votes .
We ’ re going to win Pennsylvania.
” He even held out hope for the as-yet-uncalled state of Georgia .
Patience , said Biden , was necessary .
“ Look , ” he argued , “ you know , we could know the results as early as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a little longer .
As I ’ ve said all along , it ’ s not my place or Donald Trump ’ s place to declare who ’ s winning this election .
That ’ s the decision of the American people.
” That was what Biden ’ s shaken supporters needed to hear .
It was also the truth .
The long , slow count that everyone feared is on .
It will take time .
Trump was making his outrageous claims .
Biden was countering them with the facts and with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the president ’ s lies—is functioning as it can , and must .

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On a night of close contests and inconclusive results in the most bitterly contested presidential contest of the modern era, Joe Biden spoke to his supporters and counseled, “We’re gonna to have to be patient until the hard work of tallying votes is finished. It ain’t over till every vote is counted, every ballot is counted.”
While Trump made a false claim of victory based on incomplete returns, the former vice president spoke shortly after midnight to encourage supporters to “keep the faith.” Trump was running better than preelection polls had predicted. But the count was far from finished in key battleground states; the race was too close to call.
Around the time that Biden spoke, he led the popular vote by roughly 1.5 million ballots, though that margin was sure to grow as the count continued in West Coast states that he was winning by overwhelming margins. The Democrat was ahead 223-174 in the Electoral College race, and he scoped out a scenario where he could secure the undecided states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and take the presidency away from Trump. But at the end of the night, he was not on the way to the landslide victory that the most optimistic of his supporters had imagined possible.
One state Trump won in 2016, Arizona, and one congressional district, Nebraska’s 2nd, were trending toward Biden when the former vice president spoke. But Democratic hopes for victories in Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, and Texas—states Trump won in 2016—faded as the long night unfolded. And Trump was leading in the three Great Lakes battlegrounds where he narrowly prevailed in 2016. Only hours later, on the cusp of dawn, would the counting of absentee ballots from industrial cities tip the balance toward the Democrat in Wisconsin and Michigan and reveal that Pennsylvania was very much in play. More From John Nichols A GOP Debate Without Trump Is the Definition of Pointlessness August 11, 2023 A Win for Abortion Rights, a Win for Democracy: Ohio Voters Reject Issue 1 August 9, 2023 The Biggest Threat to Donald Trump Could Be the Constitution Itself August 4, 2023
When Biden spoke around midnight, Democrats were wrestling with the daunting prospect of a second Trump term. And Trump was feeding into the waking nightmare.
Shortly after midnight on the East Coast, the president tweeted, “I will be making a statement tonight. A big WIN!” And he displayed the desperate dishonesty that Democrats feared: “We are up BIG, but they are trying to STEAL the Election. We will never let them do it. Votes cannot be cast after the Polls are closed!” Twitter flagged the statement with a warning: “Some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading about an election or other civic process.”
But a Twitter warning was insufficient to counter fiction peddled via social media and from the White House bully pulpit where Trump would, in the wee hours of the morning, assert that “we already have won,” claim victories in states where ballots were still being counted, threaten to seek an intervention by his allies on the US Supreme Court, and foster the fantasy that “a very sad group of people is trying to disenfranchise [his supporters] and we won’t stand for it.” Dateline Pennsylvania A Bumpy Night in Berks County, Pennsylvania D.D. Guttenplan
Biden had to speak on election night, and he took the opportunity to deliver a necessary reminder: Tens of millions of votes had yet to be counted nationwide—and hundreds of thousands needed to be counted in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. A lot of those votes were being tabulated in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee—cities where Democrats invariably win big, and that often provide a late-stage boost for the party’s presidential nominees.
During an anxious night, it fell to Biden to explain the obvious: that counting a lot of votes takes time. And that counting a lot of votes in Democratic cities might yet yield Democratic victories.
“We’re feeling real good about Wisconsin and Michigan,” counseled the former vice president. “And by the way, it’s going to take time to count the votes. We’re going to win Pennsylvania.” He even held out hope for the as-yet-uncalled state of Georgia.
Patience, said Biden, was necessary. “Look,” he argued, “you know, we could know the results as early as tomorrow morning, but it may take a little longer. As I’ve said all along, it’s not my place or Donald Trump’s place to declare who’s winning this election. That’s the decision of the American people.”
That was what Biden’s shaken supporters needed to hear. It was also the truth.
The long, slow count that everyone feared is on. It will take time. Trump was making his outrageous claims. Biden was countering them with the facts and with clear faith in a democratic process that—despite the president’s lies—is functioning as it can, and must.


thenation--2020-11-04--By Ignoring Latino Voters, Biden Has Made the Election Too Close

As of Tuesday night , there was no clear winner in the 2020 presidential race .
Nor is one likely to emerge until later in the week , when the votes are fully tabulated in slow-counting swing states like Pennsylvania , Wisconsin , and Michigan .
Still , it is clear that the race will not be , as some had predicted , a blow-out for Joe Biden .
Biden has already lost the crucial swing state of Florida .
He has also underperformed in Georgia and North Carolina .
It looks like if Biden wins , the path is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , with possible help from Arizona and Nebraska ’ s 2nd district .
The race is much closer in large part because Biden is performing worse than Hillary Clinton did among people of color , especially Latinos .
Explaining Trump ’ s Florida victory , New York Times polling analyst Nate Cohn notes that “ Trump is doing way , way better than 2016 in Hispanic and Cuban areas .
He ’ s also doing better in majority black precincts .
Biden *is* doing better in older and relatively white areas.… But not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it in diverse FL.
” There has been a consistent pattern in polling for most of 2020 of Biden doing better with white voters than Hillary Clinton , while doing worse than she did among people of color .
Clinton herself did worse than Barack Obama with people of color .
So the current election follows a pattern , going back nearly a decade , of Democrats losing their edge with people of color .
Even if Biden should win , this pattern should give the party pause , especially since it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump .
If Trump is doing better with people of color , it ’ s for the same reason he has improved the Republican Party ’ s edge among non-college-educated white voters : class .
Trump talks the language of bread-and-butter economics , promising jobs .
Democrats , with the exception of the progressive wing of the party , have abandoned class language and instead focus on national unity .
The problem with Trump , to hear Biden tell it , is that he ’ s a divisive figure .
Biden , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s bigotry .
But Biden , like Clinton , is also eager to pursue erstwhile Republicans , many of whom are suburban whites .
In tailoring their message to these voters , Biden and Clinton have softened the economic populism Democrat need to win working-class voters .
As HuffPost writer Zach Carter observes , “ the big shift so far is Democrats losing ground with Black and Latino voters .
If that holds , then Democrats have to do some soul-searching , and then some resigning.
” The travesty of this election @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Latino voters were well-known .
Biden did worse among them than Bernie Sanders did .
The Biden campaign could have turned to Sanders for advice on how to solve this problem .
Instead , it did nothing .
As Politico reported in May : Joe Biden won the primary in spite of , not because of , his efforts to turn out Latinos .
Two months later , Hispanic leaders are waiting on his campaign to deliver on its promises to do more .
In interviews , more than 20 Latino political operatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t see a game plan from Biden to marshal Hispanic voters effectively in the fall .
They said there ’ s little evidence the campaign is devoting the resources or hiring the staff that task will require—all the more crucial during a pandemic , when reaching and mobilizing Latino voters through in-person canvassing is nearly impossible .
Even if Biden wins , there needs to be soul-searching on the part of both Democrats and progressives .
As Yale law professor Samuel Moyn asks , “ How can the progressive outlook not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thanks to well-off suburbs , with some evidence of softening minority support ?
”

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As of Tuesday night, there was no clear winner in the 2020 presidential race. Nor is one likely to emerge until later in the week, when the votes are fully tabulated in slow-counting swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Still, it is clear that the race will not be, as some had predicted, a blow-out for Joe Biden. Biden has already lost the crucial swing state of Florida. He has also underperformed in Georgia and North Carolina. It looks like if Biden wins, the path is through Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, with possible help from Arizona and Nebraska’s 2nd district.
The race is much closer in large part because Biden is performing worse than Hillary Clinton did among people of color, especially Latinos. Explaining Trump’s Florida victory, New York Times polling analyst Nate Cohn notes that “Trump is doing way, way better than 2016 in Hispanic and Cuban areas. He’s also doing better in majority black precincts. Biden *is* doing better in older and relatively white areas.… But not by much—and that doesn’t cut it in diverse FL.”
There has been a consistent pattern in polling for most of 2020 of Biden doing better with white voters than Hillary Clinton, while doing worse than she did among people of color. Clinton herself did worse than Barack Obama with people of color. So the current election follows a pattern, going back nearly a decade, of Democrats losing their edge with people of color. Even if Biden should win, this pattern should give the party pause, especially since it is doing so against a notorious bigot like Donald Trump.
If Trump is doing better with people of color, it’s for the same reason he has improved the Republican Party’s edge among non-college-educated white voters: class. Trump talks the language of bread-and-butter economics, promising jobs. Democrats, with the exception of the progressive wing of the party, have abandoned class language and instead focus on national unity. The problem with Trump, to hear Biden tell it, is that he’s a divisive figure. Biden, to be sure, bluntly criticizes Trump’s bigotry. But Biden, like Clinton, is also eager to pursue erstwhile Republicans, many of whom are suburban whites. In tailoring their message to these voters, Biden and Clinton have softened the economic populism Democrat need to win working-class voters.
As HuffPost writer Zach Carter observes, “the big shift so far is Democrats losing ground with Black and Latino voters. If that holds, then Democrats have to do some soul-searching, and then some resigning.”
The travesty of this election is that Biden’s problems with Latino voters were well-known. Biden did worse among them than Bernie Sanders did. The Biden campaign could have turned to Sanders for advice on how to solve this problem. Instead, it did nothing.
As Politico reported in May: Current Issue View our current issue
Joe Biden won the primary in spite of, not because of, his efforts to turn out Latinos. Two months later, Hispanic leaders are waiting on his campaign to deliver on its promises to do more. In interviews, more than 20 Latino political operatives, lawmakers, and activists said they don’t see a game plan from Biden to marshal Hispanic voters effectively in the fall. They said there’s little evidence the campaign is devoting the resources or hiring the staff that task will require—all the more crucial during a pandemic, when reaching and mobilizing Latino voters through in-person canvassing is nearly impossible.
Even if Biden wins, there needs to be soul-searching on the part of both Democrats and progressives. As Yale law professor Samuel Moyn asks, “How can the progressive outlook not require a major overhaul if it succeeds thanks to well-off suburbs, with some evidence of softening minority support?”