theintercept--2020-09-01--Rebuilding the Economy Will Require Joe Biden to Think Very Differently Than 2009

of Franklin Roosevelt ’ s New Deal , in the opening words of his convention acceptance speech , offered a flash of hope that , in broad terms , the Democratic nominee has grasped the scale of the Covid-19 crisis .
Yet before Biden even spoke , the head of his transition team , former Sen. Ted Kaufman , undercut that hope , telling the Wall Street Journal that , in effect , Biden didn ’ t mean it .
“ When we get in , the pantry is going to be bare , ” Kaufman said .
“ When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the deficit … forget about Covid-19 , all the deficits that he built with the incredible tax cuts .
So we ’ re going to be limited.
” After being called out by David Sirota , the Biden campaign split the difference : There will be “ stimulus ” in the short run , retrenchment later .
The reassurance is not reassuring .
For , like the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force report on which the Democratic platform is based , it confirms that economic thinking on Team Biden , even among its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ same as that behind the Obama-Biden strategy for the previous economic crisis , from 2008 to 2009 .
But the underlying situation now is in many ways much more serious and intractable .
The 2008 crisis was , at its core , a financial one .
It stemmed from a rash of financial frauds , which generated a simulacrum of economic growth through mortgage loans that would never be honored in full — and that were designed , and targeted , to ensure that they could never be honored in full .
When @ @ @ @ @ @ @ market collapsed , millions lost their jobs ; millions more lost their homes .
Still , overall and over time , the crisis was amenable to the conventional “ Keynesian ” fix : a large injection of money .
The residual arguments over the Obama-Biden program in 2009 are merely over whether the injection was large enough , and whether a larger one might have averted the political backlash that hit the administration in 2010 .
Remarkably , although the recovery was slow and neither the labor force nor homeownership ever returned to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ able to sustain an economic expansion after 2010 .
The position of the country was helped by an unexpected surge in low-cost natural gas and high-cost oil production .
The expansion was continued , in the first three years of Donald Trump ’ s term , by large tax cuts weighted to the wealthy and a booming stock market — the “ everything bubble ” as it is sometimes called .
The jobs created , it is true , were mainly at relatively low wages .
Nevertheless , they were created .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ defined , by around 2018 .
This fact — a slow-motion success story — no doubt bolsters the confidence now of those who set the policy back then .
The long expansion relied very heavily on the consumer .
While personal consumption had been the source of the pre-crisis boom , and fell sharply in the slump , its share of gross domestic product recovered after early 2015 and remained throughout well above levels of any previous post-war epoch .
Total business investment , on the other hand , never returned to pre-crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was at the peak in 2015 almost 2 percentage points below the previous peak in 2005 , in part because the digital revolution reduced the cost of capital equipment and cut into the brick-and-mortar needs of the business sector .
Government spending rose sharply in the slump and remained historically high , but as a share of GDP it declined continuously from the start of the expansion until 2020 .
Thus , consumer spending was the main sustaining factor for the five final years , until the pandemic hit .
There are three @ @ @ @ @ @ @ expansion is will not be repeated now .
First , the pandemic has obliterated the global market for many advanced capital goods in which America excels .
Aircraft are a major example .
The civil aviation industry depends on worldwide demand , not U.S. demand , and world demand is dead so long as more airworthy planes are parked on the ground than are in the air .
In a slightly different vein , the U.S. oil business turns on a world price .
It is doomed so long as the selling price @ @ @ @ @ @ @ oil from the ground in West Texas .
Construction of offices and retail malls : also dead and done as a substantial share of clerical work shifts to the home office and of shopping to online distributors .
The sale of automobiles will slow as commuting and shopping demand fewer miles of travel , and cars therefore last longer .
In many other sectors , cheap digital equipment will replace expensive facilities and human labor .
Overall , the next recovery will not be kickstarted by exports , by business investment , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There is nothing that Keynesian stimulus can do about that .
When we come to the consumer , there is an even bigger problem .
It is that the largest share of increased spending in the last recovery — and the secret of American success at job creation — was not in the purchase of goods , but in the production and consumption of services .
The U.S. economy after the crisis saw a vast growth in jobs in bars , restaurants , coffeehouses , hotels , resorts , spas and casinos @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tattoo parlors , hair and nail salons , boutique shops , and high-end grocery stores , as well as in child care , education , cultural events , and elective medical procedures – the entire panoply of services with which a wealthy society tends to pamper itself .
In effect , the U.S. economy became a gigantic carnival of doing each other ’ s washing and scratching each other ’ s backs .
The pandemic has washed much of that away .
Direct personal contact , crowded spaces , and mixing are the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suppressed , necessarily , for health reasons — and will remain .
There is an assumption , in many quarters , that if and when the pandemic recedes , these will simply return , and things will start up where they left off .
This is neither a safe assumption nor even a reasonable one .
Back when most spending , at the margin , was for goods produced in American factories , the simple provision of money could flip the switch that got things going .
Customers placed orders , businesses hired @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In an economy in which domestic spending is overwhelmingly directed at services , the jobs will not return until the customers , collectively , are willing to buy the services that they , themselves , collectively provide .
But they will not be willing until they have the jobs , which depend on the prior presence of customers .
This is a classic catch-22 .
It is precisely the dynamic — the virtuous circle — of self-reinforcing demand that the pandemic has obstructed and will continue to obstruct .
Even when the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it does recede — these services will not return easily for a more basic reason .
They are generally not essential .
They are add-ons that grew up with our wealth , and most Americans can , by and large , do without them .
American households in the middle class and up live in houses , the byproduct of postwar policies of suburbanization and homeownership .
If they have to , people who live in houses can cook , clean , and entertain themselves at home .
In recent years , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ home : to go out , to buy food , get exercise , and have fun on the market .
The economy can and will retreat along the same lines , as families with incomes decide to spend less and save more , while those without incomes cut back on everything because they have to .
It will retreat along those lines at least until the uncertainties of the pandemic start to recede .
But the uncertainties can ’ t recede , so long as people who provide all those services do not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prospect for jobs — and there , once again , is the catch .
The firms that provide the jobs can not survive these conditions indefinitely .
Service businesses generally operate with fixed costs , including rent and interest , that demand a high level of customer pass-through .
Bars must be packed , restaurants full and noisy on the weekends , concerts sold out , or the businesses behind them can not be sustained .
The combination of public health restrictions on their capacity with high household savings and low patronage driven @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prospects .
A New York Times survey shows a falloff in August of almost 25 percent in visits to businesses compared to 2019 , even though incomes have been kept up by relief programs .
How long businesses can hold out is anyone ’ s guess .
But many have given up already and many more will follow .
And once a commercial strip or mall or neighborhood begins to go dark , blight weighs on the survivors .
This is something we can see all around us right now .
Third , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not work , arrears for rent , mortgages , and utility bills are piling up .
According to one survey , about a third of households failed to make their full rent or mortgage payment in July — for the fourth month in a row .
Landlords have begun again to file for evictions — understandably from their point of view but disastrously for the economy as a whole .
As the fear of eviction or foreclosure returns , households will save even more , and spend even less , hoping to have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bad luck or sustained joblessness , to keep the bailiff from the door .
has changed our economy for the long term .
The changes are due to our advanced technology , not our backwardness ; to our wealth , not our poverty ; to our past access to credit and therefore , to our fixed commitments in relation to current incomes ; to our houses and suburbs and cars ; and to the fact that we have had , and still have , an affluent society .
The decision , by millions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ own best interest — to eat and play at home , to save more and spend less , to protect their health and to hang on for as long as possible — creates an economic problem that can not be palliated by money alone .
This is not the postwar America of competitive consumerism and pent-up demand on which the magic of Maynard Keynes worked so well .
The point of all the measures taken in April — the CARES Act , with extended unemployment benefits , payroll protection , small business loans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; and the Federal Reserve ’ s moves — was to buy time for social distancing and other measures to bring Covid-19 under control .
The assumption was that the economy would then recover on its own .
Even though the public health measures did not work , the funds did buy time for American households to pay rent , mortgages , utility bills , and ( as it turned out ) to put something aside for the summer and fall .
They kept the country from falling apart as the pandemic spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can , of course , buy more time and is indeed urgent right now .
But it will not , by itself , set the economy on a path toward renewed growth and high employment .
Something else must be done , going far beyond mere money .
Or else , it ’ s depression all the way down .
The outlines of that something else are only just coming into view .
Some of the basic elements are the following : The sectors producing advanced capital goods for world markets , energy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the construction sector must be mobilized , as if in a wartime effort , to a new set of purposes .
These should aim at sustainable energy , mitigation of climate change , public health , and the reconstruction of life itself around safe and sustainable patterns of activity .
Renewed infrastructure of all types , new transportation systems , new amenities , natural conservation , and cultural investments are all parts of this challenge .
The Green New Deal is now doubly necessary , not only to transform the energy basis of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that there is an economy to be transformed .
For the many millions who can not find jobs in the private sector , there must be a job guarantee for all seeking to work , at a modest living wage , in the public sector .
The pandemic has cut not only services jobs , but also office jobs and construction , so that nearly 40 million American workers have been displaced .
Many will not be called back even if their employers survive .
Yet there is work enough for everyone : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ public health , in parks and libraries , in art and culture , in maintaining our communities , and in providing food and housing and other basic services to those in need , and if the jobs are made available , people will sign up for them by the millions .
Service providers must be restructured so they can be sustained at reduced volumes .
They must get loans on easy terms to reconfigure their physical layout to protect both customers and workers .
But they also need assistance in meeting their costs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of service firms , with local government getting support from the federal government , is one promising path .
In Germany , small businesses got a share of their costs covered by their localities , and so can survive , whereas in the U.S. they are failing .
Manufacturing capacity sufficient to meet the basic requirements of public health and sustenance must be rebuilt on domestic soil , so as to be immune from the disruptions to trade associated with the pandemic or other threats to global supply chains .
We can not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this spring and summer , unable to provide basic protective equipment to health care workers and indeed to the whole population .
For this purpose , a new structure of financing will be required , a Health Finance Corporation along the lines of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that operated from 1932 to 1956 .
Public health must be reconstructed , accessible to all at no out-of-pocket cost .
This call goes beyond the conventional discussion of public options and single-payer schemes to recognize that Covid-19 has created a financial crisis for America ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ else in America , health care is a business .
And as the economy has fallen , reducing accidents and other infectious diseases , and as elective procedures have been postponed , providers are seeing fewer people , so that — like every other form of business — many hospitals and clinics can not cover their costs .
The solution is to make the health care sector cooperative , to assure that appropriate services are available to all .
Indeed Spain and Ireland nationalized all health care services in the pandemic ; America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less drastic solution .
For the duration and beyond , renters and mortgage holders must be shielded from evictions , foreclosures , and utility stoppages , consistent with good behavior supervised by local authorities , and there must be reasonable facilities to write down unpayable debts , along with reasonable compensation to small landlords .
Student debt and medical debt are also good candidates for general relief .
Ultimately , since these debts are also the assets of those who lent the money , the reality is that a successful economy after Covid-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ If the pandemic is to be defeated , and if a viable social order is to emerge in the aftermath , the balance sheets of American households will have to be rewritten to carry a burden of debt that is manageable , given less market activity and lower market incomes .
This means that the assets of the wealthy , as well as the debts of the overburdened , will have to be written down .
There must be a general redistribution from creditors to debtors , reversing the trend of the past @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the way , will occur .
It can be done through a decade of depression , as in the 1930s , or two decades of inflation , as in the 1960s , or it can be done by sensible restructuring and debt relief , as was done in the immediate aftermath of World War II .
Finally , with a widespread write-down of debts and assets , the financial sector must be restructured , since that sector holds many of the assets that will lose value .
The ultimate financial consequences of this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ where the weak points of the financial system will emerge is still somewhat obscure .
But it is certain that those weak points exist and when they are exposed , they will prove profound .
The big banks that can not make it can be taken over and run as public utilities ; this can be done under present law .
Necessary payments , savings , and credit functions can be sustained by providing public options , through postal banking and a public electronic payments system , managed by the Fed .
Over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be supported to build a new economy in place of the one that Wall Street distorted and , ultimately , helped to destroy .
No spirit of radicalism animates these ideas .
They are not driven by ideology nor by any past commitment to any agenda .
They follow as matters of logic and fact from an understanding of the situation .
The previous structure of the American economy was highly efficient in some ways .
It supported , although unequally , a high living standard for a very large part of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ways that can not be controlled or reversed , and that will not evaporate on their own , whatever happens to the virus and the pandemic .
It is therefore a delusion to think that markets will restore us to well-being on their own .
It is a delusion to think that the mere injection of money , however great and generous and however needed for the short run , will bring back the happy mix of jobs and incomes we ’ ve just lost .
It is a delusion to think that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , whose ideas have dominated liberal thought and response to economic crises for 70 years now , will work in the face of the Covid-19 challenge .
The path forward requires planning and action on a far larger scale .
It requires skills , imagination , local knowledge , commitment , and mobilization that resemble — but actually surpass — those brought to bear in the New Deal .
The only good news is that other unprecedented crises have happened before .
In most cases , the result has been disaster .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ history when the country rallied to do what was necessary , overcoming the odds , the powers , the old ideas , and the bad actors who stood in the way .
It did so in 1861 , in 1933 , and in 1942 .
And here we are again .
Biden was right to invoke Roosevelt and the New Deal .
America needs for him to mean it .

Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Joe Biden’s invocation of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, in the opening words of his convention acceptance speech, offered a flash of hope that, in broad terms, the Democratic nominee has grasped the scale of the Covid-19 crisis. Yet before Biden even spoke, the head of his transition team, former Sen. Ted Kaufman, undercut that hope, telling the Wall Street Journal that, in effect, Biden didn’t mean it. “When we get in, the pantry is going to be bare,” Kaufman said. “When you see what Trump’s done to the deficit … forget about Covid-19, all the deficits that he built with the incredible tax cuts. So we’re going to be limited.” After being called out by David Sirota, the Biden campaign split the difference: There will be “stimulus” in the short run, retrenchment later.
The reassurance is not reassuring. For, like the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force report on which the Democratic platform is based, it confirms that economic thinking on Team Biden, even among its most progressive elements, is essentially the same as that behind the Obama-Biden strategy for the previous economic crisis, from 2008 to 2009. But the underlying situation now is in many ways much more serious and intractable.
The 2008 crisis was, at its core, a financial one. It stemmed from a rash of financial frauds, which generated a simulacrum of economic growth through mortgage loans that would never be honored in full — and that were designed, and targeted, to ensure that they could never be honored in full. When the frauds were exposed and the housing market collapsed, millions lost their jobs; millions more lost their homes. Still, overall and over time, the crisis was amenable to the conventional “Keynesian” fix: a large injection of money. The residual arguments over the Obama-Biden program in 2009 are merely over whether the injection was large enough, and whether a larger one might have averted the political backlash that hit the administration in 2010.
Remarkably, although the recovery was slow and neither the labor force nor homeownership ever returned to pre-crisis levels, the United States was able to sustain an economic expansion after 2010. The position of the country was helped by an unexpected surge in low-cost natural gas and high-cost oil production. The expansion was continued, in the first three years of Donald Trump’s term, by large tax cuts weighted to the wealthy and a booming stock market — the “everything bubble” as it is sometimes called. The jobs created, it is true, were mainly at relatively low wages. Nevertheless, they were created. The U.S. returned to full employment, conventionally defined, by around 2018. This fact — a slow-motion success story — no doubt bolsters the confidence now of those who set the policy back then.
The next recovery will not be kickstarted by exports, by business investment, or by the purchases of durable consumer goods.
The long expansion relied very heavily on the consumer. While personal consumption had been the source of the pre-crisis boom, and fell sharply in the slump, its share of gross domestic product recovered after early 2015 and remained throughout well above levels of any previous post-war epoch. Total business investment, on the other hand, never returned to pre-crisis levels as a share of GDP and was at the peak in 2015 almost 2 percentage points below the previous peak in 2005, in part because the digital revolution reduced the cost of capital equipment and cut into the brick-and-mortar needs of the business sector. Government spending rose sharply in the slump and remained historically high, but as a share of GDP it declined continuously from the start of the expansion until 2020. Thus, consumer spending was the main sustaining factor for the five final years, until the pandemic hit.
There are three reasons why the experience of the last expansion will not be repeated now.
First, the pandemic has obliterated the global market for many advanced capital goods in which America excels. Aircraft are a major example. The civil aviation industry depends on worldwide demand, not U.S. demand, and world demand is dead so long as more airworthy planes are parked on the ground than are in the air. In a slightly different vein, the U.S. oil business turns on a world price. It is doomed so long as the selling price is half the cost of getting fracked oil from the ground in West Texas. Construction of offices and retail malls: also dead and done as a substantial share of clerical work shifts to the home office and of shopping to online distributors. The sale of automobiles will slow as commuting and shopping demand fewer miles of travel, and cars therefore last longer. In many other sectors, cheap digital equipment will replace expensive facilities and human labor. Overall, the next recovery will not be kickstarted by exports, by business investment, or by the purchases of durable consumer goods. There is nothing that Keynesian stimulus can do about that.
When we come to the consumer, there is an even bigger problem. It is that the largest share of increased spending in the last recovery — and the secret of American success at job creation — was not in the purchase of goods, but in the production and consumption of services. The U.S. economy after the crisis saw a vast growth in jobs in bars, restaurants, coffeehouses, hotels, resorts, spas and casinos, gyms, ride-shares, massage and tattoo parlors, hair and nail salons, boutique shops, and high-end grocery stores, as well as in child care, education, cultural events, and elective medical procedures — the entire panoply of services with which a wealthy society tends to pamper itself. In effect, the U.S. economy became a gigantic carnival of doing each other’s washing and scratching each other’s backs.
The pandemic has washed much of that away. Direct personal contact, crowded spaces, and mixing are the essence of many services and have been suppressed, necessarily, for health reasons — and will remain. There is an assumption, in many quarters, that if and when the pandemic recedes, these will simply return, and things will start up where they left off. This is neither a safe assumption nor even a reasonable one.
Back when most spending, at the margin, was for goods produced in American factories, the simple provision of money could flip the switch that got things going. Customers placed orders, businesses hired workers, and the engine started up. In an economy in which domestic spending is overwhelmingly directed at services, the jobs will not return until the customers, collectively, are willing to buy the services that they, themselves, collectively provide. But they will not be willing until they have the jobs, which depend on the prior presence of customers. This is a classic catch-22. It is precisely the dynamic — the virtuous circle — of self-reinforcing demand that the pandemic has obstructed and will continue to obstruct.
Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images
Even when the threat of the virus recedes — if it does recede — these services will not return easily for a more basic reason. They are generally not essential. They are add-ons that grew up with our wealth, and most Americans can, by and large, do without them. American households in the middle class and up live in houses, the byproduct of postwar policies of suburbanization and homeownership. If they have to, people who live in houses can cook, clean, and entertain themselves at home. In recent years, the economy grew by persuading them to leave home: to go out, to buy food, get exercise, and have fun on the market. The economy can and will retreat along the same lines, as families with incomes decide to spend less and save more, while those without incomes cut back on everything because they have to. It will retreat along those lines at least until the uncertainties of the pandemic start to recede. But the uncertainties can’t recede, so long as people who provide all those services do not first experience a sustained improvement in their prospect for jobs — and there, once again, is the catch.
The firms that provide the jobs cannot survive these conditions indefinitely. Service businesses generally operate with fixed costs, including rent and interest, that demand a high level of customer pass-through. Bars must be packed, restaurants full and noisy on the weekends, concerts sold out, or the businesses behind them cannot be sustained. The combination of public health restrictions on their capacity with high household savings and low patronage driven by economic insecurity is lethal to their prospects. A New York Times survey shows a falloff in August of almost 25 percent in visits to businesses compared to 2019, even though incomes have been kept up by relief programs. How long businesses can hold out is anyone’s guess. But many have given up already and many more will follow. And once a commercial strip or mall or neighborhood begins to go dark, blight weighs on the survivors. This is something we can see all around us right now.
Third, as the pandemic lingers and people cannot work, arrears for rent, mortgages, and utility bills are piling up. According to one survey, about a third of households failed to make their full rent or mortgage payment in July — for the fourth month in a row. Landlords have begun again to file for evictions — understandably from their point of view but disastrously for the economy as a whole. As the fear of eviction or foreclosure returns, households will save even more, and spend even less, hoping to have enough in reserve, in case of bad luck or sustained joblessness, to keep the bailiff from the door.
The Covid-19 pandemic has changed our economy for the long term. The changes are due to our advanced technology, not our backwardness; to our wealth, not our poverty; to our past access to credit and therefore, to our fixed commitments in relation to current incomes; to our houses and suburbs and cars; and to the fact that we have had, and still have, an affluent society. The decision, by millions of anxious Americans each acting in their own best interest — to eat and play at home, to save more and spend less, to protect their health and to hang on for as long as possible — creates an economic problem that cannot be palliated by money alone. This is not the postwar America of competitive consumerism and pent-up demand on which the magic of Maynard Keynes worked so well.
Something else must be done, going far beyond mere money. Or else, it’s depression all the way down.
The point of all the measures taken in April — the CARES Act, with extended unemployment benefits, payroll protection, small business loans, and direct payments to tax filers; and the Federal Reserve’s moves — was to buy time for social distancing and other measures to bring Covid-19 under control. The assumption was that the economy would then recover on its own. Even though the public health measures did not work, the funds did buy time for American households to pay rent, mortgages, utility bills, and (as it turned out) to put something aside for the summer and fall. They kept the country from falling apart as the pandemic spread. A new round of income supports can, of course, buy more time and is indeed urgent right now. But it will not, by itself, set the economy on a path toward renewed growth and high employment. Something else must be done, going far beyond mere money. Or else, it’s depression all the way down.
The outlines of that something else are only just coming into view. Some of the basic elements are the following:
1. The sectors producing advanced capital goods for world markets, energy for domestic use, weapons, and the construction sector must be mobilized, as if in a wartime effort, to a new set of purposes. These should aim at sustainable energy, mitigation of climate change, public health, and the reconstruction of life itself around safe and sustainable patterns of activity. Renewed infrastructure of all types, new transportation systems, new amenities, natural conservation, and cultural investments are all parts of this challenge. The Green New Deal is now doubly necessary, not only to transform the energy basis of the economy, but also to ensure that there is an economy to be transformed.
2. For the many millions who cannot find jobs in the private sector, there must be a job guarantee for all seeking to work, at a modest living wage, in the public sector. The pandemic has cut not only services jobs, but also office jobs and construction, so that nearly 40 million American workers have been displaced. Many will not be called back even if their employers survive. Yet there is work enough for everyone: in teaching, in caring, in public health, in parks and libraries, in art and culture, in maintaining our communities, and in providing food and housing and other basic services to those in need, and if the jobs are made available, people will sign up for them by the millions.
3. Service providers must be restructured so they can be sustained at reduced volumes. They must get loans on easy terms to reconfigure their physical layout to protect both customers and workers. But they also need assistance in meeting their costs. Cooperative private-public ownership and partial municipalization of service firms, with local government getting support from the federal government, is one promising path. In Germany, small businesses got a share of their costs covered by their localities, and so can survive, whereas in the U.S. they are failing.
4. Manufacturing capacity sufficient to meet the basic requirements of public health and sustenance must be rebuilt on domestic soil, so as to be immune from the disruptions to trade associated with the pandemic or other threats to global supply chains. We cannot be caught again, as we were this spring and summer, unable to provide basic protective equipment to health care workers and indeed to the whole population. For this purpose, a new structure of financing will be required, a Health Finance Corporation along the lines of the Reconstruction Finance Corporation that operated from 1932 to 1956.
5. Public health must be reconstructed, accessible to all at no out-of-pocket cost. This call goes beyond the conventional discussion of public options and single-payer schemes to recognize that Covid-19 has created a financial crisis for America’s health care sector. Like everything else in America, health care is a business. And as the economy has fallen, reducing accidents and other infectious diseases, and as elective procedures have been postponed, providers are seeing fewer people, so that — like every other form of business — many hospitals and clinics cannot cover their costs. The solution is to make the health care sector cooperative, to assure that appropriate services are available to all. Indeed Spain and Ireland nationalized all health care services in the pandemic; America could do the same or find a less drastic solution.
Photo: Ty Wright/Bloomberg/Getty Images
6. For the duration and beyond, renters and mortgage holders must be shielded from evictions, foreclosures, and utility stoppages, consistent with good behavior supervised by local authorities, and there must be reasonable facilities to write down unpayable debts, along with reasonable compensation to small landlords. Student debt and medical debt are also good candidates for general relief.
7. Ultimately, since these debts are also the assets of those who lent the money, the reality is that a successful economy after Covid-19 requires a redistribution of financial wealth. If the pandemic is to be defeated, and if a viable social order is to emerge in the aftermath, the balance sheets of American households will have to be rewritten to carry a burden of debt that is manageable, given less market activity and lower market incomes. This means that the assets of the wealthy, as well as the debts of the overburdened, will have to be written down. There must be a general redistribution from creditors to debtors, reversing the trend of the past 40 years. The redistribution, by the way, will occur. It can be done through a decade of depression, as in the 1930s, or two decades of inflation, as in the 1960s, or it can be done by sensible restructuring and debt relief, as was done in the immediate aftermath of World War II.
8. Finally, with a widespread write-down of debts and assets, the financial sector must be restructured, since that sector holds many of the assets that will lose value. The ultimate financial consequences of this pandemic are not yet clear, and where the weak points of the financial system will emerge is still somewhat obscure. But it is certain that those weak points exist and when they are exposed, they will prove profound. The big banks that cannot make it can be taken over and run as public utilities; this can be done under present law. Necessary payments, savings, and credit functions can be sustained by providing public options, through postal banking and a public electronic payments system, managed by the Fed. Over time, regional and local banks can be supported to build a new economy in place of the one that Wall Street distorted and, ultimately, helped to destroy.
It is a delusion to think that markets will restore us to well-being on their own.
No spirit of radicalism animates these ideas. They are not driven by ideology nor by any past commitment to any agenda. They follow as matters of logic and fact from an understanding of the situation. The previous structure of the American economy was highly efficient in some ways. It supported, although unequally, a high living standard for a very large part of the population. But circumstances have changed in ways that cannot be controlled or reversed, and that will not evaporate on their own, whatever happens to the virus and the pandemic.
It is therefore a delusion to think that markets will restore us to well-being on their own. It is a delusion to think that the mere injection of money, however great and generous and however needed for the short run, will bring back the happy mix of jobs and incomes we’ve just lost. It is a delusion to think that the easy methods of the postwar economists, whose ideas have dominated liberal thought and response to economic crises for 70 years now, will work in the face of the Covid-19 challenge. The path forward requires planning and action on a far larger scale. It requires skills, imagination, local knowledge, commitment, and mobilization that resemble — but actually surpass — those brought to bear in the New Deal.
The only good news is that other unprecedented crises have happened before. In most cases, the result has been disaster. But there are a few moments in American history when the country rallied to do what was necessary, overcoming the odds, the powers, the old ideas, and the bad actors who stood in the way. It did so in 1861, in 1933, and in 1942. And here we are again.
Biden was right to invoke Roosevelt and the New Deal. America needs for him to mean it.


theintercept--2020-09-02--Joe Biden Promises a Moral Renewal for the U.S. Here's Where He Can Start.

If there has been a silver lining to Donald Trump ’ s presidency , it ’ s that it ’ s been an impetus for some form of national self-reflection in the liberal establishment .
That urge has manifested itself in Joe Biden ’ s campaign , which has gone to great lengths to portray itself as one of moral renewal after the degradation of the Trump years .
Promising a return to a more familiar style of U.S. foreign policy , Biden ’ s platform claims that under his leadership , the United States can “ reclaim our longstanding @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the world.
” It is no defense of Trump to say that a straightforward “ return to normal ” is in no one ’ s interest .
A major legacy of the governing establishment of which Biden is a champion are the post-9/11 wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Greater Middle East , wrecked entire societies , and caused great trauma to the minority of Americans who have sacrificed their lives , family members , or mental and physical well-being in combat .
Biden himself has played @ @ @ @ @ @ @ As a U.S. senator , Biden voted in favor of the disastrous 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq , later floating a plan to partition the country along sectarian lines that many warned would have plunged it into even greater chaos .
Making matters worse , he has often equivocated on his decisions rather than honestly confronting them under questioning .
There is not much to gain by dwelling forever on the wounds of the past .
But in order to take seriously Biden ’ s claim to moral leadership in foreign policy , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ — and other U.S. political leaders responsible for the post-9/11 wars — owes to those who have paid the price for their destructive fantasies : an apology .
American leaders are famously averse to apologizing , viewing it as something that degrades rather than ennobles a powerful nation .
“ I will never apologize for the United States , I don ’ t care what the facts are , ” former President George H.W .
Bush affirmed in a 1988 speech delivered to a group of Republican leaders .
Bush père stuck to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ moral outrages during his term .
These types of acts may not have penetrated America ’ s innocent self-image .
But they ’ ve hardly escaped notice abroad .
It is often argued that the United States had good intentions behind even its worst foreign policies .
But outcomes also matter .
After all the death and destruction wrought by the 2003 U.S. invasion , Iraq today is an even worse place to live than it was under Saddam Hussein : a chaotic mafia state where ordinary people live in fear of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ one .
In Afghanistan , after two decades of war , the United States is preparing to make peace with the Afghan Taliban — something that it could have spared Afghans much suffering by doing on far more favorable terms as far back as 2002 .
Rarely in history has so much toil been expended to make people worse off than when they began , including Americans .
U.S. governing elites have coped with these incredible failures by generally either ignoring or denying them .
Insulting the American public by refusing to honestly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ face , that the wars begun with grand promises had ended in total calamity , helped open the way for Trump ’ s presidency .
However disingenuously , Trump was able to call out something that was glaringly obvious to average Americans but that political leaders refused to acknowledge .
This is no defense of Trump , who has continued the worst traditions of the same elite establishment that he once harried — including by pardoning a war criminal .
But returning to the exact status quo that made his rise possible in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ It took a toxic brew of selfishness , greed , decadence , and sectarianism to elevate someone like him to the White House .
But it also took a lot of killing and dehumanization of innocent people around the world .
calculated by the Brown University Costs of War Project estimate that U.S. wars in Iraq , Afghanistan , Syria , Yemen , and Pakistan have killed over 800,000 people .
We will never know the true cost in the numbers of lives destroyed by injury , bereavement for lost loved ones , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Thousands of U.S. soldiers and contractors have also been killed or left with physical and mental wounds that will follow them for the rest of their lives .
Intoxicated by the maelstrom of crises , both domestic and global , there has been little accounting for these tragedies – the impact of the wars did not even bear mention at the Democratic National Convention .
But in the end , a catastrophe of this scale can ’ t just be brushed aside .
There is no monetary amount that can counteract the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the scale caused by the global war on terror .
Any question of financial reparations for the victims of war is unlikely to gain much traction , particularly since the United States is unable to seriously consider them for historic injustices closer to home .
The U.S. military sometimes makes paltry cash payments to the families of the civilians it kills , but despite recent reforms , the military has continuously failed to account for all the civilians it has killed or injured .
That , as well as the often-insufficient support the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , can add insult to the injury that people have already suffered .
But an apology can give something of value that money can not .
Simply acknowledging the scale of harm caused and taking responsibility for it would give the huge number of innocent victims a measure of restorative justice .
The idea is popular and has been suggested in other contexts as well .
In a speech at Oxford Union in 2015 , Indian politician Shashi Tharoor laid out the incredible harms that British colonialism had inflicted on India .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Tharoor ended by asking simply for an apology acknowledging this terrible past , as well as the payment of 1 pound per year to the Indian government in symbolic recognition .
That British apology never came .
But the United States would do well to apply Tharoor ’ s advice to the victims of its own imperial endeavors , including those that the current Democratic nominee played some role in .
If Biden were to issue a national apology for the past two decades of failed and misguided wars — directed at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ well as Americans who have directly borne the cost — that would help rebuild America ’ s reputation around the world .
It might also help rebuild the trust of Americans in their own elected leaders , who have spent many bitter years disastrously failing to live up their promises and then refusing any responsibility for their failures .
Recent U.S. history offers examples of leaders issuing apologies for past harms inflicted , as well as crimes of omission that took place on their watch .
There are many other unacknowledged wounds in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but if he is serious about his rhetoric of moral leadership , Biden can begin with taking responsibility for events that happened under his watch .
An apology for the post-9/11 wars is neither crazy or unthinkable , nor would it mean taking the blame for every problem in the Greater Middle East .
It would convey genuine strength and self-confidence , rather than the vacuous type embodied by the current resident of the White House .
In 1965 , amid the U.S. war in Vietnam , the anti-war activist and academic Eqbal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ observed of the U.S. invasion at home and abroad .
“ I know how Asians feel about America ’ s action , ” Ahmad wrote .
“ They call it neocolonialism ; some think it is imperialism .
I know this is very wrong because Americans are naturally sympathetic to people ’ s struggle for freedom and justice , and they would like to help if they could.
” More than a half-century later , I still believe this is true .
The world could still use an America that actually lives up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that can only come with an honest accounting of the past , without which there can be no closure .
The way to rebuild the moral standing of a great nation stained by a moral injury is neither through endless self-flagellation or arrogant denial .
It comes from the humility and decency of expressing that one has done wrong — and apologizing to the people that they have harmed .

Photo: Mohammed Hamoud/Getty Images
If there has been a silver lining to Donald Trump’s presidency, it’s that it’s been an impetus for some form of national self-reflection in the liberal establishment. That urge has manifested itself in Joe Biden’s campaign, which has gone to great lengths to portray itself as one of moral renewal after the degradation of the Trump years. Promising a return to a more familiar style of U.S. foreign policy, Biden’s platform claims that under his leadership, the United States can “reclaim our longstanding position as the moral and economic leader of the world.”
It is no defense of Trump to say that a straightforward “return to normal” is in no one’s interest. A major legacy of the governing establishment of which Biden is a champion are the post-9/11 wars that have killed hundreds of thousands of people in the Greater Middle East, wrecked entire societies, and caused great trauma to the minority of Americans who have sacrificed their lives, family members, or mental and physical well-being in combat.
Biden himself has played a role in this dismal history. As a U.S. senator, Biden voted in favor of the disastrous 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, later floating a plan to partition the country along sectarian lines that many warned would have plunged it into even greater chaos. Making matters worse, he has often equivocated on his decisions rather than honestly confronting them under questioning.
There is not much to gain by dwelling forever on the wounds of the past. But in order to take seriously Biden’s claim to moral leadership in foreign policy, there is a minimum debt that he — and other U.S. political leaders responsible for the post-9/11 wars — owes to those who have paid the price for their destructive fantasies: an apology.
American leaders are famously averse to apologizing, viewing it as something that degrades rather than ennobles a powerful nation. “I will never apologize for the United States, I don’t care what the facts are,” former President George H.W. Bush affirmed in a 1988 speech delivered to a group of Republican leaders. Bush père stuck to his no-apologies policy even while overseeing serious moral outrages during his term. These types of acts may not have penetrated America’s innocent self-image. But they’ve hardly escaped notice abroad.
It is often argued that the United States had good intentions behind even its worst foreign policies. But outcomes also matter. After all the death and destruction wrought by the 2003 U.S. invasion, Iraq today is an even worse place to live than it was under Saddam Hussein: a chaotic mafia state where ordinary people live in fear of a hundred petty tyrants rather than one great one. In Afghanistan, after two decades of war, the United States is preparing to make peace with the Afghan Taliban — something that it could have spared Afghans much suffering by doing on far more favorable terms as far back as 2002. Rarely in history has so much toil been expended to make people worse off than when they began, including Americans.
U.S. governing elites have coped with these incredible failures by generally either ignoring or denying them. Insulting the American public by refusing to honestly acknowledge the reality staring them in the face, that the wars begun with grand promises had ended in total calamity, helped open the way for Trump’s presidency. However disingenuously, Trump was able to call out something that was glaringly obvious to average Americans but that political leaders refused to acknowledge.
This is no defense of Trump, who has continued the worst traditions of the same elite establishment that he once harried — including by pardoning a war criminal. But returning to the exact status quo that made his rise possible in the first place hardly makes sense. It took a toxic brew of selfishness, greed, decadence, and sectarianism to elevate someone like him to the White House. But it also took a lot of killing and dehumanization of innocent people around the world.
Photo: Noorullah Shirzada/AFP via Getty Images
Conservative figures calculated by the Brown University Costs of War Project estimate that U.S. wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan have killed over 800,000 people. We will never know the true cost in the numbers of lives destroyed by injury, bereavement for lost loved ones, or the destruction of homes and livelihoods. Thousands of U.S. soldiers and contractors have also been killed or left with physical and mental wounds that will follow them for the rest of their lives. Intoxicated by the maelstrom of crises, both domestic and global, there has been little accounting for these tragedies – the impact of the wars did not even bear mention at the Democratic National Convention. But in the end, a catastrophe of this scale can’t just be brushed aside.
There is no monetary amount that can counteract the destruction of people’s lives on the scale caused by the global war on terror. Any question of financial reparations for the victims of war is unlikely to gain much traction, particularly since the United States is unable to seriously consider them for historic injustices closer to home. The U.S. military sometimes makes paltry cash payments to the families of the civilians it kills, but despite recent reforms, the military has continuously failed to account for all the civilians it has killed or injured. That, as well as the often-insufficient support the military gives to its own suffering veterans, can add insult to the injury that people have already suffered.
But an apology can give something of value that money cannot. Simply acknowledging the scale of harm caused and taking responsibility for it would give the huge number of innocent victims a measure of restorative justice. The idea is popular and has been suggested in other contexts as well. In a speech at Oxford Union in 2015, Indian politician Shashi Tharoor laid out the incredible harms that British colonialism had inflicted on India. Instead of asking for some incalculable financial restitution, Tharoor ended by asking simply for an apology acknowledging this terrible past, as well as the payment of 1 pound per year to the Indian government in symbolic recognition.
If he is serious about his rhetoric of moral leadership, Biden can begin with taking responsibility for events that happened under his watch.
That British apology never came. But the United States would do well to apply Tharoor’s advice to the victims of its own imperial endeavors, including those that the current Democratic nominee played some role in. If Biden were to issue a national apology for the past two decades of failed and misguided wars — directed at the wars’ foreign victims, as well as Americans who have directly borne the cost — that would help rebuild America’s reputation around the world. It might also help rebuild the trust of Americans in their own elected leaders, who have spent many bitter years disastrously failing to live up their promises and then refusing any responsibility for their failures.
Recent U.S. history offers examples of leaders issuing apologies for past harms inflicted, as well as crimes of omission that took place on their watch. There are many other unacknowledged wounds in American history that continue to fester, but if he is serious about his rhetoric of moral leadership, Biden can begin with taking responsibility for events that happened under his watch. An apology for the post-9/11 wars is neither crazy or unthinkable, nor would it mean taking the blame for every problem in the Greater Middle East. It would convey genuine strength and self-confidence, rather than the vacuous type embodied by the current resident of the White House.
In 1965, amid the U.S. war in Vietnam, the anti-war activist and academic Eqbal Ahmad reflected on the contrasting views he observed of the U.S. invasion at home and abroad. “I know how Asians feel about America’s action,” Ahmad wrote. “They call it neocolonialism; some think it is imperialism. I know this is very wrong because Americans are naturally sympathetic to people’s struggle for freedom and justice, and they would like to help if they could.”
More than a half-century later, I still believe this is true. The world could still use an America that actually lives up to its rhetoric about itself. But that can only come with an honest accounting of the past, without which there can be no closure. The way to rebuild the moral standing of a great nation stained by a moral injury is neither through endless self-flagellation or arrogant denial. It comes from the humility and decency of expressing that one has done wrong — and apologizing to the people that they have harmed.


theintercept--2020-09-02--Ed Markey Beats Back Senate Challenge from Joe Kennedy

In one of the most widely watched Democratic primaries of the 2020 cycle , on Tuesday night 74-year-old Sen. Ed Markey cruised to victory against 39-year-old Rep. Joe Kennedy .
The win represented the first time a Kennedy has ever lost an election in Massachusetts , and now with his House seat also on the ticket tonight , he ’ ll soon be out of elected office altogether .
With 32 percent of precincts reporting , Markey had a 10-point lead with 55 percent of the vote to Kennedy ’ s 45 percent , and Kennedy conceded the race .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ between the two candidates for the safe blue seat .
For the last 12 months , voters and reporters have pressed Kennedy to explain why he was running in the first place , since his policy positions largely mirror Markey ’ s and Democrats are under great pressure to focus energy — and cash — on reclaiming the White House and Senate .
His answer largely boiled to the idea that he felt he could “ leverage ” a Senate seat better than the incumbent , that there ’ s more to being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sponsor and the votes you cast .
While Kennedy acknowledged that he has not used his platform in the House of Representatives to bring national attention to policy issues like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ayanna Pressley , he says he leveraged his time in the House by traveling across the country during the 2018 midterm cycle , to help raise nearly $ 5 million for other Democratic candidates and flip the House .
He served then as a regional DCCC vice chair , and stumped for candidates in at least 15 states and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Intercept previously reported , this commitment to unseating Republicans represented a shift for the Massachusetts congressman , who , when he began his time in Washington , was not as keen to build Democratic power in the House .
He would make a point to defend his tea party colleagues , even in the midst of the 2013 government shutdown , and after the Democrats lost more seats in the 2014 midterms , he quickly rejected the idea that he could help lead the DCCC going into 2016 .
“ It ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Boston Globe at the time .
“ But it ’ s not something that interests me .
If I do the job right , I would be finding ways to beat those guys.
” Massachusetts voters didn ’ t seem to buy it , and many speculated the bid was driven by Kennedy calculating his chances of entering the Senate .
Massachusetts has no shortage of strong Senate hopefuls waiting for Elizabeth Warren to find a place in a potential Biden administration .
Both Rep. Ayanna Pressley and state Attorney General Maura @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in running in an open seat , and Kennedy ’ s chances against those women are much slimmer than his shot at ousting Markey appeared to be as he geared up for the run .
As young as Kennedy is , it was now or never for him .
clear signs that Kennedy ’ s campaign was growing more desperate in the final month of the race .
While he had spent most of his political career trying to prove that he was more than just a guy who coasted to power on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Election Day he regularly invoked his family ’ s political legacy and reminded Massachusetts voters of his beloved heritage .
Markey , on the other hand , took the unusual step of doubling down on attacks against Kennedy ’ s family , long a sacred cow in Massachusetts politics .
Throughout August , Markey contrasted the wealth and privilege of Kennedy ’ s upbringing with his own modest childhood .
In a viral campaign video released mid-month , Markey says , “ It ’ s time to start asking what your country can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at Kennedy ’ s famous great-uncle , John F. Kennedy .
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi , who came out with a late-stage endorsement of Kennedy , cited the digs against the Kennedy clan as motivating her endorsement .
“ I wasn ’ t too happy with some of the assault that I saw made on the Kennedy family , ” she told The Washington Post .
“ Joe didn ’ t ask me to endorse him , ” she added , “ but I felt an imperative to do so.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s campaign earlier in August , and $ 5,000 to Markey ’ s campaign in 2019 .
Following Pelosi ’ s endorsement — which was slammed by progressives who thought it was hypocritical she back a primary challenger in the Senate given her opposition to primary challengers in her chamber — Markey nabbed new House endorsements from House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler and House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney .
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , who co-authored the Green New Deal resolution with Markey , has also been campaigning for him all year @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it raised $ 100,000 immediately after Pelosi ’ s endorsement , while Markey ’ s campaign said it raised more than $ 300,000 during that same period .
Another sign that Kennedy ’ s campaign seemed to be flailing was the amount of energy he spent in August decrying “ cyberbullying ” from some of Markey ’ s online supporters , an unmistakable reference to the kinds of attacks Sen. Bernie Sanders received from his opponents during the 2020 presidential primary .
Kennedy ’ s campaign accused the Markey camp of encouraging the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to condemn online trolls .
Kennedy also beefed up his security detail in light of what he described as increasing death threats .
Trying to tie Markey supporters to the image of hostile “ Bernie Bros ” may have been an attempt to try and win supporters of Warren who , while still brooding over the presidential primary and how they were treated , supported Markey this primary en masse .
Polls throughout the campaign showed Markey doing best with affluent , college-educated , and suburban voters , the same sort of demographic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by contrast , polled better among lower-income voters , rural and Black voters , and those without a college education .
Sanders notably declined to endorse Markey in the primary .
With the help of an army of progressive activists , Markey transformed the narrative around his candidacy from where it stood a year ago .
Last July , before Kennedy jumped into the race , a Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll showed that 45 percent of likely voters in the state were undecided about supporting Markey for reelection and 14 percent said they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ months later , in September 2019 , another Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll found Kennedy ahead by 14 points in a Senate head-to-head , and more Massachusetts voters viewed Kennedy as the more liberal candidate and a better fighter for Democratic priorities than Markey .
to suggest the race was tightening by the spring , when a UMass-Lowell poll released in early May showed Kennedy up by just 2 points .
Although another poll released around the same time showed Markey trailing by 16 points , the UMass-Lowell one was enough to allow the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a surging underdog .
By August , a flurry of new polls showed Markey in the lead , with margins of 2 points , 10 points , 8 points , and 12 points , respectively .
The decision by the millennial left , led by Sunrise Movement , to make Markey its top priority of the cycle did not come without costs , as it drained resources that could have gone into other competitive Senate primaries — including in Delaware , where Sen. Chris Coons , who is openly hostile to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ facing a spirited challenge from the left — or into House races like Alex Morse ’ s challenge to Ways and Means Chairman Richie Neal or that of Robbie Goldstein , who launched a viable but largely overlooked challenge against a Democrat opposed to single-payer .
Even Ihssane Leckey , a would-be Squad member in Kennedy ’ s district , could have been more competitive with some national attention , but on Tuesday night she wasn ’ t in the top three candidates .
Choosing Markey , though , sent a message to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activists does not consider age or length of service disqualifying credentials .
This ought to have been clear given the youth support for the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders , yet it still seemed to mystify pundits covering the race , who marveled that young people were somehow not supporting the young person .

In one of the most widely watched Democratic primaries of the 2020 cycle, on Tuesday night 74-year-old Sen. Ed Markey cruised to victory against 39-year-old Rep. Joe Kennedy. The win represented the first time a Kennedy has ever lost an election in Massachusetts, and now with his House seat also on the ticket tonight, he’ll soon be out of elected office altogether. With 32 percent of precincts reporting, Markey had a 10-point lead with 55 percent of the vote to Kennedy’s 45 percent, and Kennedy has conceded the race. At least $29 million was spent between the two candidates for the safe blue seat.
For the last 12 months, voters and reporters have pressed Kennedy to explain why he was running in the first place, since his policy positions largely mirror Markey’s and Democrats are under great pressure to focus energy — and cash — on reclaiming the White House and Senate. His answer largely boiled to the idea that he felt he could “leverage” a Senate seat better than the incumbent, that there’s more to being in the upper chamber than bills you sponsor and the votes you cast.
While Kennedy acknowledged that he has not used his platform in the House of Representatives to bring national attention to policy issues like Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Ayanna Pressley, he has said he’s leveraged his time in the House by traveling across the country during the 2018 midterm cycle to help raise nearly $5 million for other Democratic candidates and flip the House. He served then as a regional Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee vice chair and stumped for candidates in at least 15 states and Washington, D.C.
But as The Intercept previously reported, this commitment to unseating Republicans represented a shift for the Massachusetts congressman, who, when he began his time in Washington, was not as keen to build Democratic power in the House. He would make a point to defend his tea party colleagues, even in the midst of the 2013 government shutdown, and after the Democrats lost more seats in the 2014 midterms, he quickly rejected the idea that he could help lead the DCCC going into 2016. “It’s an important job,” Kennedy told the Boston Globe at the time. “But it’s not something that interests me. If I do the job right, I would be finding ways to beat those guys.”
Massachusetts voters didn’t seem to buy it, and many speculated that the bid was driven by Kennedy calculating his chances of entering the Senate. Massachusetts has no shortage of strong Senate hopefuls waiting for Sen. Elizabeth Warren to find a place in a potential Biden administration. Both Pressley and state Attorney General Maura Healey are widely assumed to be interested in running in an open seat, and Kennedy’s chances against those women are much slimmer than his shot at ousting Markey appeared to be as he geared up for the run. As young as Kennedy is, it was now or never for him.
There were clear signs that Kennedy’s campaign was growing more desperate in the final month of the race. While he had spent most of his political career trying to prove that he was more than just a guy who coasted to power on his famous surname, leading up to Election Day he regularly invoked his family’s political legacy and reminded Massachusetts voters of his beloved heritage.
Markey, on the other hand, took the unusual step of doubling down on attacks against Kennedy’s family, long a sacred cow in Massachusetts politics. Throughout August, Markey contrasted the wealth and privilege of Kennedy’s upbringing with his own modest childhood. In a viral campaign video released mid-month, Markey says, “It’s time to start asking what your country can do for you” — a jab at Kennedy’s famous great-uncle, John F. Kennedy.
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who came out with a late-stage endorsement of Kennedy, cited the digs against the Kennedy clan as motivating her endorsement. “I wasn’t too happy with some of the assault that I saw made on the Kennedy family,” she told the Washington Post. “Joe didn’t ask me to endorse him,” she added, “but I felt an imperative to do so.” Pelosi had donated $5,000 to Kennedy’s campaign earlier in August, and $5,000 to Markey’s campaign in 2019.
Following Pelosi’s endorsement — which was slammed by progressives who thought it was hypocritical that she backed a primary challenger in the Senate given her opposition to primary challengers in her chamber — Markey nabbed new House endorsements from House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler and House Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney. Ocasio-Cortez, who co-authored the Green New Deal resolution with Markey, has also been campaigning for him all year. Kennedy’s campaign said it raised $100,000 immediately after Pelosi’s endorsement, while Markey’s campaign said it raised more than $300,000 during that same period.
Another sign that Kennedy’s campaign seemed to be flailing was the amount of energy he spent in August decrying “cyberbullying” from some of Markey’s online supporters, an unmistakable reference to the kinds of attacks Sen. Bernie Sanders received from his opponents during the 2020 presidential primary. Kennedy’s campaign accused the Markey camp of encouraging the attacks and repeatedly pressed the Senator to condemn online trolls. Kennedy also beefed up his security detail in light of what he described as increasing death threats.
Trying to tie Markey supporters to the image of hostile “Bernie Bros” may have been an attempt to try and win supporters of Warren who, while still brooding over the presidential primary and how they were treated, supported Markey this primary en masse. Polls throughout the campaign showed Markey doing best with affluent, college-educated, suburban voters, the same sort of demographic that Warren excelled with. Kennedy, by contrast, polled better among lower-income voters, rural and Black voters, and those without a college education. Sanders notably declined to endorse Markey in the primary.
With the help of an army of progressive activists, Markey transformed the narrative around his candidacy from where it stood a year ago. Last July, before Kennedy jumped into the race, a Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll showed that 45 percent of likely voters in the state were undecided about supporting Markey for reelection and 14 percent said they had never heard of him. Two months later, in September 2019, another Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll found Kennedy ahead by 14 points in a Senate head-to-head, and more Massachusetts voters viewed Kennedy as the more liberal candidate and a better fighter for Democratic priorities than Markey.
Polls started to suggest the race was tightening by the spring, when a UMass-Lowell poll released in early May showed Kennedy up by just 2 points. Although another poll released around the same time showed Markey trailing by 16 points, the UMass-Lowell one was enough to allow the incumbent to start running ads framing himself as a surging underdog. By August, a flurry of new polls showed Markey in the lead, with margins of 2 points, 10 points, 8 points, and 12 points, respectively.
The decision by the millennial left, led by Sunrise Movement, to make Markey its top priority of the cycle did not come without costs, as it drained resources that could have gone into other competitive Senate primaries — including in Delaware, where Sen. Chris Coons, who is openly hostile to the party’s progressive flank, is facing a spirited challenge from the left — or into House races like Alex Morse’s challenge to Ways and Means Chair Richie Neal or that of Robbie Goldstein, who launched a viable but largely overlooked challenge against a Democrat opposed to single-payer health care. Even Ihssane Leckey, a would-be Squad member in Kennedy’s district, could have been more competitive with some national attention, but on Tuesday night she wasn’t in the top three candidates.
Choosing Markey, though, sent a message to Democratic incumbents that the new generation of activists does not consider age or length of service disqualifying credentials. This ought to have been clear given the youth support for the presidential campaigns of Sanders, yet it still seemed to mystify pundits covering the race, who marveled that young people were somehow not supporting the young person.


theintercept--2020-09-02--Massachusetts Hopeful Alex Morse Couldn’t Overcome Homophobic Smear

toward full equality for the LGBTQ community , the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg was a landmark moment .
The openly gay mayor of South Bend , Indiana ’ s connection with Democratic primary voters brought him a win in the Iowa caucuses , a second-place finish in New Hampshire , and enough cache that his surprise departure and endorsement of Joe Biden helped put the primary to bed .
But to make that connection , Buttigieg made compromises with heteronormativity that left some advocates of equality uncomfortable .
His just-like-you stump speech was replete with references to Bible verses @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and his monogamous marriage .
He famously canceled an event at a gay bar when he learned it had a dancer ’ s pole .
For the Buttigieg campaign , being gay was more about the essence than the being , more about identity than sexuality — and certainly not about sex .
For most of the campaign for Massachusetts ’ s 1st Congressional District , the race between incumbent Richie Neal and challenger Alex Morse played out along similar lines .
The Holyoke mayor was proud of his identity as the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ postindustrial town , but the race was more of a referendum on Neal and his approach to politics .
With his voracious appetite for fundraising — he ’ s the No .
1 collector of corporate PAC money among House Democrats — Neal summits the Ways and Means panel , grabbing the most powerful committee gavel in the House .
But accusations about Morse ’ s lifestyle , which was not quite as heteronormative as Buttigieg ’ s , distracted from Morse ’ s challenge to the corporate Democrat and eventually sunk his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ most townships counted , Neal led Morse by 18 points — 59 percent to 41 percent .
The president of LGBTQ Victory Fund , a PAC supporting LGBTQ candidates , released a statement shortly after the race was called for Neal on Tuesday night : “ The efforts to sensationalize and weaponize Alex ’ s sexual orientation certainly influenced the outcome of this race , but the backlash it engendered should give pause to those considering similar tactics in the future.
” thanks in part to a $ 300,000 ad campaign run by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hammered Neal for corruption , the race turned on the question of whether Neal was using that power for the benefit of the district , or leaving the struggling district behind in favor of the multinational corporations that funded him .
“ I ’ ve delivered , ” Neal said repeatedly , referencing projects , tax breaks , and other government help he ’ d sent home .
“ After 32 years , Richard Neal knows how Washington works , ” went Morse ’ s rebuttal .
“ But I want to change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Morse argued , would not diminish the district ’ s power , but increase it , as he would use his people-powered campaign to push for a bold agenda that would reshape both the country and the district .
Where Neal had used his power to protect the ability of private equity barons to profit from surprise medical billing , Morse , rejecting corporate PAC money , said he would push for a Green New Deal and Medicare for All .
Along the way , progressive groups hoped to prove that their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and take on a skilled , well-funded politician who was paying attention to the challenge .
They never got the chance .
On August 7 , three weeks before the election , a week before the first debate , and just ahead of early voting , all hell broke loose .
The College Democrats of University of Massachusetts Amherst sent Morse a letter , which was quickly leaked and published by the college paper , disinviting him from future events , alleging that he had made students uncomfortable by making advances on them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ On August 12 , The Intercept began publishing the first of four exposés that reported , in order : One of the students who orchestrated the scheme was motivated by a desire to launch his political career through Neal ; that the students had sought to entrap Morse and , having failed , went ahead anyway with vague allegations ; that the state party had offered legal advice and media training in preparation for the letter being leaked ; and finally , that the state party , once the scheme was exposed , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ conduct while at the same time privately urging the students to delete messages that showed collusion with the state party .
The New York Times called the reporting “ a cascade of head-spinning revelations , ” but in the district , voters who relied on the local news were still treated with he-said , he-said coverage that made room for Morse ’ s denial but gave little oxygen to the reality that it had been an orchestrated smear .
Major damage had been done , as the race turned into a conversation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sex .
Morse ’ s internal polling showed that even when told that the smear had been trumped up and orchestrated by allies of Neal , the scandal still made 1 in 5 voters more likely to support Neal .
The week of unmitigated bad press had driven up the number of voters who had a negative opinion of him , and without the local media covering the second phase of the story — and with early voting locking in tens of thousands of votes — Morse was in a deep hole .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the smear , even after it was exposed as a plot , and made sure the conversation remained about Morse and his sex life , fueled by TV ads and robocalls .
A Super PAC backing Neal spent roughly $ 1 million on attack ads , including one that hit him for having sex with college students .
The PAC apologized for the ad , claiming that it had been sent to stations by mistake , but in one of the more brazenly cynical exploitations of bigotry in recent Democratic primary , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ad right through Election Day .
Neal had faced Tahirah Amatul-Wadud , who had raised barely any money , finishing with 29 percent of the vote to Neal ’ s 71 .
In February 2019 , Justice Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Rojas met with Morse , after being tipped off by local resident Sara Seinberg .
The group contemplated what it would mean to take on the chair of the Ways and Means Committee .
Knocking off Rep. Joe Crowley , who was in line to be speaker of the House , had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more recent conquests — Reps. Eliot Engel and Lacy Clay — were the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a senior member of the Financial Services Committee , respectively .
But neither incumbent compared to Neal , and Morse ’ s district did not include the number of urban voters that had enabled them to knock off Crowley , Engel , and Clay .
In western Massachusetts , the group would have to win largely among the type of white working-class voters that had previously stymied its growth .
And Neal was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ granted , and would have endless money .
But the upsides were obvious : For one , if a Justice Democrat could win in western Massachusetts , it would mean that no incumbent was safe .
And the implications for people ’ s lives would be immediate .
Neal ’ s jurisdiction gives him a hand in nearly every piece of legislation moving through the House , and he always used it to provide a helping hand to corporate interests .
A more progressive chair of the panel — perhaps Rep. Lloyd Doggett @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in line — would mean that every major piece of legislation moving through Congress in 2021 , potentially headed for the desk of Joe Biden , would be more progressive .
So they went for it .
In July , Morse announced his candidacy , and Justice Democrats endorsed him in August .
A year later , a Morse internal poll had Neal hovering at 45 percent , well into the danger zone for an incumbent , especially one like Neal who was getting battered for corruption and failing to stand up to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organizations backing Morse — with the exception of Fight Corporate Monopolies — took steps of varying distances away from him as the fallout from the College Dems letter threatened to end not just his campaign , but his career in public life .
In the wake of The Intercept ’ s reporting , those groups redoubled their support , including Justice Democrats , the Sunrise Movement , Working Families Party , Indivisible , and others .
By the end , activists with the Sunrise Movement , in coordination with the campaign , had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mailed more than 7,000 postcards .
Justice Democrats had also mobilized its supporters , spent $ 600,000 in outside money , and helped raise $ 140,000 in small contributions for Morse .
despite winning by a landslide , Neal collected just 49,696 votes .
As of Wednesday , with ballots still to be counted , Morse had already notched more than 56,000 votes and Neal more than 81,000 .
Overall turnout , driven by the competitive Senate race and the ease of mail-in voting , nearly doubled .
While turnout was up , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ needed .
The more the electorate expands to voters paying less attention to politics , the harder it becomes to unseat an incumbent with the kind of name recognition and popularity Neal has in the area .
Ocasio-Cortez , whose PAC endorsed Morse , knocked off Crowley in 2018 with fewer than 16,000 votes .
In his mayoral runs , Morse relied heavily on strong support from the Puerto Rican community in Holyoke , enough to override opposition from the Irish Catholic sections of the town , who tend to favor the establishment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on Tuesday , Morse lost his own town .
“ Paper City is very racially divided and Morse is despised by the Irish old guard .
They came out in droves for Neal while the Latino vote must have stayed home , ” said Matt Barron , a former consultant to Amatul-Wadud .
Progressive Sen. Ed Markey , meanwhile , who faced a primary challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy , carried Holyoke .
Baron described the complex political alliances of Massachusetts that resulted in Markey , the Sunrise Movement-backed Senate sponsor of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against Neal , the only member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation that doesn ’ t support it .
“ Obviously [ Markey ] wasn ’ t going to cross the most powerful representative in Congress out there .
They also go way back .
They work on cross-state transportation initiatives , and of course they have both been congressmen from Massachusetts for decades , so that allegiance is hard to break up , ” he said .
Morse ’ s campaign raised more than $ 2 million , a massive sum for an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the haul of Neal , who spent $ 4.3 million of his own campaign funds , buttressed by another $ 1 million-plus in Super PAC spending from the outside .
“ This election was really about the future of the Democratic Party , the future of this region , and what kind of party and country we want to be , ” said Morse on election night .
“ And too often as Democrats , we point fingers at Republicans and think that they ’ re the only party guilty of being bought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At the end of the day , they did what they needed to do to hold on , not something they should be proud of , ” Morse told The Intercept .
“ I ’ m glad we fought back .
”

On the march toward full equality for the LGBTQ community, the presidential campaign of Pete Buttigieg was a landmark moment. The openly gay mayor of South Bend, Indiana’s connection with Democratic primary voters brought him a win in the Iowa caucuses, a second-place finish in New Hampshire, and enough cache that his surprise departure and endorsement of Joe Biden helped put the primary to bed.
But to make that connection, Buttigieg made compromises with heteronormativity that left some advocates of equality uncomfortable. His just-like-you stump speech was replete with references to Bible verses, his father-in-law’s hunting blind, and his monogamous marriage. He famously canceled an event at a gay bar when he learned it had a dancer’s pole. For the Buttigieg campaign, being gay was more about the essence than the being, more about identity than sexuality — and certainly not about sex.
For most of the campaign for Massachusetts’s 1st Congressional District, the race between incumbent Richie Neal and challenger Alex Morse played out along similar lines. The Holyoke mayor was proud of his identity as the first openly gay man to govern the postindustrial town, but the race was more of a referendum on Neal and his approach to politics. With his voracious appetite for fundraising — he’s the No. 1 collector of corporate PAC money among House Democrats — Neal summits the Ways and Means panel, grabbing the most powerful committee gavel in the House.
But accusations about Morse’s lifestyle, which was not quite as heteronormative as Buttigieg’s, distracted from Morse’s challenge to the corporate Democrat and eventually sunk his campaign. On Wednesday morning, with most townships counted, Neal led Morse by 18 points — 59 percent to 41 percent. The president of LGBTQ Victory Fund, a PAC supporting LGBTQ candidates, released a statement shortly after the race was called for Neal on Tuesday night: “The efforts to sensationalize and weaponize Alex’s sexual orientation certainly influenced the outcome of this race, but the backlash it engendered should give pause to those considering similar tactics in the future.”
At first, thanks in part to a $300,000 ad campaign run by the group Fight Corporate Monopolies, which hammered Neal for corruption, the race turned on the question of whether Neal was using that power for the benefit of the district, or leaving the struggling district behind in favor of the multinational corporations that funded him. “I’ve delivered,” Neal said repeatedly, referencing projects, tax breaks, and other government help he’d sent home. “After 32 years, Richard Neal knows how Washington works,” went Morse’s rebuttal. “But I want to change how Washington works.”
Tossing out Neal, Morse argued, would not diminish the district’s power, but increase it, as he would use his people-powered campaign to push for a bold agenda that would reshape both the country and the district. Where Neal had used his power to protect the ability of private equity barons to profit from surprise medical billing, Morse, rejecting corporate PAC money, said he would push for a Green New Deal and Medicare for All.
Along the way, progressive groups hoped to prove that their message could resonate outside major metropolitan areas and take on a skilled, well-funded politician who was paying attention to the challenge.
Major damage had been done, as the race turned into a conversation not about corruption, but about gay sex.
They never got the chance. On August 7, three weeks before the election, a week before the first debate, and just ahead of early voting, all hell broke loose. The College Democrats of University of Massachusetts Amherst sent Morse a letter, which was quickly leaked and published by the college paper, disinviting him from future events, alleging that he had made students uncomfortable by making advances on them, along with other vague accusations.
On August 12, The Intercept began publishing the first of four exposés that reported, in order: One of the students who orchestrated the scheme was motivated by a desire to launch his political career through Neal; that the students had sought to entrap Morse and, having failed, went ahead anyway with vague allegations; that the state party had offered legal advice and media training in preparation for the letter being leaked; and finally, that the state party, once the scheme was exposed, publicly ordered an investigation into the students’ conduct while at the same time privately urging the students to delete messages that showed collusion with the state party.
The New York Times called the reporting “a cascade of head-spinning revelations,” but in the district, voters who relied on the local news were still treated with he-said, he-said coverage that made room for Morse’s denial but gave little oxygen to the reality that it had been an orchestrated smear. Major damage had been done, as the race turned into a conversation not about corruption, but about gay sex. Morse’s internal polling showed that even when told that the smear had been trumped up and orchestrated by allies of Neal, the scandal still made 1 in 5 voters more likely to support Neal. The week of unmitigated bad press had driven up the number of voters who had a negative opinion of him, and without the local media covering the second phase of the story — and with early voting locking in tens of thousands of votes — Morse was in a deep hole.
Neal’s backers never backed off the smear, even after it was exposed as a plot, and made sure the conversation remained about Morse and his sex life, fueled by TV ads and robocalls. A Super PAC backing Neal spent roughly $1 million on attack ads, including one that hit him for having sex with college students. The PAC apologized for the ad, claiming that it had been sent to stations by mistake, but in one of the more brazenly cynical exploitations of bigotry in recent Democratic primary, the group continued airing the “accidental” ad right through Election Day.
In 2018, Neal had faced Tahirah Amatul-Wadud, who had raised barely any money, finishing with 29 percent of the vote to Neal’s 71. In February 2019, Justice Democrats Executive Director Alexandra Rojas met with Morse, after being tipped off by local resident Sara Seinberg. The group contemplated what it would mean to take on the chair of the Ways and Means Committee. Knocking off Rep. Joe Crowley, who was in line to be speaker of the House, had been no small feat. And their more recent conquests — Reps. Eliot Engel and Lacy Clay — were the chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a senior member of the Financial Services Committee, respectively. But neither incumbent compared to Neal, and Morse’s district did not include the number of urban voters that had enabled them to knock off Crowley, Engel, and Clay. In western Massachusetts, the group would have to win largely among the type of white working-class voters that had previously stymied its growth. And Neal was a canny politician, taking nothing for granted, and would have endless money.
If a Justice Democrat could win in western Massachusetts, it would mean that no incumbent was safe.
But the upsides were obvious: For one, if a Justice Democrat could win in western Massachusetts, it would mean that no incumbent was safe. And the implications for people’s lives would be immediate. Neal’s jurisdiction gives him a hand in nearly every piece of legislation moving through the House, and he always used it to provide a helping hand to corporate interests. A more progressive chair of the panel — perhaps Rep. Lloyd Doggett of Texas, the No. 2 in line — would mean that every major piece of legislation moving through Congress in 2021, potentially headed for the desk of Joe Biden, would be more progressive.
So they went for it. In July, Morse announced his candidacy, and Justice Democrats endorsed him in August. A year later, a Morse internal poll had Neal hovering at 45 percent, well into the danger zone for an incumbent, especially one like Neal who was getting battered for corruption and failing to stand up to President Donald Trump.
Most of the organizations backing Morse — with the exception of Fight Corporate Monopolies — took steps of varying distances away from him as the fallout from the College Dems letter threatened to end not just his campaign, but his career in public life. In the wake of The Intercept’s reporting, those groups redoubled their support, including Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement, Working Families Party, Indivisible, and others. By the end, activists with the Sunrise Movement, in coordination with the campaign, had made more than 350,000 phone calls and mailed more than 7,000 postcards. Justice Democrats had also mobilized its supporters, spent $600,000 in outside money, and helped raise $140,000 in small contributions for Morse.
In 2018, despite winning by a landslide, Neal collected just 49,696 votes. As of Wednesday, with ballots still to be counted, Morse had already notched more than 56,000 votes and Neal more than 81,000. Overall turnout, driven by the competitive Senate race and the ease of mail-in voting, nearly doubled. While turnout was up, it wasn’t the kind Morse needed. The more the electorate expands to voters paying less attention to politics, the harder it becomes to unseat an incumbent with the kind of name recognition and popularity Neal has in the area. Ocasio-Cortez, whose PAC endorsed Morse, knocked off Crowley in 2018 with fewer than 16,000 votes.
In his mayoral runs, Morse relied heavily on strong support from the Puerto Rican community in Holyoke, enough to override opposition from the Irish Catholic sections of the town, who tend to favor the establishment he took on. In the primary on Tuesday, Morse lost his own town. “Paper City is very racially divided and Morse is despised by the Irish old guard. They came out in droves for Neal while the Latino vote must have stayed home,” said Matt Barron, a former consultant to Amatul-Wadud.
Progressive Sen. Ed Markey, meanwhile, who faced a primary challenge from Rep. Joe Kennedy, carried Holyoke. Baron described the complex political alliances of Massachusetts that resulted in Markey, the Sunrise Movement-backed Senate sponsor of the Green New Deal, failing to endorse against Neal, the only member of the Massachusetts congressional delegation that doesn’t support it.
“Obviously [Markey] wasn’t going to cross the most powerful representative in Congress out there. They also go way back. They work on cross-state transportation initiatives, and of course they have both been congressmen from Massachusetts for decades, so that allegiance is hard to break up,” he said.
Morse’s campaign raised more than $2 million, a massive sum for an insurgent candidate, but it paled against the haul of Neal, who spent $4.3 million of his own campaign funds, buttressed by another $1 million-plus in Super PAC spending from the outside. “This election was really about the future of the Democratic Party, the future of this region, and what kind of party and country we want to be,” said Morse on election night. “And too often as Democrats, we point fingers at Republicans and think that they’re the only party guilty of being bought and paid for by corporations.”
“At the end of the day, they did what they needed to do to hold on, not something they should be proud of,” Morse told The Intercept. “I’m glad we fought back.”
Correction: September 2, 2020, 3:43 p.m.
This article originally misspelled Matt Barron’s name.