Newspaper & online reporters and analysts explore the cultural and news stories of the week, with photos frequently added by Esco20, and reveal their significance (with a slant towards Esco 20's opinions)
WASHINGTON — Jay Gatsby gave big, lavish, new-money parties at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. He wanted Daisy to notice him.
Barack Obama gave a big, lavish, new-money party at his sprawling mansion on the water because he wanted to seem cool. Being cool is important to him.
One difference is that Gatsby opened his house to the uninvited. Obama closed his house to many of the invited after getting flak for hosting “a celebrity mosh pit,” as Stephen Colbert called it, while officials were telling people to mask back up.
It’s hard to stop thinking about the over-the-top fete the former president held at his Martha’s Vineyard manse for his 60th birthday. It is such a perfect taxonomy of the Obama arc.
As president, he didn’t try hard enough on things we needed. He was a diffident debutante with a distaste for politics. Post-presidency, he is trying too hard on things we don’t need. The culture is already swimming in Netflix deals, celebrity worship, ostentatious displays of wealth, not to mention podcasts. Did the world really need “Renegades,” his duet with Bruce Springsteen?
We already knew Obama gravitated to stars but it was disillusioning to see it on such a grand scale last weekend.
“I think the nouveaux riches Obamas are seriously tone-deaf,” said the authority on opulence, André Leon Talley. “We all love Beyoncé. But people have so many things to worry about with Covid, voting rights, climate warming. People are afraid of being evicted from their homes. And the Obamas are in Marie-Antoinette, tacky, let-them-eat-cake mode. They need to remember their humble roots.”
Obama was a cool cat as a candidate in 2008, but after he won, he grew increasingly lofty. Now he’s so far above the ground, he doesn’t know what’s cool. You can’t be cool if you diss the people who took risks for you when you were a junior senator — only a few years out from paying off your student loans — taking on the fearsome Clinton machine.
Many of those who helped Obama achieve the moonshot, becoming the first African American president and then becoming uber rich, were disinvited.
The party crystallized the caricature of the Democratic Party that Joe Biden had to fight against in order to get elected. It was as far from Flint and Scranton as you can imagine: an orgy of the 1 percent — private jets, Martha’s Vineyard, limousine liberals and Hollywood whoring — complete with a meat-free menu.
The disinvitados, as one referred to them, were in four camps: Some didn’t care; some pretended they didn’t care; some were annoyed; and some were deeply hurt, especially loyal former staffers who felt they had contributed more to the Obama legacy than the likes of George Clooney, John Legend and Don Cheadle.
There were pop-up Plan B gatherings on the island and gallows humor among the iced. One joked that he would have liked to go mostly to see the old Obama gang from campaigns, except, oops, they weren’t there.
Colbert, who was disinvited, joked that he was axed because the president had to limit the guest list to “only his closest Beyoncés.”
Only one person was thrilled to be disinvited and you can guess who it was. When he got a call from the former president’s assistant, Larry David (who has a home on the island) figured he was going to be asked to perform. He went into a tailspin, trying to think of what routine he could come up with in three days.
“I was pretty glum when I finally called back his assistant,” David said in an email. “When he told me I was eighty-sixed from the party, I was so relieved I screamed, ‘Thank you! Thank you!’ He must have thought I was insane. Then I hung up the phone, poured myself a drink and finished my crossword puzzle.”
Whether the party was 500 or 300 or 30, Obama should have made sure to have the people there who made the moment possible, the ones who worked so hard to get him elected and cement his legacy.
David Axelrod, Pygmalion to Obama’s Galatea, was a disinvitado, which he handled with his usual grace. Rahm Emanuel, the former Obama chief of staff who helped him navigate the first two successful years of his presidency, was also disinvited and quipped in the Times story by Annie Karni that getting voted off the island was character-building.
Obama would not have been president if Nancy Pelosi had not subtly put her high-heeled shoe on the scale for him against Hillary Clinton and her chances to be the first woman president. And he would not have gotten health care passed without Pelosi. She wasn’t there.
It was a bombshell when Caroline Kennedy endorsed Obama in 2008 along with her uncle Teddy, a turning point in the primary against Hillary. After being disinvited from the party, Kennedy had the speaker at her home on the island for dinner. “I would have disinvited me if I was him,” she joked.
One disinvitado joked that he’s going to throw a surprise 61st birthday party for Obama. “As long as they had anything to do with passing health care, rescuing the auto industry and saving the economy from a Great Depression,” he said, “they’re invited.”
Democrats have to be very happy with what they were able to accomplish this week with their convention.
Their production of the first all-virtual convention went off mostly without a hitch. At times, the last night seemed like whiplash with a serious segment on faith and forgiveness followed by snark from emcee Julia Louis-Dreyfus, for example.
But none of that will be remembered. What will be, and perhaps for a very long time, was the speech Joe Biden was able to deliver. Biden gave a lot of thunderous speeches on the floor of the U.S. Senate when he was a senator and he has appeared at conventions before, but no speech he has ever made was as important, and perhaps as well-delivered, as this one.
With that, here are seven takeaways from a consequential week:
1. Biden may have delivered the best speech of his career
It was more fireside chat than convention barn burner, and he has never been an arena orator like the man he worked for, Barack Obama. But, frankly, it worked for Biden.
He delivered a sober and urgent speech directly to the American people with a clarity of message, one of light versus dark. Biden, a devout Irish Catholic, seemingly channeled years of homilies about good versus evil, right versus wrong. If he wins, it will be a speech for the ages.
"Here and now, I give you my word: If you entrust me with the presidency, I will draw on the best of us, not the worst," he said. "I will be an ally of the light, not the darkness." The Trump campaign might regret setting the bar so low to the point where as long as Biden got through the speech, he would dispel questions of his mental acuity. But he did far more than that. For the first time, perhaps even since he began this campaign, Biden showed why he should be president for reasons other than simply being not Trump. 2. Democrats offered a different choice
Even before Biden's speech, Democrats were able to lay out a different choice, a different version of what the country could be, for those disaffected by Trump.
Look, Trump's supporters are locked in. But Democrats took aim at that sliver of truly persuadable voters and tried to win them over. Democrats' vision for America is one that celebrates diversity, adheres to norms and will change direction. Change is one of the most powerful motivators in politics, and it particularly sticks when things aren't going well in the country. Think Ronald Reagan following Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton after George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama after George W. Bush. If Americans are looking for change again, Democrats presented it.
It's up to Trump and Republicans next week to try to sell steadiness to right the course. That's something that can work for presidents seeking reelection, though it's made tougher by Trump's volatility.
Jill and Joe Biden, wearing face masks, watch fireworks outside the Chase Center in Wilmington, Del., after Biden's acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential nomination.
3. A unified Democratic Party was on display
One advantage of a virtual convention is the boos aren't magnified. Past conventions have featured at least some unrest within the base.
That was certainly true in 2016 with Bernie Sanders supporters who did not go gently into that good night. And it was true of Sen. Ted Cruz supporters at the Republican National Convention the same year.
But it wasn't just the lack of in-person delegates, it was the clear and present threat of Donald Trump for progressives. Sanders spoke strongly on Biden's behalf; and single-payer advocate Ady Barkan, who has ALS, praised Biden and promoted progress over purity.
Sure, there was some grumbling about who got time, who didn't and who got more, but this is a far more unified Democratic Party coming out of this convention than the one taking on Trump the last time. 4. It wasn't all about Trump
For as much as this election is all about Trump and as much as Biden's supporters are mostly motivated by antipathy for Trump, the convention did buoy Biden personally and made an affirmative case for Biden's vision for the country.
It became pretty clear, if it wasn't going in, that a message Democrats wanted to get across was: The Bidens are decent people, people you can trust and who care about people like you.
But as his speech showed, don't mistake kindness for weakness. It's almost as if one message was — he'll fight for kindness. 5. Kamala Harris is the heir apparent
Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris speaks during the third day of the Democratic National Convention. Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images
If you had any doubt that Harris was the right pick, she proved she's ready for prime time. She delivered a solid speech and has hit all the right notes since being announced as Biden's running mate.
Being a Black and South Asian woman, she highlights the diversity of the Democratic Party and of America. Her simply being on the ballot is a statement against Trump. But she has shown, throughout her career and highlighted this week, she is far more than that.
She's sharp, can deliver a punch and has provided some needed energy to the Biden candidacy. At the end of the day, Biden won the Democratic primary, in part, because he was seen as the most likely to beat Trump. But it's clear, given that he has said he would be a transitional president that he is a bridge and Harris is on the other side.
Democrats Question Whether Postmaster General's Hiring Skirted Background Checks 6. An economic message didn't break through
Biden has led Trump in almost every issue area consistently and by a lot, except when it comes to the economy. Democrats didn't seem to do anything to break through with an economic message, beyond saying that the pandemic had to be solved and other boilerplate Democratic points, like securing the social safety net and having the rich pay their "fair share."
Biden was involved in one segment Thursday dealing with the economy, where he talked with workers. At one point, he said that he believed the auto industry could be revitalized back to its peak in the 1940s and 1950s. But no economist thinks that's possible.
He also said he wants to invest $2 trillion in infrastructure, something every president says he wants to invest in but has been unable to get the parties to agree on how to pay for it.
It sounded as if Harris was on track to pivoting to a new emphasis on the economy when she was picked to be Biden's running mate when she talked about Trump spoiling the economy he inherited from Obama. But that was not something much talked about during these four days. 7. It's about voting, voting, voting
Former first lady Michelle Obama, and her necklace, urged viewers to vote on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention. Chris Delmas /AFP via Getty Images
If there was one message Democrats hope people take away from this week it was that people need to go vote.
While wearing a V-O-T-E necklace, former first lady Michelle Obama implored people get on their "comfortable shoes" and bring their dinners, maybe even breakfasts and wait for as long as it takes.
Her husband, former President Barack Obama, ended his speech with a similar urgency:
"We have to get busy building it up by pouring all our efforts into these 76 days and by voting like never before for Joe and Kamala and candidates up and down the ticket," he said, "so that we leave no doubt about what this country that we love stands for today and for all our days to come."
Democrats really feel if everyone votes, and if all their votes are counted, they win.
And now it's on to the Republican convention starting Monday, where it will be interesting to see whether there are any new ways that Trump frames the argument for why he feels he deserves four more years.
What President Joe Biden would do to stop Covid-19
I asked some experts last month how Biden’s proposed Covid-19 response differs from what the current federal government has done. They pointed to a few specific provisions in his plans:
Establishing a public-private “pandemic testing board” to scale up and allocate testing across the country. (“This would deal with one of the problems we still seem to have, that supply and demand are out of sync,” says Jennifer Kates with the Kaiser Family Foundation.)
Creating a state and local government emergency fund that would pay for medical supplies, hiring more health care workers, and providing overtime pay for certain essential workers.
Eliminating cost-sharing for Covid-19 testing and treatment — and changing the law so that provision would apply to future public health emergencies.
Setting minimum standards for the number of testing sites in each state, including 10 mobile or drive-through sites.
Establishing a national public health jobs corps, which would employ at least 100,000 people to do contact tracing.
As NPR reported, right now most states do not have enough people to perform that job.
“Contact tracing has been mostly ignored at the federal level, and states have been left to prioritize as they see fit,” Joshua Michaud at the Kaiser Family Foundation told me. “Which means that some have done more and others have done much less.”
The on-and-off supply shortages that lead to test results being delayed to the point that they are nearly worthless for contact tracing also reflect the lack of a national coordinated strategy. State and local governments are going to need another injection of stimulus to fend off debilitating staff and service cuts, but the latest stimulus talks have stalled out because Democrats want to put more money in the package but the Trump White House wants less.
Biden is promising much more aggressive federal intervention. As he said in his acceptance speech, concluding his list of Covid-19 policies: "In short, we'll do what we should have done from the very beginning."
Democrats on Wednesday night formally nominated Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) as Joe Biden’s vice-presidential nominee, making her the first woman of color on a major-party ticket, while the last Democratic president, Barack Obama, issued an extraordinary rebuke of his successor, President Trump.
Wednesday night’s acceptance speech was an opportunity for Harris to redefine herself — after her 2020 primary campaign flamed out early and at a time in which she’s not just vital to Democrats’ 2020 hopes, but is set up to be their standard-bearer in future presidential elections.
Two lines stood out: “I know a predator when I see one,” and “There is no vaccine for racism.”
“I have fought for children and survivors of sexual assault,” Harris said. “I fought against transnational criminal organizations. I took on the biggest banks and helped take down one of the biggest for-profit colleges. I know a predator when I see one.”
That line, which is similar to one she used when campaigning for herself, came before Harris’s address explicitly turned to President Trump, but it was clearly intended to paint a picture. It was a subtly delivered but not terribly subtle allusion to the character of the man who occupies the Oval Office. In fact, Harris has previously followed up similar comments by directly invoking Trump, saying, “And we have a predator in the White House right now.” Harris also uttered it while talking about her past as a prosecutor — seeking to turn something of a liability with progressives into a positive.
Harris later described racial injustice as a “virus,” likening it to the coronavirus pandemic.
“This virus, it has no eyes, and yet it knows exactly how we see each other and how we treat each other,” Harris said. “And let’s be clear: There is no vaccine for racism.”
The speech was short on direct attacks on Trump — the traditional role of a running mate. But it seemed to pave a path for doing so next.
2. Obama’s big break with history
For years, Trump built his political career by using Obama as a boogeyman — mostly as the lead public face of the racist birther movement. Despite this, Obama in 2016 initially offered Trump the kind of well wishes we expect during a peaceful transfer of power. He even called their post-election conversation “excellent” and professed to be “encouraged” by it.
On Wednesday night, Obama was done putting anything amounting to a good face on things, utterly departing from traditional post-presidential protocol. While Obama has increasingly criticized Trump, on Wednesday he went further.
In his speech, Obama said that the man he hoped would rise to the task had utterly failed — and didn’t really even try.
“He never did,” Obama said. “For close to four years now, he’s shown no interest in putting in the work, no interest in finding common ground, no interest in using the awesome power of his office to help anyone but himself and his friends, no interest in treating the presidency as anything but one more reality show that he can use to get the attention he craves.
“Donald Trump hasn’t grown into the job because he can’t. And the consequences of that failure are severe: 170,000 Americans dead. Millions of jobs gone while those at the top take in more than ever.”
The comments echoed former first lady Michelle Obama’s speech Monday night, when she said Trump “cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us.”
Barack Obama also suggested that Trump used law enforcement as political pawns and averted “facts and science and logic” in favor of “just making stuff up.”
“None of this should be controversial,” Obama said, before alluding to his 2004 convention speech: “These shouldn’t be Republican principles or Democratic principles. They’re American principles. But at this moment, this president and those who enable him have shown they don’t believe in these things.”
Obama added: “This administration has shown it will tear our democracy down if that’s what it takes for them to win.”
The former president spent most of his speech on the kind of high-minded rhetoric that characterized his 2004 speech and on vouching for his former vice president. But his decision to go so hard on Trump was surely one he arrived at after years of Trump laying waste to so many of the other norms of American politics. Democrats have trodden uneasily around just how much to go down that path themselves, and that made this a significant moment.
3. Hillary Clinton turns her disappointment into a call to action
Ever since unexpectedly losing the 2016 election, Hillary Clinton has blamed various factors — many of them credibly, given the narrowness of her loss — often re-litigating things even as some Democrats wanted to turn the page.
But on Wednesday night, she found a way to turn her disappointment into a perhaps more fruitful call to action. Reflecting on her own loss, Clinton implored Democrats not to be overconfident or take things for granted.
“For four years, people have told me, ‘I didn’t realize how dangerous he was,’ ‘I wish I could do it all over’ or worse: ‘I should have voted,’” Clinton said. “Look, this can’t be another woulda, coulda, shoulda election.”
She added later: “And don’t forget, Joe and Kamala can win by 3 million votes and still lose — take it from me. So we need numbers overwhelming, so Trump can’t sneak or steal his way to victory.”
That last line could be read as an allusion to Russian interference and other factors that Clinton has suggested made Trump’s win illegitimate. It could also be read as an allusion to Trump’s 2020 maneuvers with the post office. But the practical impact is probably the same.
4. Sidelining the left-wing insurgency
Around the time the convention began Monday, a quarrel broke out between Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and former Ohio governor John Kasich (R). Kasich, who would speak that night, had suggested that Ocasio-Cortez’s role in the modern Democratic Party was overstated, and she hit back hard. For a party that has largely tamped down tensions between its left wing and the establishment since Biden emerged as its nominee, it threatened to be an unhappy sideshow.
Since then, though, it’s been “kumbaya.”
For the third night in a row, a leader of the liberal movement in the United States spoke at the convention — Bernie Sanders on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday and Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday. But there has been almost no real dissension expressed. Sanders even offered an enthusiastic endorsement of Biden’s health-care plan, which he had attacked in the 2020 primaries.
Criticism of Biden — or even a hint of it — was never going to happen in such a prepackaged virtual convention. But that doesn’t mean there wouldn’t be avenues for dissension about the future of the party — as Monday showed. Thus far, there’s almost no indication of that. Apart from grumbling about the likes of Kasich and Colin Powell speaking, it’s the picture of a party united behind a common cause — at least for now.
The way Joe Biden explained it on the campaign trail in Iowa, he and his friend Barack Obama had long talked of Biden succeeding him in the White House, continuing the work of their administration. It was only tragic fate, in the form of the loss of his son Beau, that intervened. Now, after four years, the plan could finally go forward, with Biden running as the administration’s true heir.
Barack Obama, Biden solemnly declared in his campaign announcement in Philadelphia, is “an extraordinary man, an extraordinary president.” On the social media-generated #BestFriendsDay, the campaign posted a picture of “Joe” and “Barack” friendship bracelets. Biden relabeled himself an “Obama-Biden Democrat.”
But behind all the BFF bonhomie is a much more complicated story—one fueled by the misgivings the 44th president had about the would-be 46th, the deep hurt still felt among Biden’s allies over how Obama embraced Hillary Clinton as his successor, and a powerful sense of pride that is driving Biden to prove that the former president and many of his aides underestimated the very real strengths of his partner.
“He was loyal, I think, to Obama in every way in terms of defending and standing by him, even probably when he disagreed with what Obama was doing,” recalled Leon Panetta, Obama’s secretary of Defense. “To some extent, [he] oftentimes felt that that loyalty was not being rewarded.”
Next week, Barack and Michelle Obama are each headlining different days of Biden’s convention, a lineup meant to display party unity and a smooth succession from its most popular figure to its current nominee. But past tensions between Obama’s camp and Biden’s camp have endured, forming some hairline fractures in the Democratic foundation. Some Biden aides boast that they wrapped up the nomination faster than Obama did in 2008. They tout that Biden’s abilities at retail, one-on-one politics are superior to those of the aloof former president. And they don’t easily forget the mocking or belittling of their campaign during the primary and revel in having proven the Obama brainiacs wrong.
Some have gotten caught in this crossfire—including Ron Klain, Biden’s former chief of staff, who has been working to regain Biden’s trust after having ditched the VP for Hillary Clinton’s campaign back when Biden still hoped to contend for the 2016 nomination.
Interviews with dozens of senior officials of the Obama-Biden administration painted a picture of eight years during which the president and vice president enjoyed a genuinely close personal relationship, built particularly around devotion to family, while at the same time many senior aides, sometimes tacitly encouraged by the president’s behavior, dismissed Biden as eccentric and a practitioner of an old, outmoded style of politics.
“You could certainly see technocratic eye-rolling at times,” said Jen Psaki, the former White House communications director. Young White House aides frequently mocked Biden’s gaffes and lack of discipline in comparison to the almost clerical Obama. They would chortle at how Biden, like an elderly uncle at Thanksgiving, would launch into extended monologues that everyone had heard before.
Former administration officials treated Biden dismissively in their memoirs.
Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, who was known for his mind-meld with the president, wrote in his memoir that “in the Situation Room, Biden could be something of an unguided missile.”
Former FBI Director James Comey recalled in his book that “Obama would have a series of exchanges heading a conversation very clearly and crisply in Direction A. Then, at some point, Biden would jump in with, ‘Can I ask something, Mr. President?’”
Comey continued: “Obama would politely agree, but something in his expression suggested he knew full well that for the next five or 10 minutes we would all be heading in Direction Z. After listening and patiently waiting, President Obama would then bring the conversation back on course.”
Meanwhile, Biden loyalists stewed, aware that the vice president, who had gotten himself elected to the Senate at age 29 in the year of President Richard M. Nixon’s landslide reelection and served 36 years, had a range of Washington political skills Obama lacked. The president and his closest allies seemed unaware of how he would alienate potential allies with his preachy tone, particularly in Congress, where Biden excelled.
Biden, for his part, felt Obama too often let his head get in the way. “Sometimes I thought he was deliberate to a fault,” he wrote in his 2017 book Promise Me, Dad.
But, as is sometimes the case in a troubled marriage, there were three people in the Obama-Biden relationship.
And the person who ultimately came between Obama and Biden was Hillary Clinton.
Back in 2008, when Obama was struggling to close the deal on the Democratic nomination, he engaged in a legendary duel with then-Sen. Clinton, sparring with her for months in one-on-one debates in which the two matched wits like law professors in a mock courtroom.
Despite the exhaustive battle, Obama admired how she made him earn it (“backwards and in heels,” he said at her convention in 2016). Clinton and her husband’s enthusiastic campaigning for Obama that fall helped seal the respect between the former rivals: Obama wanted Clinton to be secretary of State and handle world affairs while he tackled the tumbling economy. Biden’s own 2008 presidential campaign, meanwhile, had barely made a mark and fizzled after he won less than 1 percent in Iowa.
From the start, Obama’s personal style meshed better with Clinton’s—in the sense that they were both very disciplined and cerebral—than with Biden’s much more free-wheeling approach. Even if Obama sensed that Biden provided a much-needed complement and contrast, he naturally gravitated toward Clinton.
Obama and Clinton both viewed themselves as pioneers who worked their way through America’s elite colleges. Obama went to Columbia University and Harvard Law School, where he headed the law review; Clinton went from Wellesley to Yale Law School. They shared a work style as well, always sure to do their homework and arrive at a meeting prepared to get to the crux of an issue. “They do the reading,” said one former Clinton aide. “In Situation Room meetings, she had the thickest binder and had read it three times.”
Biden’s own academic career was unimpressive—he repeated the third grade, earned all Cs and Ds in his first three semesters at the University of Delaware except for As in P.E., a B in “Great English Writers” and an F in ROTC, and graduated 76th in his Syracuse Law School class of 85 students. He’s the first Democratic nominee since Walter Mondale in 1984 not to have an Ivy League degree. He was not a binder person, Clinton and Obama aides said.
Biden admitted as much in his 2007 memoir Promises to Keep, writing “It’s important to read reports and listen to the experts; more important is being able to read people in power.”
Biden’s tendency to blurt out whatever was on his mind rankled Obama, who wasn’t afraid to needle him for it. In his first press conference in 2009, the young president quipped “I don’t remember exactly what Joe was referring to—not surprisingly,” when asked about Biden’s assessment that there was a 30 percent chance they could get the economic stimulus package wrong.
The gaffes were only one side of the story, though. Obama warmed both to Biden’s effusive personality and his skill in implementing the administration’s $787 billion economic stimulus package, which the president had delegated to him.
Aides recall that Obama and Biden took almost polar-opposite approaches to policymaking, Obama always seeking data for the most logical or efficient outcome, while Biden told stories about how a bill would affect the working-class guy in Scranton, Pennsylvania, where he was born. When a deal was finally made, Obama would bemoan the compromises, while Biden would celebrate the points of agreement.
“Biden doesn’t come from the wonky angle of leadership,” said a senior Obama administration official. “It’s different than the last two Democratic presidents. Biden is from a different style. It’s an older style, of Franklin Roosevelt and Lyndon Johnson of ‘Let’s meet, let’s negotiate, let’s talk, let’s have a deal.’”
Republicans who negotiated with the administration often came away finding Obama condescending and relying on Biden to understand their concerns.
“Negotiating with President Obama was all about the fact that he felt that he knew the world better than you,” said Eric Cantor, the Republican House majority leader from 2011 to 2014. “And he felt that he thought about it so much, that he figured it all out, and no matter what conclusion you had come to with the same set of facts, his way was right.” Biden, he said, understood that “you’re gonna have to agree to disagree about some things.”
A former Republican leadership aide described Obama’s style as “mansplaining, basically.” The person added that Biden “may not be sitting down talking about Thucydides but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have a high level of political intelligence.”
Valerie Jarrett, Obama’s close adviser and family friend, bristled at any suggestion that Obama’s negotiating style was responsible for tensions with members of Congress: “Obama was younger than many of them. He was the first Black president. He wasn’t a part of that club,” Jarrett said.
But Obama would often convey a weariness with the traditional obligations of political leadership: the glad-handing, the massaging of egos. Sometimes he couldn’t hide his disdain for part of the job he signed up for.
At the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2013, in front of a roomful of journalists, Obama joked, “Some folks still don’t think I spend enough time with Congress. ‘Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?’ they ask. Really? ‘Why don’t you get a drink with Mitch McConnell?’ I’m sorry, I get frustrated sometimes.”
Biden, former aides say, didn’t get why that was funny. Biden wrote in his 2007 memoir that likely “the single most important piece of advice I got in my career” came from the late Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield (D-Mont.) who told him, “Your job here is to find the good things in your colleagues—the things their state saw—and not focus on the bad.”
Mansfield added: “And, Joe, never attack another man’s motive, because you don’t know his motive.”
Thus, Biden invested time in developing those relationships that Obama never did.
Denis McDonough, Obama’s former chief of staff, said Biden “always wanted to have had two conversations with someone before he would ask that person for something. … Once in a while you’re like, ‘Hey, can we get through those two touches so you can make the ask here,’ but he just wouldn’t do it. That’s the kind of operation he runs.”
Advance staffers recall that Obama’s speeches were arranged to be delivered alone on the stage with voters behind him, while Biden would push to include every local elected official up there with him, knowing they would love the exposure to the vice president—a chit to cash in later.
Psaki, for one, recalled that the president often saw photo lines as obligations while they might be the best part of the vice president’s day.
“His background is much more retail politics kind of person, and the president was very much sort of a wholesale kind of president,” said former Sen. Ted Kaufman, a longtime Biden adviser who is now heading up his presidential transition effort.
Immediately after Obama’s reelection in 2012, Biden’s team started thinking about his own 2016 run. His mind wasn’t entirely made up, but he wanted to focus on a few areas—particularly infrastructure—that could form the basis of a forward-looking campaign agenda, according to former Biden officials and Democrats they consulted.
One former Biden aide described the vice president’s thinking as “I want to find the ways to stay viable to make the decision on my own terms.”
From early on, however, it became increasingly clear that Obama and many of his closest aides were helping along a Hillary Clinton succession.
In the past few years, the story of how that happened has taken on a particular shape. After Clinton’s 2016 loss and a certain amount of Monday-morning quarterbacking about her weakness as a candidate, many Obama aides tried to cast the president’s snub of Biden as purely an act of compassion: Biden was grieving for his son Beau, who died of cancer in 2015, and didn’t have the emotional bandwidth to handle a campaign.
Biden himself has offered this explanation in public, and Jarrett, the ultimate Obama loyalist, insists that was largely the case: “Vice President Biden was devastated, as any parent would be, by the loss of Beau. It was excruciating to watch him suffer the way he did,” she said.
But numerous administration veterans, including loyalists to both Obama and Biden, remember it differently: Obama had begun embracing Clinton as a possible successor years before Biden lost his son, while the vice president was laying the groundwork for his own campaign.
Just after Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, Democrats turned on their TVs to see Obama singing Clinton’s praises in a joint “60 Minutes” interview on the occasion of Clinton’s departure from the State Department—one that two Clinton aides say was suggested by Obama’s team, albeit as a print interview.
“Why have them sit together for two hours and have 200 of their words used?,” recalled Philippe Reines, Clinton’s press aide at the time. “I always just prefer TV. And I’m like, ‘Let’s go for gold. Let’s do ‘60 Minutes.’ And Ben [Rhodes] said, ‘I love it.’”
“I was a big admirer of Hillary’s before our primary battles and the general election,” Obama enthused. “You know, her discipline, her stamina, her thoughtfulness, her ability to project, I think, and make clear issues that are important to the American people, I thought made her an extraordinary talent. … [P]art of our bond is we’ve been through a lot of the same stuff.”
To which Clinton gushed, “I think there’s a sense of understanding that, you know, sometimes doesn’t even take words because we have similar views.”
When interviewer Steve Kroft raised the prospect of a Clinton presidential run, both Obama and Clinton played it coy, saying it was way too early for such thinking, but doing nothing to discourage the idea.
Then Obama’s political sage, David Plouffe [above]—the man who had dedicated a year and a half to taking down Clinton in 2008—offered his help in mid-2013 and met with Clinton, according to a Democrat familiar with the overture. (Plouffe maintains that Clinton’s team approached him first.) Obama’s pollster, Joel Benenson, later hopped on board. In early 2015, so did top Obama aides John Podesta and Jennifer Palmieri. Clinton’s campaign even began interviewing and picking off people from Biden’s office, including Alex Hornbrook, who became Clinton’s director of scheduling and advance.
“It certainly felt like Obama’s world was behind us,” said one former Clinton campaign aide. “It wasn’t just Plouffe, Palmieri and Benenson. From the beginning, a lot of key Obama aides came over and helped stand up our campaign.” It was so blatant that some Clinton aides wondered whether Obama had just wrongly assumed that Biden wasn’t interested in running because of his age.
On January 5, 2015, Biden and Obama privately discussed a White House run at their weekly lunch. Obama “had been subtly weighing in against,” Biden recalled in Promise Me, Dad, his 2017 book.
“I also believe he had concluded that Hillary Clinton was almost certain to be the nominee, which was good by him,” Biden wrote. A campaign spokesperson added that in the meeting, Obama also said, “If I could appoint anyone to be president over the next eight years, Joe, it would be you.”
Panetta, who had known Clinton from his days as her husband’s White House chief of staff, recalled that “Both she and her staff worked at that a great deal in trying to build that support.” Among Obama and his aides, Panetta said, “I think there was a certain attraction to someone that would certainly break ceilings and kind of create the same kind of precedent that he created when he became president … as opposed to supporting somebody who’s kind of your more traditional politician and, you know, a white Irish Catholic guy.”
There was also dismissiveness of Biden in Clinton’s orbit that echoed Obama aides. “The good thing about a Biden run,” Neera Tanden, Clinton’s close aide who also advised the Obama administration on health policy, wrote to Podesta in 2015, in an email later exposed by WikiLeaks, “is that he would make Hillary look so much better.”
Obama tried to remain above the fray, even as his closest staffers largely rallied around Clinton—which they likely would not have done if there was a chance he would support Biden. “I knew a number of the president’s former staffers, and even a few current ones, were putting a finger on the scale for Clinton,” Biden wrote.
Pressed on whether Obama ever expressed a preference between Clinton and Biden, Jarrett demurred, saying, “that’s a conversation you’ll have to have with him.”
Obama declined to be interviewed through his spokesperson. “President Obama has been unequivocal in his respect for Joe’s wisdom, experience, empathy and integrity,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Even if he did express preference for Clinton, some Obama officials characterized it more as an acknowledgment of her strength than an attempt to undercut Biden.
“There was a feeling of inevitability about Hillary Clinton in every aspect,” recalled Psaki. “So it never felt to me like it was Obama choosing Hillary Clinton over Joe Biden. It was a feeling like it’s inevitable after Hillary Clinton left the State Department that she will be the Democratic nominee, and she will become the next president. So Obama … was trying to play a part in being helpful.”
Reines said Obama “was always very encouraging” of Clinton and that after serving as president, “he believed there was no one better prepared to do it.”
It was in the midst of the handoff to Clinton that Beau Biden’s health began deteriorating. Joe Biden had had an especially deep bond with his eldest son since Beau’s mother and sister died in a car accident that seriously injured Beau and his brother Hunter. Before the 46-year-old Beau passed away that May from an aggressive form of brain cancer, he had been a firm advocate for his Dad to run and, even in intense grief, Biden made serious preparations in the summer and fall of 2015 to jump into the race.
The Clinton camp took Biden’s deliberations seriously. Podesta told people he believed Biden would go for it. The Clinton team assembled an oppo-research book on him with the code name “Project Acela,” according to one former Clinton official. Negative stories began popping up. The Clinton campaign denied having had any role, but Biden was skeptical.
Obama pressed the issue in another private meeting. “The president was not encouraging,” Biden recalled.
A more direct kind of brushback occurred that fall. Plouffe—the Obama strategist who had been quietly advising Clinton since 2013—met with Biden and told him not to end his career in embarrassment with a third place finish in Iowa, according to multiple accounts of the meeting.
“There just wasn’t an opening,” Plouffe said, explaining why he advised Biden against the run. “He started asking the question in the 4th quarter of the contest.” Plouffe argued that Biden hadn’t done the necessary legwork before 2015 that previous vice presidents had done before their runs.
Clinton’s campaign conducted a survey around the same time showing Biden in third in Iowa. In a foreshadowing of Biden’s 2020 performance, the analysis also showed his tremendous strength among African American voters.
“With Biden in the race, our support among African Americans drops by 23 points,” an internal Clinton memo noted ominously. “While we still lead, it is not the overwhelming, commanding lead we hold in a one-on-one race with [Bernie] Sanders.”
The most stinging rebuke, however, came when Klain—Biden’s former chief of staff who went back decades with him to when he was chief counsel on Biden’s Judiciary Committee in 1989—defected to Clinton.
Ebola Response Coordinator Ron Klain, Vice President Joe Biden and White House Senior Adviser Valerie Jarrett at a November 2014 meeting in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building.
“It’s been a little hard for me to play such a role in the Biden demise,” Klain wrote to Podesta in October 2015, a week before Biden gave in and announced he would not run. “I am definitely dead to them—but I’m glad to be on Team HRC.”
According to the email, which was released by WikiLeaks in what American intelligence officials have concluded was a Russian-backed effort to hurt the Clinton campaign, Klain added: “Thanks for inviting me into the campaign, and for sticking with me during the Biden anxiety.”
In the years since Clinton’s loss, Democrat operatives have chuckled at Klain’s attempts to earn his way back into Biden’s good graces, including lots of Twitter praise for the former vice president. Klain is not on the campaign’s payroll but remains an adviser, and observers assume he’s hoping to be chief of staff in a Biden White House. Klain refused to elaborate on the situation: “I’m not going to comment on a story that uses Russian intelligence measures.”
In a sign of the raw feelings, Biden’s aides declined to comment on the fallout from Klain’s defection but said they are happy he is on board in 2020.
Lingering tensions between the Biden and Obama camps were subtly visible in the 2020 primary campaign, in which Obama declined to endorse any candidate.
Many top Obama administration and campaign officials sat on the sidelines or worked for candidates other than Biden. Top former aides including strategist David Axelrod and the young hosts of Pod Save America—Jon Favreau, Tommy Vietor, Jon Lovett and Dan Pfeiffer—at times ridiculed the former vice president’s campaign. Biden is one of the few candidates to have not gone on either of their popular podcasts during the campaign, despite having been invited: “I can’t speak for his campaign’s scheduling decisions,” said Vietor, “but the Zoom is always open.”
Biden aides acknowledge that Obama didn’t do nearly as much for Biden in 2020 as he did for Clinton in 2016.
The lack of public enthusiasm for Biden was noticeable enough that former Obama senior adviser Pete Rouse—who was one of the aides who helped Biden organize his potential 2016 run—addressed it at a fundraiser of Obama alumni for Biden last November that he helped organize.
“I think the turnout tonight demonstrates the high regard in which the vice president is held in the extended Obama family,” Rouse told the crowd of about 50 people. “And I think that that message is not out as far as it should be.”
Yet searing, anonymously sourced quotes from Obama kept appearing through the race. One Democrat who spoke to Obama recalled the former president warning, “Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.” Speaking of his own waning understanding of today’s Democratic electorate, especially in Iowa, Obama told one 2020 candidate: “And you know who really doesn’t have it? Joe Biden.”
Biden’s weaknesses were such that even Clinton reconsidered her decision not to get into the race last fall, according to Reines.
“There were a number of people who decided not to run and then around, October, before Thanksgiving said to themselves, ‘You know, did I make the right decision?,’ he said, name-checking Mike Bloomberg and Deval Patrick who did make late entries. “She went through that exercise.”
But Biden proved them all wrong.
His focus on electability along with a sentimental message about saving the soul of the nation—“character is on the ballot”—was dismissed by many pundits and reporters as hokey and uninspiring, but ended up being the winning one.
One former Clinton aide noted that Biden’s ability to cultivate personal relationships paid dividends at the primary’s end: Bernie Sanders saw Biden as one of the few people in Washington who took him seriously before his 2016 run for president. After it was clear Biden had an insurmountable delegate lead, Sanders decided not to drag out the fight the way he did against Clinton in 2016.
“That relationship is why Bernie got out in March,” said the former Clinton aide.
“I don’t know who saw him sailing to the nomination,” said Psaki. Biden’s old-fashioned style of politics, she reasoned, “still taps into something in the American electorate. And maybe we’re not seeing that because I live in a suburb of Washington, D.C., with a bunch of upper middle-class white people.”
Or, as one former Biden official put it: “I don’t think he really cares about what a 30-something Pod Save America host thinks about him, and that honestly might be why he’s the nominee.”
But even in victory, Biden and his aides often act like they have something to prove to the Obama team that doubted them. Some Biden allies noted that Obama’s endorsement of Biden, when it finally arrived, lacked the effusiveness of his endorsement of Clinton. “I don’t think there’s ever been someone so qualified to hold this office,” he said of Clinton in his video message in 2016. Four years later, in his endorsement video for Biden, he said: “I believe Joe has all of the qualities we need in a president right now … and I know he will surround himself with good people.”
Biden aides also fumed at Axelrod and Plouffe penning a New York Times op-ed that instructed them on “What Joe Biden Needs to Do to Beat Trump,” according to Democrats who talked with them.
Meanwhile, some senior Democrats credited Obama for Biden’s comeback given his strength among Black voters, while Biden has emphasized he did it on his own.
After the South Carolina primary win, he told aides that Obama hadn’t “lifted a finger” to help him. Anita Dunn, an Obama administration aide and top adviser to Biden’s presidential campaign, said “[Biden] did feel that he needed to go out and earn it himself, as opposed to having people see it as an extension of a third Obama term or having it be any kind of referendum directly on Obama.”
Now, as Reines put it, Biden “might have the last laugh of everybody.”Biden has long been defensive about suggestions of being dumb or a lightweight—a narrative that took hold during in his first campaign for the presidency, in 1988. As a kid, a teacher mocked him for his stutter (“Bu-bu-bu-bu-Biden,” she went, according to his 2007 memoir). “Other kids looked at me like I was stupid,” Biden wrote.
Or, as Richard Ben Cramer wrote in his classic about the 1988 race: “Joe Biden had balls. Lot of times, more balls than sense.” Biden didn’t seem to mind that assessment, as he brought on Cramer’s researcher, Mark Zwonitzer, to help write his books in 2007 and 2017.
“I had to convince the Big Feet [his euphemism for national reporters] that I had depth,” he recalled about that 1988 race. Striving to answer his critics, he puffed up his academic credentials on the trail (“I exaggerate when I’m angry,” he later tried to explain). In a heated exchange in New Hampshire during the 1988 campaign, he uncharacteristically snapped at a voter who asked him which law school he attended and his class rank that “I have a much higher IQ than you do, I suspect.”
Sen. Joe Biden, pictured with his wife Jill, holds a news conference in Washington on Sept. 23, 1987, to announce he is withdrawing from the Democratic race for the presidential nomination.
In the less-remembered part of that encounter, however, Biden also decried the snobby intelligentsia that had taken over the Democratic Party. “It seems to me you’ve all become heartless technocrats,” he said. “We have never as a party moved this nation by 14-point position papers and nine-point programs.”
That sensibility is part of what separates him from Obama. “It really is the difference between street smarts and, you know, Harvard smart,” Panetta said.
That’s why even some Republicans believe Biden may be better poised to fulfill Obama’s promises of restoring unity and civility in Washington than the “change we can believe in” 44th president was. If Biden wins, many Democrats and Republicans believe that at least relations between the White House and Congress will be better than in any other recent administration, including Obama’s.
“Obama, clearly he was smart, he was bright, he would come up with proposals, but that second part of then taking those proposals and working and lobbying members and listening to them and doing all of the things that need to be done when you’re dealing with the egos on Capitol Hill was not something that came easily to him,” Panetta said. “He was impatient with that process. I think Biden understands that process and understands what it takes.”
Even with Biden as the Democratic nominee, Republican leadership and their aides can’t help but feel more animosity toward Obama than Biden. In negotiations, Biden asked them what they could sell to their caucus while Obama would trenchantly but unproductively lecture leadership about why their caucus’ worldview was wrong, the aides said.
“Frankly, I came to dread those Oval Office meetings because they were lost time,” said one such former aide. “Those were hours of your life you were never getting back.”
Vice President Joe Biden is emotional as President Barack Obama presents him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during a ceremony at the White House, Jan. 12, 2017.
Axelrod echoed this view in his memoir. “Few practiced politicians appreciate being lectured on where their political self-interest lies,” he wrote of Obama’s style. “That hint of moral superiority and disdain for politicians who put elections first has hurt Obama as negotiator, and it’s why Biden, a politician’s politician, has often had better luck.”
The other advantage Biden brings, according to his advisers, is his nearly unrivaled Rolodex.
“Obama knew some of these people, but it wasn’t like a deep relationship,” said Kaufman. “He knows mayors and governors, he knows the members of Congress much better than Obama did.”
Biden once wrote, “A person’s epitaph was written when his or her last battle was fought.”
Is this battle in part a way to show that Obama favored the wrong successor?
“I think Joe’s the type that victory makes all the difference,” said Panetta. “And if he can win the presidency, I think that will say an awful lot to a lot of people about who Joe Biden really is.”
Three former presidents and dozens of other dignitaries were drawn to Ebenezer Baptist Church on Thursday to bid farewell to John Lewis, a giant of Congress and the civil rights era whose courageous protests guaranteed him a place in American history. But even as the funeral looked back over Mr. Lewis’s long life, it also focused very much on the tumultuous state of affairs in the country today.
The most pointed eulogy came from former President Barack Obama, who issued a blistering critique of the Trump administration, the brutality of police officers toward Black people and efforts to limit the right to vote that Mr. Lewis had shed his blood to secure.
Mr. Obama compared Mr. Lewis to an Old Testament prophet and credited him with directly paving the way for the nation’s first Black president. He also took aim at the forces that he said were working against the equality for Black Americans and other oppressed people that Mr. Lewis had spent a lifetime championing.
“Bull Connor may be gone,” Mr. Obama said, referring to the 1960s-era public safety commissioner of Birmingham, Ala., who turned fire hoses and dogs on civil rights protesters. “But today, we witness, with our own eyes, police officers kneeling on the necks of Black Americans.”
George Wallace, the Alabama governor who endorsed segregation and used racist language, may also be gone, Mr. Obama continued. “But we can witness our federal government sending agents to use tear gas and batons against peaceful demonstrators.”
And while insuperable poll tests for Black people may be a thing of the past, Mr. Obama said, “Even as we sit here, there are those in power who are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision.”
Mr. Obama praised Mr. Lewis in his eulogy as an “American whose faith was tested again and again to produce a man of pure joy and unbreakable perseverance.”
In death, Mr. Lewis drew a bipartisan crowd, including former presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, although Mr. Trump did not attend. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and dozens of members of Congress were also at the three-hour service, presided over by Ebenezer’s pastor, the Rev. Dr. Raphael G. Warnock, who is running as a Democrat for a Senate seat.
Mr. Bush gave a short, warm speech in which he praised Mr. Lewis’s Christian faith and recalled working with him to establish the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington.
“Listen, John and I had our disagreements, of course,” said Mr. Bush, a Republican. “But in the America John Lewis fought for, and the America I believe in, differences of opinion are inevitable elements and evidence of democracy in action.”
The line was as well received as Mr. Bush himself: Dr. Warnock noted that Mr. Bush was president “the last time we reauthorized the Voting Rights Act.” It was a markedly different tone from the 2006 funeral of Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, in which numerous speakers criticized the Bush administration while Mr. Bush, then in his second term, looked on.
Mr. Clinton called Mr. Lewis “a man I loved for a long time” and someone who was “on a mission that was bigger than personal ambition.”
He also said that Mr. Lewis had learned a lesson after he was asked by other civil rights leaders to tone down a fiery speech that he had written for the March on Washington in August 1963. “He listened to people that he knew had the same goals say, ‘Well, we have to be careful how we saythis because we’re trying to get converts, not more adversaries.’”
In his eulogy, Mr. Obama, among other things, called on Congress to pass a new Voting Rights Act named for Mr. Lewis, for the end of gerrymandering and for the establishment of a national holiday on Election Day to make it easier for working people to get to the polls.
Echoing a favored theme, Mr. Obama also praised Mr. Lewis for understanding that it takes not only faith but hard work to improve the country and keep a healthy democracy on course.
Mr. Lewis exhibited, he said, “that most American of ideas — the idea that any of us ordinary people, without rank or wealth or title or fame, can somehow point out the imperfections of this nation and come together and challenge the status quo and decide that it is in our power to remake this country that we love until it more closely aligns with our highest ideals.”
For that, he said, Mr. Lewis would come to be viewed as “a founding father of that fuller, fairer, better America.”
The sentiment resonated with the crowd that had gathered outside the church. Many dashed over to get a look as Mr. Lewis’s coffin was carried out.
A Collapse That Wiped Out 5 Years of Growth, With No Bounce in Sight
The second-quarter contraction set a grim record, and it would have been worse without government aid that is expiring.
Second set of figures showed new unemployment claims of 1.4 million in last week - second week in a row they have gone up
The percentage decrease in G.D.P. is by far the biggest on record.
The coronavirus pandemic’s toll on the nation’s economy became emphatically clearer Thursday as the government detailed the most devastating three-month collapse on record, which wiped away nearly five years of growth.
Gross domestic product, the broadest measure of goods and services produced, fell 9.5 percent in the second quarter of the year as consumers cut back spending, businesses pared investments and global trade dried up, the Commerce Department said.
The drop — the equivalent of a 32.9 percent annual rate of decline — would have been even more severe without trillions of dollars in government aid to households and businesses
.
Data from Europe shows what might have been. Germany on Thursday reported a drop in second-quarter G.D.P. that was even steeper than the U.S. decline. But in Germany, coronavirus cases fell sharply and remain low, which has allowed a much stronger economic rebound in recent weeks.
In the United States, the rebound appears to have stalled. More than 1.4 million Americans filed new claims for state unemployment benefits last week, the Labor Department said Thursday. It was the 19th straight week that the tally exceeded one million, an unheard-of figure before the pandemic. A further 830,000 people filed for benefits under the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program, which supports freelancers, the self-employed and other workers not covered by traditional unemployment benefits.
In total, some 30 million people are receiving unemployment benefits, a number that has come down only slowly as new layoffs — many of them permanent job losses, as opposed to the spring’s temporary furloughs — offset gradual rehiring. Some economists now fear that the monthly jobs report coming next week will show that total employment fell in July after two months of strong gains. The slow recovery, and signs of backsliding, are taking a toll on consumer confidence, which fell in July after rising in June.
The economic collapse in the second quarter was unrivaled in its speed and breathtaking in its severity. The decline was more than twice as large as in the Great Recession a decade ago, but occurred in a fraction of the time. The only possible comparisons in modern American history came during the Great Depression and the demobilization after World War II, both of which predated modern economic statistics.
Many fiscal conservatives, on the other hand, do not want to pass another $1 trillion package in general
'We're nowhere close to a deal,'
The White House and Congress have just one day to come up with a compromise on unemployment benefits before the coronavirus-era boost expires on Friday.
After Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled Republican's $1 trillion stimulus package on Monday, negotiations stalled on Capitol Hill.
The plan included cutting an unemployment boost included in a previous package from $600-per-week on top of state benefits to $200.
The GOP’s goal regarding unemployment benefits is also to phase out the flat-rate boost 60 days after it’s passed and then cap benefits at 70 per cent of the individual’s pre-coronavirus wages.
The $600-per-week bolstered benefits will run out on Friday as White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows revealed Wednesday, 'We're nowhere close to a deal.'
While Trump doesn't mind stimulus bills with high price tags, there are many fiscal conservatives who will not jump on board another sweeping stimulus package.
Republicans who object to big government spending, like Senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, reveal that at least 50 per cent of GOP lawmakers will not vote in favor of any new sweeping legislation.
While McConnell's proposal appears to be dead on arrival, with Democrats and Republicans rebuking the measure, other GOP lawmakers are looking to reach a compromise with their versions.
Senator Mitt Romney laid out his proposal Wednesday night and Senator Ron Johnson will put out his own proposal later in the day Thursday as lawmakers scramble to agree on something before the benefits' expiration.
One person in the US dies every MINUTE from COVID-19 as the death toll surpasses 150,000 - and Florida, California and Texas all set single-day highs for the number of deaths
The United States recorded 1,461 new deaths on Wednesday, bringing the total death toll to more than 150,000
It is the highest one-day spike since the 1,484 recorded on May 27
Coronavirus deaths across the country are rising at their fastest rate in two months and have increased by 10,000 in the past 11 days
Nationally, COVID-19 deaths have risen for three weeks in a row while the number of new cases week-over-week has fallen for the first time since June
California, Florida and Texas, the three largest US states, all set one-day records for fatalities from COVID-19 on Wednesday
The pace of coronavirus infections has accelerated since late May and the epicenter has moved to the South and West from New York
While new infections appear to have slowed, deaths have rapidly risen in July in California, Texas and Florida
Once again, the coronavirus is ascendant. As infections mount across the country, it is dawning on Americans that the epidemic is now unstoppable, and that no corner of the nation will be left untouched. As of Wednesday, the pathogen had infected at least 4.3 million Americans, killing more than 150,000. Many experts fear the virus could kill 200,000 or even 300,000 by year’s end.
Each state, each city has its own crisis driven by its own risk factors: vacation crowds in one, bars reopened too soon in another, a revolt against masks in a third. “We are in a worse place than we were in March,” when the virus coursed through New York, said Dr. Leana S. Wen, a former Baltimore health commissioner. “Back then we had one epicenter. Now we have lots.”
To assess where the country is heading now, The New York Times interviewed 20 public health experts — not just clinicians and epidemiologists, but also historians and sociologists, because the spread of the virus is now influenced as much by human behavior as it is by the pathogen itself.
While there may be no appetite for a national lockdown, local restrictions must be tightened when required, the researchers said, and governors and mayors must have identical goals. Testing must become more targeted.
In most states, contact tracing is now moot — there are simply too many cases to track. And while progress has been made on vaccines, none is expected to arrive this winter in time to stave off what many fear will be a new wave of deaths.
Overall, the scientists conveyed a pervasive sense of sadness and exhaustion. Where once there was defiance, and then a growing sense of dread, now there seems to be sorrow and frustration, a feeling that so many funerals never had to happen and that nothing is going well. The United States is a wounded giant, while much of Europe, which was hit first, is recovering and reopening — although not to us.
“We’re all incredibly depressed and in shock at how out of control the virus is in the U.S.,” said Dr. Michele Barry, the director of the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford University.
With so much wealth and medical talent, they asked, how could we have done so poorly? How did we fare not just worse than autocratic China and isolated New Zealand, but also worse than tiny, much poorer nations like Vietnam and Rwanda?
“National hubris and belief in American exceptionalism have served us badly,” said Martha L. Lincoln, a medical anthropologist and historian at San Francisco State University. “We were not prepared to see the risk of failure.”
What We’ve Learned
Since the coronavirus was first found to be the cause of lethal pneumonias in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, scientists have gained a better understanding of the enemy.
The infection may start in the lungs, but it is very different from influenza, a respiratory virus. In severely ill patients, the coronavirus may attach to receptors inside the veins and arteries, and move on to attack the kidneys, the heart, the gut and even the brain, choking off these organs with hundreds of tiny blood clots.
Most of the virus’s victims are elderly, but it has not spared young adults, especially those with obesity, high blood pressure or diabetes. Adults aged 18 to 49 now account for more hospitalized cases than people aged 50 to 64 or those 65 and older.
Among adults, a very different picture has emerged. Growing evidence suggests that perhaps 10 percent of the infected account for 80 percent of new transmissions. Unpredictable superspreading events in nursing homes, meatpacking plants, churches, prisons and bars are major drivers of the epidemic.
Thus far, none of the medicines for which hopes were once high — repurposed malaria drugs, AIDS drugs and antivirals — have proved to be rapid cures. One antiviral, remdesivir, has been shown to shorten hospital stays, while a common steroid, dexamethasone, has helped save some severely ill patients.
One or even several vaccines may be available by year’s end, which would be a spectacular achievement. But by then the virus may have in its grip virtually every village and city on the globe.
Solutions Must Be Localized
An outdoor gym in Miami this month. Florida and California now have reported more coronavirus infections than New York State, once the epicenter of the epidemic.Credit...Scott McIntyre for The New York Times
Some experts, like Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, argue that only a nationwide lockdown can completely contain the virus now. Other researchers think that is politically impossible, but emphasize that localities must be free to act quickly and enforce strong measures with support from their state legislators.
Danielle Allen, the director of Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, which has issued pandemic response plans, said that finding less than one case per 100,000 people means a community should continue testing, contact tracing and isolating cases — with financial support for those who need it.
Up to 25 cases per 100,000 requires greater restrictions, like closing bars and limiting gatherings. Above that number, authorities should issue stay-at-home orders, she said.
Testing must be focused, not just offered at convenient parking lots, experts said, and it should be most intense in institutions like nursing homes, prisons, factories or other places at risk of superspreading events.
Testing must be free in places where people are poor or uninsured, such as public housing projects, Native American reservations and churches and grocery stores in impoverished neighborhoods.
None of this will be possible unless the nation’s capacity for testing, a continuing disaster, is greatly expanded. By the end of summer, the administration hopes to start using “pooling,” in which tests are combined in batches to speed up the process.
But the method only works in communities with lower infection rates, where large numbers of pooled tests turn up relatively few positive results. It fails where the virus has spread everywhere, because too many batches turn up positive results that require retesting.
Above all, researchers said, mask use should be universal indoors — including airplanes, subway cars and every other enclosed space — and outdoors anywhere people are less than six feet apart.
Dr. Emily Landon, an infection control specialist at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, said it was “sad that something as simple as a mask got politicized.”
“It’s not a statement, it’s a piece of clothing,” she added. “You get used to it the way you got used to wearing pants.”
Arguments that masks infringe on personal rights must be countered both by legal orders and by persuasion. “We need more credible messengers endorsing masks,” Dr. Wen said — just before the president himself became a messenger.
“They could include C.E.O.s or celebrities or religious leaders. Different people are influencers to different demographics.”
Although this feels like a new debate, it is actually an old one. Masks were common in some Western cities during the 1918 flu pandemic and mandatory in San Francisco. There was even a jingle: “Obey the laws, wear the gauze. Protect your jaws from septic paws.”
“A libertarian movement, the Anti-Mask League, emerged,” Dr. Lincoln of San Francisco State said. “There were fistfights with police officers over it.” Ultimately, city officials “waffled” and compliance faded.
“I wonder what this issue would be like today,” she mused, “if that hadn’t happened.”
Images of Americans disregarding social distancing requirements have become a daily news staple. But the pictures are deceptive: Americans are more accepting of social distancing than the media sometimes portrays, said Beth Redbird, a Northwestern University sociologist who since March has conducted regular surveys of 8,000 adults about the impact of the virus.
“About 70 percent of Americans report using all forms of it,” she said. “And when we give them adjective choices, they describe people who won’t distance as mean, selfish or unintelligent, not as generous, open-minded or patriotic.”
The key predictor, she said in early July, was whether or not the poll respondent trusted Mr. Trump. Those who trusted him were less likely to practice social distancing. That was true of Republicans and independents, “and there’s no such thing as a Democrat who trusts Donald Trump,” she added.
Whether or not people support coercive measures like stay-at-home orders or bar closures depended on how scared the respondent was.
“When rising case numbers make people more afraid, they have more taste for liberty-constraining actions,” Dr. Redbird said. And no economic recovery will occur, she added, “until people aren’t afraid. If they are, they won’t go out and spend money even if they’re allowed to.”
The Danger Indoors
Closing a bar in Houston on June 27, after Gov. Greg Abbott ordered a partial re-closing of Texas.Credit...Erin Trieb for The New York Times
As of Wednesday, new infections were rising in 33 states, and in Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, according to a database maintained by The Times.
Weeks ago, experts like Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases, were advising states where the virus was surging to pull back from reopening by closing down bars, forbidding large gatherings and requiring mask usage.
Many of those states are finally taking that advice, but it is not yet clear whether this national change of heart has happened in time to stop the newest wave of deaths from ultimately exceeding the 2,750-a-day peak of mid-April. Now, the daily average is 1,106 virus deaths nationwide.
Deaths may surge even higher, experts warned, when cold weather, rain and snow force Americans to meet indoors, eat indoors and crowd into public transit.
Oddly, states that are now hard-hit might become safer, some experts suggested. In the South and Southwest, summers are so hot that diners seek air-conditioning indoors, but eating outdoors in December can be pleasant.
Several studies have confirmed transmission in air-conditioned rooms. In one well-known case cluster in a restaurant in Guangzhou, China, researchers concluded that air-conditioners blew around a viral cloud, infecting patrons as far as 10 feet from a sick diner.
Rural areas face another risk. Almost 80 percent of the country’s counties lack even one infectious disease specialist, according to a study led by Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the chief of infectious diseases at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
At the moment, the crisis is most acute in Southern and Southwestern states. But websites that track transmission rates show that hot spots can turn up anywhere. For three weeks, for example, Alaska’s small outbreak has been one of the country’s fastest-spreading, while transmission in Texas and Arizona has dramatically slowed.
Deaths now may rise more slowly than they did in spring, because hospitalized patients are, on average, younger this time. But overwhelmed hospitals can lead to excess deaths from many causes all over a community, as ambulances are delayed and people having health crises avoid hospitals out of fear.
The experts were divided as to what role influenza will play in the fall. A harsh flu season could flood hospitals with pneumonia patients needing ventilators. But some said the flu season could be mild or almost nonexistent this year.
Normally, the flu virus migrates from the Northern Hemisphere to the Southern Hemisphere in the spring — presumably in air travelers — and then returns in the fall, with new mutations that may make it a poor match for the annual vaccine.
But this year, the national lockdown abruptly ended flu transmission in late April, according to weekly Fluview reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. International air travel has been sharply curtailed, and there has been almost no flu activity in the whole southern hemisphere this year.
Assuming there is still little air travel to the United States this fall, there may be little “reseeding” of the flu virus here. But in case that prediction turns out be wrong, all the researchers advised getting flu shots anyway.
“There’s no reason to be caught unprepared for two respiratory viruses,” said Tara C. Smith, an epidemiologist at Kent State University’s School of Public Health.
Partially Effective Remedies
Blood samples for coronavirus research in a lab in New York City.Credit...Misha Friedman for The New York Times
Experts familiar with vaccine and drug manufacturing were disappointed that, thus far, only dexamethasone and remdesivir have proved to be effective treatments, and then only partially.
Because the virus is still spreading rapidly, most experts said “challenge trials,” in which a small number of volunteers are vaccinated and then deliberately infected, would probably not be needed.
Absent a known cure, “challenges” can be ethically fraught, and some doctors oppose doing them for this virus. “They don’t tell you anything about safety,” Dr. Borio said.
And when a virus is circulating unchecked, a typical placebo-controlled trial with up to 30,000 participants can be done efficiently, she added. Moderna and Pfizer have already begun such trials.
The Food and Drug Administration has said a vaccine will pass muster even if it is only 50 percent effective. Experts said they could accept that, at least initially, because the first vaccine approved could save lives while testing continued on better alternatives.
“A vaccine doesn’t have to work perfectly to be useful,” Dr. Walensky said. “Even with measles vaccine, you can sometimes still get measles — but it’s mild, and you aren’t infectious.”
“We don’t know if a vaccine will work in older folks. We don’t know exactly what level of herd immunity we’ll need to stop the epidemic. But anything safe and fairly effective should help.”
Still, haste is risky, experts warned, especially when opponents of vaccines are spreading fear. If a vaccine is rushed to market without thorough safety testing and recipients are hurt by it, all vaccines could be set back for years.
A Focus on People of Color
Ayub Farah working at a drive-through testing site in Houston earlier this month.Credit...Callaghan O'Hare for The New York Times
No matter what state the virus reaches, one risk remains constant. Even in states with few Black and Hispanic residents, they are usually hit hardest, experts said.
People of color are more likely to have jobs that require physical presence and sometimes close contact, such as construction work, store clerking and nursing. They are more likely to rely on public transit and to live in neighborhoods where grocery stores are scarce and crowded.
Federal data gathered through May 28 shows that Black and Hispanic Americans were three times as likely to get infected as their white neighbors, and twice as likely to die, even if they lived in remote rural counties with few Black or Hispanic residents.
“By the time that minority patient sets foot in a hospital, he is already on an unequal footing,” said Elaine Hernandez, a sociologist at Indiana University.
The differences persist even though Black and Hispanic adults drastically altered their behavior. One study found that through the beginning of May, the average Black American practiced more social distancing than the average white American.
The top factor making people adopt self-protective behavior is personally knowing someone who fell ill, said Dr. Redbird. By the end of spring, Black and Hispanic Americans were 50 percent more likely than white Americans to know someone who had been sickened by the virus, her surveys found.
This Is the Beginning
A line for coronavirus testing in Atlanta on July 6.Credit...Dustin Chambers for The New York Times
There was no widespread agreement among experts about what is likely to happen in the years after the pandemic. Some scientists expected a quick economic recovery; others thought the damage could persist for years.
Working at home will become more common, some predicted, while crowded, open-plan offices may be changed. The just-in-time supply chains on which many businesses depend will need fixing because the processes failed to deliver adequate protective gear, ventilators and test materials.
A disease-modeling system like that used by the National Weather Service to predict storms is needed, said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. Right now, the country has surveillance for seasonal flu but no national map tracking all disease outbreaks. As Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, a former C.D.C. director, recently pointed out, states are not even required to track the same data.
Several experts said they assumed that millions of Americans who have been left without health insurance or forced to line up at food banks would vote for politicians favoring universal health care, paid sick leave, greater income equality and other changes.
But given the country’s deep political divisions, no researcher was certain what the outcome of the coming election would be.
Dr. Redbird said her polling of Americans showed “little faith in institutions across the board — we’re not seeing an increase in trust in science or an appetite for universal health care or workers equity.”
The Trump administration did little to earn trust. More than six months into the worst health crisis in a century, Mr. Trump only last week urged Americans to wear masks and canceled the Republican convention in Florida, the kind of high-risk indoor event that states have been banning since mid-March.
Millions of Americans have lost their jobs and their health insurance, and are in danger of losing their homes, even as they find themselves in the path of a lethal disease. The Trump presidency “is the symptom of the denigration of science and the gutting of the public contract about what we owe each other as citizens,” said Dr. Joia S. Mukherjee, the chief medical officer of Partners in Health in Boston.
One lesson that will surely be learned is that the country needs to be better prepared for microbial assaults, said Dr. Julie Gerberding, a former director of the C.D.C.
“This is not a once-in-a-century event. It’s a harbinger of things to come.”
Social-distancing signage at Coney Island in Brooklyn in May.Credit...Brittainy Newman/The New York Times
Much of the U.S. presidential election battleground is now in the ‘red zone.’
The virus has been spreading rapidly in four of six key battleground states crucial to the presidential election in November — Arizona, Florida, North Carolina and Wisconsin. The states are among 21 recently declared to be in the “red zone” in a report by the federal government because of the substantial number of new virus cases reported there each day.
If the presumptive Democratic nominee and former vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., wins the states won by Hillary Clinton four years ago, many combinations of any three of six swing states would be enough to defeat Mr. Trump. In addition to the four swing states labeled “red zones,” the list includes Michigan and Pennsylvania, which have not seen major spikes in cases in recent weeks.
Already many states are revisiting their mail-in voting policies, so that voters will not have to go to polling stations and risk infection. The six swing states have either always allowed relatively easy mail-in voting or have recently made it easier. Currently, eight states allow mail-in or absentee ballots only with an approved excuse. The issue continues to be a point of contention between Democrats and Republicans.
Robert Redford with his Daisy, Mia Farrow, in 1974’s “The Great Gatsby.”Credit...Paramount Pictures, via Everett Collection
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Biden has long been defensive about suggestions of being dumb or a lightweight—a narrative that took hold during in his first campaign for the presidency, in 1988. As a kid, a teacher mocked him for his stutter (“Bu-bu-bu-bu-Biden,” she went, according to his 2007 memoir). “Other kids looked at me like I was stupid,” Biden wrote.
