OCTOBER 2020: “HISTORY CHOOSES US”

10.31 Sean Connery dies at 90.

10.30 Early voting. Let’s go, Joe

10.30 Anthony Fauci, in an interview with The Washington Post: “We’re in for a whole lot of hurt. It’s not a good situation. All the stars are aligned in the wrong place as you go into the fall and winter season, with people congregating at home indoors. You could not possibly be positioned more poorly.”

10.29 Bill Jackson dies at 95.

10.28 Axios: Republicans, win or lose next week, face a big — and growing — math problem. They’re relying almost exclusively on a shrinking demographic (white men), living in shrinking areas (small, rural towns), creating a reliance on people with shrinking incomes (white workers without college degrees) to survive. Why it matters: You can’t win elections without diversity, bigger population centers and sufficient money.   Flashback: Pre-Trump, the GOP acknowledged all this. Then-RNC Chair Reince Priebus said in his “autopsy” after Mitt Romney’s loss in 2012: “We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them, too. We must recruit more candidates who come from minority communities.”What’s happening: Trump threw that out and realigned the GOP base away from suburbs and wealth, and toward working-class whites in small towns. Republicans have hemorrhaged support among suburban women during the Trump years. Now, the GOP even struggles in exurbs. Trump’s plaintive pleas to these vital voters have become a 2020 punchline. “Suburban women, you’re going to love me. You better love me,” Trump said last night in West Salem, Wis. Another GOP drain: Voters are no longer following the traditional pattern of getting more conservative as they age. In what Axios demographic expert Stef Kight calls the “liberal youth revolution,” millennials and Gen Z stick with the Democratic Party as they move through adulthood.

10.27 The Dodgers defeat the Rays 2-1, win the World Series 4 games to 2. Rays’ analytics-driven manager Kevin Cash may have made the worst decision in World Series history by deciding to remove starter Blake Snell after he yielded a single with one out in the sixth with the Rays ahead 1-0. To that point, Snell had thrown only 73 pitches, struck out nine, had given up two measly singles and hadn’t walked anyone. Cash says he didn’t want Snell to face the heart of the Dodgers line-up a third time, even though Snell had struck out the three hitters twice each.

10.27 Jimmy Orr dies at 85.

10.27 Trump: “Women, suburban or otherwise, they want security, they want security, they want safety. They want law and order. . . .You know what else? I’m also getting your husbands ― they wanna get back to work. … We’re getting your husbands back to work.”

10.26 James Hohmann in the Washington Post: Republican presidents have appointed 15 of the most recent 19 justices, including six of the current nine. That is all the more remarkable when you consider that the Republican candidate for president has only won the national popular vote once since 1988: George W. Bush’s 2004 reelection. And Republican senators have only represented a majority of the American population for one Congress in the last three decades. With Barrett joining Justices Brett Kavanaugh and John Roberts, three of the nine justices worked for Bush on Bush v. Gore. A fourth, Neil Gorsuch, volunteered as a lawyer for Bush’s reelection campaign. A fifth, Sam Alito, was appointed by Bush to the high court. A sixth, Thomas, was appointed by George H.W. Bush.

10.26 Amy Coney Barrett sworn in as Justice of the Supreme Court

10.25 Mark Meadows on CNN: “We’re not going to control the pandemic. We are going to control the fact that we get vaccines, therapeutics and other mitigation areas. . . Because it is a contagious virus, just like the flu

10.23 Paul Waldman in The Washington Post: If it were any other candidate, his party would be trying desperately to figure out whether it could replace him on the ticket, because someone so unhinged could only lead it to disaster. But because it’s Trump, everyone says, “Gee, he did pretty well!”

10.23 David Brooks in the Times: Over the last 100 years, Americans have engaged in a long debate about the role of markets and the welfare state. Republicans favored a limited government, fearing that a large nanny state would sap American dynamism and erode personal freedom. Democrats favored a larger state, arguing that giving people basic economic security would enable them to take more risks and lead dignified lives. That debate ebbed and flowed over the years, but 2020 has turned out to be a pivotal year in the struggle, and it looks now as if we can declare a winner. The Democrats won the big argument of the 20th century. It’s not that everybody has become a Democrat, but even many Republicans are now embracing basic Democratic assumptions. Americans across the board fear economic and physical insecurity more than an overweening state. The era of big government is here.

10.21 George Will in the Washington Post: The GOP’s desire — demonstrated in myriad measures in many states — for low voter turnout is prudent: As the nation becomes more urban, suburban, diverse and secular, the Republican Party becomes more fixated on rural and small-town White voters. Thirty-six percent of Americans lived in rural areas in 1950; in 1990, 25 percent did; today, 17.5 percent do. Now, the rural population, 60 million, is about what it was in 1945. Since then, the urban population has almost tripled. Analyst Charlie Cook asks: “In 2016, 87 percent of Trump’s vote came from whites. For congressional Republicans in the 2018 midterms, it was 86 percent. Is this sustainable?” You have to admire Republicans’ jaunty, if suicidal, wager that it is.

10.21 Lawyers tasked with identifying and reuniting families separated in 2017 and 2018 under the Trump administration’s so-called “zero tolerance” border policy say they still haven’t been able to locate the parents of at least 545 migrant children, according to a Tuesday court filing from the American Civil Liberties Union. “Approximately two-thirds,” the filing said — are believed to have been deported to Central America without their children, some of whom were “just babies” at the time of the separation.

10.21 Frank Luntz: “I’ve never seen a campaign more miscalibrated than the Trump campaign. Frankly, his staff ought to be brought up on charges of political malpractice. It is the worst campaign I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been watching them since 1980. They’re on the wrong issues. They’re on the wrong message. They’ve got their heads up their asses. Your damn job is to get your candidate to talk about things that are relevant to the people you need to reach. And if you can’t do your damn job then get out.. . . Nobody cares about Hunter Biden.”.

10.21 Obama: “Donald Trump isn’t going to suddenly protect all of us. He can’t even take the basic steps to protect himself.”

10.21 Rudy Giuliani, New York City’s former mayor and President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, was caught on camera appearing to touch his genitals in front of a woman he believed was a journalist, but was actually an actor involved in the sequel to Sacha Baron Cohen’s movie “Borat.”. . . Soon afterward, Baron Cohen, playing Borat, bursts into the room and says, “She’s 15, she’s too old for you!” (Bakalova is 24 years old).

10.20 In Game One of the World Series played in Arlington TX, the Dodgers beat the Rays 8-2. MLB allowed about 28% of capacity in the 40,518-seat Globe Life Field to be  used. The crowd was widely dispersed and the roof was open. The official attendance of 11,388 was the smallest for the Series since 1909, when 10,535 attended Game 6 between the Pirates and Tigers at Detroit’s Bennett Park.

10.20 The Lincoln Project: “None of us can choose history. History chooses us. If you ever wondered what side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge you would have stood on, this is your chance to choose. Those who went before faced dogs and fire hoses, and yet they did not flinch. In war and peace, Americans have displayed unparalleled courage in the face of evil and injustice. It doesn’t take courage to stand up to Trump; it takes courage to stand up for your country. That is the legacy we inherited and are called to defend. That is the choice. America or Trump? Now is the time to stand with the country you love.”

10.19 Paul Krugman in the Times: The need for big spending will not, however, end with the pandemic. We also need to invest in our future. After years of public underspending, America desperately needs to upgrade its infrastructure. In particular, we should be investing heavily in the transition to an environmentally sustainable economy. And we should also do much more to help children grow up to be healthy, productive adults; America spends shamefully little on aid to families compared with other wealthy countries.

10.15 Washington Post: U.S. intelligence agencies warned the White House last year that President Trump’s personal lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani was the target of an influence operation by Russian intelligence.

10.15 Washington Post: Today we are experiencing a recovery that William Galston has called “the most unequal in modern history.” There are now more jobs for the top quarter of earners than before the covid-19 crisis. For the bottom quarter, jobs have dropped by more than 20 percent. 

10.15 Graeme Wood in The Atlantic: What if Trump does not concede—and he continues not to concede, even as he packs his suitcases, swipes some White House–branded complimentary toiletries, and walks onto the South Lawn and into Marine One and waves farewell to the presidency? I think this scenario is in fact the most likely one, if Trump loses the election. And it may even be his preferred scenario, better than an outright victory (which would require another four years of onerous employment), better than  showing up on Inauguration Day and having to duel Joe Biden for the right to be sworn in. As for the prospect of civil war: Trump is a coward, and all evidence suggests that he would run from the responsibility, even more burdensome than normal service as president, of overseeing the violent fracture of America. A civil war sounds like a lot of work. The easiest path is also the most lucrative. Get on Marine One, protesting all the way, and spend the rest of your days fleecing the 40 percent of Americans who still think you are the Messiah, and who will watch you on cable news, spend their money on whatever hypoallergenic pillow you endorse, and come to see you whenever you visit their town.

10.13 Trump in Pennsylvania: “Suburban women, would you please like me? Please. Please. I saved your damn neighborhood, OK?”

10.11 Lakers win NBA championship; fourth for Lebron James

10.11 Joe Morgan dies at 77

10.9 Whitey Ford dies at 91

10.8 Michele Norris in the Washington Post: Vice President Pence wasn’t following the rules — not about timing, not about interrupting — during Wednesday’s debate. Moderator Susan Page’s efforts at polite shushing, uttering repeated “thank you’s,” was about as effective as a cafeteria monitor trying to halt a food fight. It fell to Harris to remind the vice president, “I’m speaking” — something he already knew but chose to ignore. If Harris had raised her voice in those moments, she would have been labeled shrill. If she had frowned, she would have been labeled a scold. If she had raised a hand, she would have been called angry or even unhinged. So she smiled as she held her ground — and of course they called it a smirk, a grin that by definition comes off as irritating or smug. But it was more than that. Harris gave Pence “The Look” — and you don’t have to look up that phrase to know exactly what I mean. Black women have elevated the “Mama don’t take no mess” expression to a form of high art — a narrowing of the eye, a lift of the eyebrow, a tilt of the head. Sometimes there is a sideways arch of the neck, a molasses-slow movement of the jaw that says, without speaking, “You’ve got exactly 10 seconds to pick up your feet and run for the hills.” Some of this is the stuff of caricature. The kind of thing that leads Black women to be called sassy, volatile, aggressive or angry. All of that is an effort to dismiss or demean. But that attempted erasure is the very reason Black women — indeed, most women — have some version of The Look in their arsenal.

10.7 David Frum in The Atlantic: We saw a weird moment when a fly landed on Pence’s snow-white hair—and the vice president did not react at all. No doubt, it’s a conundrum, what to do in such a situation. If Pence had shooed the fly and the fly had refused to shoo, that would have been bad. So he did nothing. And that doing nothing somehow in one powerful visual moment concentrated everything. It symbolized the whole Pence vice presidency, the determined, willful refusal to acknowledge the most blaring and glaring negative realities.

10.7 After a lackluster vice presidential debate, Trump blasted Kamala Harris: “This monster that was onstage with Mike Pence, who destroyed her last night, by the way. This monster, she says, ‘no no, there won’t be fracking,’ there won’t be this. Everything she said is a lie.”

10.7 Trump calls off stimulus talks. “There’s no strategy here. Trump just kicked over the chess board and committed political [suicide] in front of all of us,” said J.W. Verret, former chief economist and senior counsel to the House Financial Services Committee.

10.7 Spike Lee, in n interview in Variety: “I got to give it up to Cuomo. I think he did a great job because it easily could’ve gone the other way. I remember all those movies — “Death Wish” and “Escape From New York” — it was full of drug addicts and prostitutes and dope dealers and muggers. And then, later, I remember the summer of ’77, the blackout, 9/11. New York was dead. And they’re running that same narrative. New York has always gone through hard times and rebounded, so I’m not buying that. But here’s the thing — it was the Black and Brown people of New York City that kept this motherf—er going. And we saw it [with] MTA buses, the subway, hospital workers, cops, firemen, nurses, first responders. And also, we paid the price. We didn’t have a choice. We had to work. A lot of these people, I think, wanted to work. They wanted to help. And then, we suffered the most because of the condition we live in. We’re just not healthy. We don’t have the health services that other people have. I don’t think you have to be a medical Einstein to see that we over-index Black and Brown people: hypertension, obesity, we can go down the line.”

10.6 The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other top Pentagon officials are quarantining after being exposed to the virus.

10.6 Katie Shepherd in the Washington Post: Shortly after being discharged from the hospital treating him for the novel coronavirus, President Trump on Monday climbed onto a White House balcony — and then peeled off his mask to salute Marine One as it flew away. After waving, Trump turned to go inside, still maskless. Following a weekend ofmounting horror among medical professionals and commentators fretting over Trump’s handling of his own infection, his actions Monday — particularly removing his mask and walking into a room frequented by White House staff — left them worried and frustrated yet again. “What White House staffer would still wanna go to work tomorrow???” Eric Feigl-Ding, an epidemiologist and health economist with the Federation of American Scientists, said in a tweet Monday night. “Epidemiologists just wanna vomit.”

10.5 A CDC Web page:  “There is evidence that under certain conditions, people with COVID-19 seem to have infected others who were more than six feet away.  These transmissions occurred within enclosed spaces that had inadequate ventilation. Sometimes the infected person was breathing heavily, for example while singing or exercising. . . .Under these circumstances, scientists believe that the amount of infectious smaller droplet and particles produced by the people with COVID-19 became concentrated enough to spread the virus to other people. The people who were infected were in the same space during the same time or shortly after the person with COVID-19 had left.” 

10.5 Trump leaves Walter Reed Hospital.  “Don’t be afraid of Covid. Don’t let it dominate your life,”

10.5 Dana Milbank in the Washington Post: Americans of all political stripes wished President Trump well in his battle with covid-19. Now he is repaying our compassion with reckless disregard and callous contempt for the well-being of anybody but himself. . . .A more selfish man has never occupied his high office. He received a cutting-edge treatment, monoclonal antibodies, unavailable to virtually all other Americans. He received an antiviral, remdesivir, that is rationed for ordinary Americans. He required oxygen and steroids. Yet Trump has the audacity to tell Americans the virus is no biggie. No doubt the families of the 209,000 dead are greatly reassured.

10.4 Pope Francis, in an encyclical entitled Fratelli Tutti (Brothers All) denounced the “magic theories” of market capitalism of “as the only solution to societal problems.” “There is little appreciation of the fact that the alleged ‘spillover’ does not resolve the inequality that gives rise to new forms of violence threatening the fabric of society,” the pope said. “There were those who would have had us believe that freedom of the market was sufficient to keep everything secure (after the pandemic hit). . . .The fragility of world systems in the face of the pandemic has demonstrated that not everything can be resolved by market freedom.” “It is imperative to have a proactive economic policy directed at ‘promoting an economy that favors productive diversity and business creativity’ and makes it possible for jobs to be created, not cut.” The pope also restated the past calls for the redistribution of wealth, saying those with much should “administer it for the good of all.” But he clarified that he was “not proposing an authoritarian and abstract universalism.” He hoped the global coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 1 million people worldwide, would inspire a reassessement of global priorities. “Once this health crisis passes, our worst response would be to plunge even more deeply into feverish consumerism and new forms of egotistic self-preservation.”

10.3 List of covid-positive Republicans swells to include Chris Christie, Mike Lee, Ron Johnson, Tom Tillis, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway

10.2 Trump announces that he has tested positive for covid. Melania as well. Trump enters Walter Reed Hospital.