Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

After the coronavirus, who wins the recovery?

We are living through a gruesome case study in the irrationality of elites. COVID-19 is a serious disease, but the question of just how serious it is has hardly even been posed correctly, let alone answered intelligently. Yet already our leaders have assumed dictatorial airs and enacted policies that threaten to plunge the Western world into an economic crisis unmatched since the Great Depression. Eighty days into 2020, the official worldwide death toll from the coronavirus stands at somewhat over 10,000 lives. That includes fatalities from the final months of 2019 as well, when Chinese authorities initially tried to disguise rather than treat the outbreak of the new disease. The world was utterly unprepared for the virus as it spread from Wuhan.

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How government should respond

Misdiagnosis can be fatal in a pandemic. Treating the economic effects of the global COVID-19 epidemic as a conventional recession means prescribing the wrong medicine and harming the patient. This is a supply-side recession, not a demand-side recession. The shortfall includes intensive care beds, ventilators, protective gear for healthcare workers, and other medical supplies. Thanks to these shortages, as well as insufficient trained medical personnel, hospitals may soon be overwhelmed everywhere by the demands for treatment of coronavirus victims. To slow the spread of the virus while augmenting existing medical supplies and personnel, governments are promoting social distancing and sheltering in place, both euphemisms for quarantine.

Why Tulsi backed Biden

Though neither her supporters and detractors wanted to hear it, Tulsi Gabbard was always clear that she would support the eventual Democratic nominee. Now, with the Democratic primary functionally over, she has endorsed the nominee — Joe Biden. It’s really as simple as that.Tulsi haters loved to invent wild theories about her supposedly sinister motivations, and were always either unwilling or incapable of just listening to her plain-spoken words. Over and over again, she said she would not run as a third-party candidate and would support the eventual nominee. Anyone surprised by her announcement today had no reason to be: it doesn’t contradict anything she’s said in the past; in fact,  it comports entirely with what she always said she would do.

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Vermin Supreme’s quest to win hearts, minds and the Libertarian primaries

Vermin Supreme has ‘been running for president for over 30 years’. His two most recent bids polled at third and fourth in the 2012 and 2016 New Hampshire Democratic primaries, respectively. But now, the boot-bonneted boomer is running to win.When I spoke to Supreme in January, he had just triumphed in New Hampshire’s Libertarian presidential primary. Now he’s runner-up in the LP’s primaries, with a chance to be on every American’s ballot come November.‘This is my first legitimate, actual, bona fide, real campaign,’ he said. ‘In the past, I ran as a Democrat and was not a Democrat, I ran as a Republican and was not a Republican. Right now, I am a Libertarian and seeking the Libertarian party nomination.

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Biden bus rolls over Bernie in Florida, Illinois and Arizona

Joe Biden is projected to win all three states that voted in the Democratic primary on Tuesday night, advancing his delegate lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders. Biden won Florida by a wide margin, garnering nearly 62 percent of the vote compared to Sanders’s 23 percent. Hillary Clinton defeated Sanders by a similar margin in 2016. Florida awards 219 delegates proportionally, putting Biden that much closer to the 1,991 delegates required to secure the nomination in the first round of voting at the Democratic National Convention. Poll workers in Florida noted lower turnout than usual due to fears over the coronavirus, a phenomenon that could have hurt Biden due to his popularity among older voters.

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The coronavirus is springing the Thucydides trap

The first casualty of informational war is truth. The first American casualty of COVID-19 was the myth that the United States can ‘manage’ the rise of China as a world power through mutual interest. That mutual interest was only ever economic. Naturally, most of our politicians, business leaders and commentators explained it as strategic too: as technocracy calls GDP the index of human happiness, so it identifies strategic interests with economic ones. The coronavirus crisis has, however, exposed an essential strategic antagonism between the United States and China.'‘What made war inevitable was the growth of Athenian power and the fear which this caused in Sparta,’ Thucydides wrote in History of the Peloponnesian War.

Coughing crotchety codgers at a dull DC coronavirus debate

Two gentlemen considered at 'high risk' of contracting COVID-19 met tonight in the Washington DC studio of CNN, to pitch themselves to an on-edge nation as the best alternative to Donald Trump. The Sunday night face-off between Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders was initially supposed to be in Phoenix, Arizona, as the state votes on Tuesday. But that was in The Before Time. Even the CNN panel was socially distanced before the debate, with panelists spaced six feet apart across two studios, as opposed to the usual eight people crammed behind the desk like a pack of hot dogs. This memo clearly didn't get sent down the hall to where the debate was being held, as Jake Tapper, Dana Bash and Univision's Ilia Calderón sat unhealthily close together.

Federal health agencies risk lives in their response to COVID-19

President Trump announced on Friday that the country is now in a state of emergency, due to the rapid pace of the COVID-19 novel coronavirus and its spread. Such a declaration escalates the federal government’s ability to respond to the virus, via the access of billions in funds that can be dispersed to state and local governments in need of additional financial assistance to accommodate robust public health responses. But the declaration was made too late. While we have the ability to contain this outbreak effectively with international coordination, the failures of the Trump administration to respond more quickly is troubling.

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What have we learned since the swine flu outbreak?

Donald Trump declared a national emergency on Friday over the spread of COVID-19, promising to dedicate $50 billion in funding for states to fight the virus. The order is the latest in a line of actions taken by the administration to try to stem the spread of the virus: major restrictions on travel from China and the European Union, convincing insurance companies to waive copayments on Coronavirus testing, and loosening FDA restrictions on testing, among others. 'We will overcome the threat of the virus,' President Trump said during a news conference in the White House Rose Garden.

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EXCLUSIVE: Karlie Kloss’s dad helps Jared with coronavirus ‘research’

Jared Kushner has a lot on his plate. The White House senior adviser was tasked this week with conducting research into the coronavirus to help Trump decide whether to declare a national emergency. According to Politico, Kushner is talking to 'relevant parties' and will 'present his findings to the president'. It appears that one of these 'relevant parties' is an emergency room doctor called Kurt Kloss, father of Jared's sister-in-law Karlie. And Dr Kloss sought the advice of other medical professionals on Kushner's behalf...in a Facebook group with almost 22,000 members. 'If you were in charge of Federal response to the Pandemic what would your recommendation be,' Kloss wrote in the private group Wednesday, according to screenshots passed to The Spectator.

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COVID-19 is terrifying — as a weapon of political propaganda

The president delivered an address last night about the Wuhan flu, aka novel coronavirus, aka (if you want to sound scary/scientific 'COVID-19'). The speech was brief, but to the point. It outlined a number of practical steps that the administration has taken, and would be taking, to slow the spread of the disease, help those who contract it, and — just as important—rescue the market from the panic that has surrounded this malady. The wretched Jim Acosta, court jester on CNN, complained about Trump calling the virus ‘foreign’ and his identifying the source of the virus as China. That was 'smacking of xenophobia' said the babbling head.

Trump cannot defeat a virus

There are no atheists in foxholes, and no libertarians in a pandemic. As the spread of the COVID-19 virus in the United States starts to resemble the exponential outbreaks in countries where the pandemic is more advanced, the American public wants the kind of security that only government can provide. Donald Trump was elected to provide security, whether from the domestic challenge of outsourcing or the foreign challenge of a rising China. In recent days, he has failed in judgment, in leadership and in decision-making. Only after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic did he address the nation and announce the closure of America’s borders.

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Coronavirus’s biggest victim? Money

The first victim of war, they say, is truth. The first victim of coronavirus, by contrast, is fiscal discipline. Yesterday, President Trump started negotiating with the Senate over a proposal to suspend payroll taxes, possibly until the end of the year. Wall Street certainly liked it: markets shot up by five percent. Whether future Americans will enjoy paying the bill is another matter. The government’s proposal is not just targeted help for a few industries like travel and tourism, which stand to lose out heavily as people stay at home. It is not a modest tax cut to encourage Americans to go out and spend a little more. Even to call it a 'stimulus package' — as these things are pat to be called — seems pathetically inadequate.

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Matt Gaetz calls from self-quarantine

Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida has one day remaining in his self-quarantine after learning he came into contact with an individual who had coronavirus at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland at the end of February. Gaetz spoke to The Spectator over the phone from his condo in Florida about the events leading up to his quarantine and how he's trying to stay productive during his lockdown. 'I’m on calls with my staff, I’m doing a radio interview a little bit later, I think I might be doing a phone interview on television a little bit later, so I’m doing all the things I would normally do, just from my house,' Gaetz said when asked about how his work schedule may have changed because of the quarantine.

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The circular failing Squad

The history of socialism being one of high hopes and rude repudiations, everyone could see that Bernie Sanders was about to bounce off the Blue Wall in Michigan’s Democratic primaries. Everyone, that is, except for the Bernie faithful. The high hopes of socialism are, historically speaking, little more than the sentiments of the Gospels applied to political economy. As politics go, socialism begins in articles of faith and ends in them. But faith is impervious to reason, just as voters are impervious to the more stringent forms of socialism and hence have to have it forced upon them for their own collective good.Which means we are stuck with Bernie’s followers after their aging shaman has tottered off the stage.

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Nation’s sick game of elder abuse intensifies

Despite telling a Michigan auto worker to his face that he was ‘full of shit’ about gun rights and lampooning some weapon called an AR-14 (which is an assault rifle used by fake country the Republic of Surea and not the beloved, American semi-automatic sporting rifle, the AR-15) earlier Tuesday while campaigning, Joe Biden soared ahead in the Democratic primaries against Bernie Sanders in states Sanders swept from under Hillary Clinton in 2016. Michigan, and Biden’s victory there, is perhaps the only interesting primary story we'll see this election cycle and reveals more about the 2016 election than it does 2020.

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Biden is the comeback kid — but is he ready for Trump?

Former vice president Joe Biden had an impressive showing on ‘Mini Tuesday’, crushing the delegate count and potentially sticking the fork in Sen. Bernie Sanders’s faltering campaign, but Biden’s sudden primary victories belie major concerns about his ability to translate that success into a general election. Biden pulled in two quick victories in Mississippi and Missouri, which signaled big trouble for Sanders since he lost Missouri by less than half a percentage point against Hillary Clinton in 2016. Biden continued his sweep by taking Michigan, the biggest prize of the night and a state in which the Democratic socialist pulled off an upset victory in the last election.

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It’s time to take Joe Biden seriously

Everybody knows that Joe Biden’s mental health is a concern. We all understand that he is not the Democratic party’s ideal candidate. We appreciate that his nomination could leave a huge numbers of anti-Trump voters feeling apathetic. But tonight’s results suggest it is time to consider something else: Joe Biden may be quite a formidable presidential candidate in 2020. Biden has won in Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. He can win across America. It’s not just that the establishment has quickly rallied behind him. It’s not just that the African American vote seems to be solidly in his favor — although his numbers tonight suggest his appeal to black voters is extraordinary.

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Impeachment: the verdict of history

This article is in The Spectator’s March 2020 US edition. Subscribe here.Spring term, 2170. Professor Hankins assigns an English translation from the 22nd century’s most authoritative historical survey, The Beijing Universal History. This week’s course reading is from Volume VIII: The Far Western Hemisphere — North Central American Province. Chapter 33 The Era of Impeachment, 2020-52 At this time the North Central American province was still independent and under the system of governance known as ‘liberal democracy’, described in Chapter 29.