Mitch McConnell, Master of Partisanship

Posted on April 23, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 23, 2020

Oscar Wilde said that Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life. Judging by our country’s response to the COVID-19 virus, he was wrong. Consider the way Hollywood has treated pandemics. There have been at least twenty big screen treatments of the subject since the 1950s. They basically fall into two categories: those in which most of the human race is turned into zombies, and those that focus on fighting the pandemic before it kills everyone.

The second group consistently focuses on the scientists who are desperately working to find a cure. There is always an element of politics and there are usually a few corrupt or incompetent leaders who don’t get the message, but generally Hollywood makes the reasonable assumption that desperate times will unite us. Whether it’s alien invasions, rogue asteroids, or mysterious illnesses, the movies assure us that our survival depends on a united response led by science.

It’s unfortunate that Trump and his political advisors spend their time watching Fox News instead of those movies. Public health experts and epidemiologists have had to fight every day to keep the country on track to mitigate the effects of the virus. It’s been an ugly spectacle with many wasted weeks that could have saved lives, but so far, the scientists have prevailed.  And we have seen unity where it was most important, among our state governors.

Life struggled to imitate art these last few months, but it is about to encounter it’s most difficult obstacle. Now that the battle over health policy is largely resolved, we face an even more insidious if less deadly enemy. The enemy is unrelenting partisanship. It’s face is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. No other politician has so consistently devoted his career to trashing the opposition, and what’s best for the nation be damned.

He famously announced on Barrack Obama’s first day in office, in 2009, that his job was to assure that Obama would fail as president. His sole mission has been to increase the number and power of red states and diminish the blue ones. Now he has expanded that fight to include federal financial aid in response to the pandemic.

McConnell is betting that he can control how emergency funding flows to the states. He had to cave to Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats to pass the $2.2 trillion aid package under the force of public opinion, but he’s back trying it again.

It’s neither a secret nor a mystery that blue states have more financial challenges than red ones. Financial problems and budget shortfalls are almost synonymous with large urban areas. With the exception of Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, and Atlanta, seventeen of the twenty largest metropolitan areas in the United States are in blue states (12) and purple states (5).

McConnell’s new ploy is to make sure red states come out of the pandemic as whole as possible while impoverishing, and therefore, weakening the blue states. This is unabashed partisanship of the worst kind. It’s pure unfiltered politics, waging the fight the Tea Party began in 2009, not coincidentally, the same year McConnell declared total war against Democrats to the exclusion of everything else.

In life as opposed to art, it happens this way all too often. Pandemics, natural disasters, and economic collapses all have one thing in common. No matter how bad things are for the mass of people, there are always some who profit. For some it’s being in the right place at the right time and possessing skills that are in short supply. For others, it’s the result of predatory planning and scheming, waiting for an opportunity to pounce.

Big cities and populous states have enormous financial and budgetary commitments. The ability to support teachers, police, firefighters, state and local governments, and public health facilities all depend on state budgets, and one of the mostly costly items those states have is pension systems. Those are the things McConnell is attacking out of pure political spite. Yesterday, he said he’d rather see states declare bankruptcy than bail them out. That’s not only evil and selfish, it’s also hypocritical.

 Our major cities are the financial engines that make our country go. The entire nation benefits from their productivity, but it’s largely left to the individual states and cities to fund themselves. Where states are helped by federal aid, the distribution is extremely uneven. New York Governor Cuomo addressed the disparity today. He pointed out that New York contributes $116 billion more to the federal treasury than it receives in federal aid, while McConnell’s deep red Kentucky receives $148 billion more in federal aid than it contributes.

McConnell said there’s no way he’ll support bailing out blue states. Cuomo asked, “Who’s bailing out who?”

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Playing One on TV Doesn’t Make You a Real President

Posted on April 22, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 22, 2020

That’s what Trump biographer Michael d’Antonio implied in his op-ed today. It sounds like an attempt at dark humor, but the more you think about it the more profound it seems.

Look at the evidence. Tune in to Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings and read his tweets, and compare them, for example, with what we see and hear from our governors. Have you heard a single governor, regardless of his or her politics mention TV ratings? Does Trump make you cringe when he shows more emotion about how many people are watching him than discussing tens of thousands of Americans living on ventilators and dying? Do you wonder if it occurs to him to ask how many of the people tuning in to his briefings are infuriated by them? It makes me think about people lying injured after a car crash counting how many rubberneckers slow down to see the carnage.

Every day, every governor I watch provides information (facts) and offers support and compassion to frightened citizens, eschewing politics. Every Trump briefing comes off like a campaign rally. Governors every day take personal responsibility for their decisions and accept dissent and protest with equanimity. Trump uses every briefing to deflect blame,  explicitly refusing to accept personal responsibility for anything, instead claiming credit for the successes of everyone else and continually throwing personal tantrums at anyone who attempts to hold him accountable.

This week, Trump expanded his campaign of creating chaos to distract Americans from his mismanagement of the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. On successive days he tweeted that he was suspending immigration into the United States and ordering naval commanders to fire on and destroy Iranian vessels that harass American ships. That sounds like his promises to destroy NBC News, CBS News, and CNN for harassing him with questions about his own lies and contradictions, in other words, for doing their jobs responsibly – except that the potential consequences are far more serious.

The tweets were attempts to recharge his flagging base, obvious signs of desperation as even our delusional president must accept the implications of his falling approval numbers. A master at using his bully pulpit for his own personal benefit, it never occurs to him to use it to promote the welfare of all Americans. And that’s tragic, because the single thing Donald Trump excels at is rallying an audience. Just imagine if he used that talent the way Franklin Roosevelt did.

D’Antonio, who interviewed Trump extensively for his biography tells us that Trump’s idol early in life was quintessential talk show host, Johnny Carson. Trump wanted, more than anything else to be a television star. As president he can be one just by decreeing it. The COVID-19 pandemic gives him access to hundreds of hours of network television time. He loves the briefings, even when reporters’ questions infuriate him. It’s a classic Trump M. O., setting up enemies and straw men to cast him in the role of a beleaguered victim. When he lashes out, devoid of decency and respect for truth, he’s telling his base of angry people in search of scapegoats – See? I’m just like you, always being victimized by liberals and leftists.

What better scapegoats than immigrants and the Shiite Muslim leaders of Iran? Trump has already convinced his base that immigrants want only to steal their jobs and rape their daughters. And Iranian leadership has frequently advocated death to America and Israel. What wonderful foils for Trump’s hate-mongering and divisiveness. But immigration has nothing to do with Trump’s failed response to the pandemic or the harm he does when he undermines his own medical experts. And no one believes Iran is suddenly so great a threat to our national security that it justifies a shoot and destroy order.

Becoming president enabled Donald Trump to achieve his lifelong dream of being a television star, but even in that he’s cheating. Most television personalities have to earn their ratings through either public acclaim or increasing sales for sponsors. As president, all he has to do is step out of the White House into a crowd of reporters. He understands media frenzy, and it makes no difference whether the noise they make is adulation or criticism.

At the end of a long, stressful day of following lockdown rules, when my wife and I turn on our television, the last thing we want to see is another Trump clown show. We’re thankful to the networks who draw a line between presidential news and campaigning. To quote Michael d’Antonio, “Right now, the American people need an actual president. Not someone who just plays one on TV.”

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Inciting Insurrection

Posted on April 19, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 19, 2020

insurrection

In a well-ordered universe, a U. S. President inciting insurrection would be grounds for removal under the twenty-fifth amendment. Anyone else who posted those tweets would be guilty of both federal and state felonies.

The internet has blown up with shock and horror over them, but sometimes understatement speaks loudest. The response I liked best was my son’s: “I’m no virologist, but encouraging civil unrest during a pandemic seems ill-advised.” Unless, of course, you look at it from the point of view of a mentally disturbed narcissist desperate to cling to power.

In obvious knee-jerk responses by Trump’s base, second amendment protests erupted all over the country. They were mostly in states with Democratic governors, but there was one in Annapolis, home of Republican Maryland Governor Larry Hogan. Hogan, who also serves as the Chair of the National Governor’s Association has consistently ignored or refuted the Trump administration’s misguided approach to managing the spread of the virus.

The Second Amendment tweets are a clear signal that Trump has pulled out all the stops in a re-election campaign dealing with approval ratings in the low forties and a clear message sent by two-thirds of the electorate that Americans are unhappy with his response to the pandemic. It’s classic Trump, creating confusion and chaos to divert attention from his leadership failures as president.

But it’s worse than that. Many fear that he might react to losing the next election by calling right-wing extremists to arms and refusing to leave office. Several of his actions as president have been reckless, but now he’s willing to risk elevating the divisiveness he has cultivated into full blown insurrection.

The Louisville Courier Journal reported that soon after Trump’s tweets hit the internet, death threats against Kentucky’s Democratic Governor Andy Beshear by gun rights activists began appearing on Facebook, asserting that: “…the Constitution protects us and gives us the authority to eliminate him by any means necessary via the Second Amendment.” Even in deeply red Kentucky, there was immediate bipartisan condemnation of these threats by state lawmakers, although Mitch McConnell, the leading Republican in the state hasn’t seen fit to comment. There’s no way to spin this. The Facebook posts encourage the assassination of a duly elected governor, with an indisputable connection to the president’s tweets.

As despicable as using the Second Amendment to stir up his base is, it’s not only disruptive to states’ efforts to limit the spread of the pandemic, it’s a dangerous misinterpretation of the Amendment. The notion that the Second Amendment was intended to allow citizens to take up arms against governors and other state officials is absurd. The Second Amendment empowered states to raise militias comprised of armed citizens because the Founders feared attempts by the federal government to exercise power over the states not granted to it by the Constitution. Period.

Boston College historian Heather Cox Richardson, who authors a very-worth-reading daily newsletter (heathercoxrichardson.substack.com) makes a convincing case that stirring up gun rights advocates is simply part of a joint campaign by Trump and the aforementioned Mitch McConnell to retain power after 2020. She notes, for example that three Fox News hosts (Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro, and Laura Ingraham) all cheered on the protests against Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. It’s no coincidence that Trump won Michigan by a whisker in 2016, and he can’t win in 2020 without that state in his column.

Richardson also reported that four of the top five donors to Senator McConnell are Fox News Executives. She sees all of this as part of a decades long attempt by right wing Republicans to suppress liberals, with Fox News as a major collaborator and enabler. Anyone who doubts that should have a look at the Showtime series, The Loudest Voice. It’s chilling to watch Russell Crowe portray Roger Ailes, the prime mover behind both Fox News and Trumpism.

Professor Richardson is too responsible an academic to wonder what else Trump might be willing to do to stay in office, but I’m under no such inhibition. I believe Trump is more than willing to have armed conflict erupt in the battleground states, dangerous as that is. What better scenario than to be able to point to open insurrection for the declaration of martial law?

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, whose autocratic style has been praised by Trump, may have given us a window into our own future on Friday, when he said his country’s national elections might have to be postponed because of COVID-19. As Fall approaches, if Trump’s numbers continue to slide, don’t be surprised if he tries the same thing. It would trigger a constitutional crisis, but that wouldn’t stop him. The good news is that with John Roberts as Chief Justice, Trump will lose that fight.

 

 

 

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Wrongheaded Leadership

Posted on April 16, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 16, 2020

There is much about the COVID-19 pandemic that defies reason and makes us feel like the world is spinning out of control. That’s serious because in a crisis, one of the things we most need is to believe that we are in control of our fate. At such times, most people look to experts for reassurance and a sense of what the future holds.

In the case of the current pandemic, those experts are medical professionals, statistical modelers, and economists. There are literally thousands of such people working around the clock to get a handle on the virus and its impact. While they don’t all agree, each study or analysis, the forecasts of the various models, and the conclusions of researchers narrows the scope of our uncertainty. No one can tell us with confidence how or how fast the virus spreads, which drugs can be used to treat it, or how long it will be before we have a vaccine.

Every week we learn more, as scientists, mathematicians, and front line medical professionals discard bad ideas and failed experiments using sound research and analysis. The good news is that all of their findings point in the same direction. The only way to control the spread of COVID-19 until there is a vaccine available for everyone is distancing for those who are not infected and isolation for those who are. But despite the nearly unanimous consensus of the people we should be listening to, there remains an almost unfathomable disconnect among our leaders.

The debate between people who worry that a declining economy must be fixed to avoid a catastrophe like the Great Depression and those who believe that our first priority should be saving lives and averting the collapse of our health care system is legitimate. Both are serious issues that must be dealt with. The disconnect occurs when raw politics rears its ugly head.

It’s difficult enough to formulate policies when the only objectives are protecting the lives and health of our people, and preventing economic disaster. Politics corrupts the process, because its goals are narrow, venal, and selfish. There are many people with the financial means to do so who are all too willing to pounce like predators on a system struggling to survive for their own benefit. In normal times we refer to them in benign terms like “special interests.” In times like the ones in which we’re currently living, we call them what they really are – vultures who will do whatever is necessary to achieve their ends without regard for anyone else.

The only way we can protect ourselves from them is with integrity of purpose and strong, effective central leadership. That means President Trump. While many aspects of the fight against the pandemic are difficult to understand, Trump’s failures are not. The problem with his lack of leadership is what most of us who were distressed by his election worried about from the start. His extreme narcissism impedes his ability to feel compassion. Compassion means sensitivity to other people’s pain, suffering, and loss, completely separate from our individual desires and needs. Even many of Trump’s political allies acknowledge that he lacks that quality.

That’s why when people like Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx explain the reality of the virus to him, he virtually has to be beaten over the head to understand the human impact of getting back to business as usual prematurely. He is always the last person on board with sound policy decisions, and at every critical point his delays worsen the situation. His focus on himself and his need for adoration are always at the forefront, whether it’s claiming credit for everything, worrying about his television ratings, or desperately deflecting blame to everyone else. It’s also the reason that when governors, mayors, epidemiologists, and the people trying to save lives with inadequate supplies and equipment disagree with him, he demonizes them and complains that the mythical deep state is still out to get him.

Trump’s approach to managing the pandemic is entirely wrongheaded. And despite the feedback he’s getting from business leaders that massive nationwide testing must precede ending distancing restrictions, it’s made worse when sycophants and other politicians like Florida Governor Ron deSantis, who are beholden to him for campaign funds, bolster his wrongness. It’s why conservative super-PACs like the Liberty Project have endorsed Joe Biden, arguing that Trump must be defeated in November for the good of the nation.

His other flaws aside, Trump simply cannot be depended on in a crisis, not because he’s evil, but because he is incapable. It’s never been clearer that he lacks the tools and qualities necessary for leadership.

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The Tenth Amendment

Posted on April 14, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 14, 2020

Yesterday, in the midst of an internationally televised pandemic briefing, which was actually more of a tantrum/meltdown that was as embarrassing as it was lacking in facts, President Donald Trump declared that, “The President calls the shots,” and that he has complete authority to order states to resume business as usual whenever he sees fit. He must be taking his cues from Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping again, trapped in an alternate reality in which the American president has unlimited power. The problem with those assertions is that thing we call the Constitution, which most Americans take seriously, but which Trump regularly ignores and disdains.

I spent several years interpreting federal statutes and regulations, lamenting at their often obscure, difficult to decipher wording. The Constitution, however, is quite clear and direct on most issues. One of the clearest, easiest to read sections is Amendment 10 of the Bill of Rights:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

It looks pretty simple to me. The “United States” in this context means the federal government, which could imply the Congress or the President, or both. But what is crystal clear is the distinction between the authority of the President and State Governors. That’s not to say that clever attorneys won’t spend months attempting to argue alternate interpretations before various courts, but let’s be serious. The two most central and contentious subjects addressed by the Founders in our Constitution were distinguishing between a monarchy and a republic, (that is, between a king and an elected president,) and drawing a clear line of separation of powers between the federal government and the individual states.

The State Compacts that were recently announced to assure an orderly return to business as usual when the coronavirus has receded to safe levels, strengthened today by the addition of Massachusetts’ Republican governor, are an unsubtle gauntlet that challenges the President’s authority to force his will on them. When asked how he would respond if the President ordered him to suspend pandemic related restrictions, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said that if he thought the order endangered his citizens he would refuse it. There’s little doubt that every governor in the compacts, as well as those in other states currently seeing spikes in their coronavirus caseloads (Michigan, Illinois, Ohio, and Louisiana to name a few) would all defy such a presidential order.

I turned to the Constitution Center for a better understanding of the Tenth Amendment. Their analysis points out that the original 1788 version of the Constitution did not contain a bill of rights because the drafters voted unanimously that it was unnecessary. There was a tacit understanding that the federal government was authorized to execute only the powers it was explicitly granted by Article 2, which makes the President Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces but grants him or her no policy-making authority that would supersede the power of either the Congress or the individual States. That’s in direct opposition to the position consistently asserted by President Trump, namely, that he is entitled to do anything not expressly forbidden by the Constitution. That’s like the difference between “innocent until proven guilty” and “guilty until proven innocent.”

There is no doubt that if Trump attempts to force a relaxation of public health guidelines at a time when the majority of governors believe that would threaten the health and lives of their people, they will defy and ignore him. While I would heartily applaud that decision, the notion left me imagining months of constant legal wrangling that would ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, all occurring while Rome burned, as it were. Since my legal expertise ends with the ability to parse the simple phrasing of the Tenth Amendment I appealed to someone with an incisive understanding of the Constitution.

Ninety minutes later, I understood the reality that that cannot happen, because the President simply has no legal authority to usurp the Governors’ rights to manage their states. There is no statute or phrase embedded in the Constitution that would support such an action; moreover, the President has no enforcement mechanism at his disposal. He has no jurisdiction over local law enforcement, or even the National Guards which report only to their States’ Governors.

Thus, Trump can rant and threaten, but in the end all it will amount to is bluster. We should all be thankful that we are safe from his quixotic temperament, at least in regard to staying safe from COVID-19. Our safety is in the hands of our State Governors.

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Who’s in Charge? Our Governors.

Posted on April 13, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 13, 2020

Our country and the world are in the midst of a deadly pandemic. If this were a movie, serious actors would portray serious politicians consulting even more serious experts and pooling their resources. Politics would be but a sidebar. Even the most imaginative Hollywood producers couldn’t envision the sort of chaos and leadership vacuum we see in the United States today.

In times of national crisis we reflexively turn to our president for direction, reassurance, and comfort. We do that because of the examples of the past; FDR shepherding us through the Depression and World War 2, Winston Churchill taking the Battle of Britain on his shoulders, Dwight Eisenhower assuring us that we would not be obliterated by Soviet H-bombs, George W. Bush calming us after nine-eleven, Barrack Obama inheriting the worst financial crisis since Black Friday, 1929 and taking the helm with eloquent calm assurance.

Americans need that today, but instead we have a self-aggrandizing president who brags about his television ratings and his popularity on Facebook, who babbles incoherently, misstating facts, inventing falsehoods on the fly, and constantly being discreetly corrected by the experts who should be conducting the briefings in the first place. And Congress? After a rare show of bipartisanship no matter how reluctantly they were dragged into it by the need to assure Americans that they would be able feed their families, they are once again mired in impasse, separated by competing special interests trying to protect their wealth and power.

Trump’s daily briefing ratings are high in the same way that people are fascinated by train wrecks and zombie films. They are longer and less informative every day, with Trump devouring airtime in pursuit of re-election, telling us he’s doing a perfect job, deflecting blame for the mistakes he has made, and spouting insane, debunked conspiracy theories. His public health task force stands behind him for two hours cringing as he undermines their attempts to save lives.

Trump claims he’s facing the most difficult decision of his presidency. That’s true, but the decision is not a binary choice between the health and safety of Americans and protecting the economy. In the 1930s our economy survived a devastating Depression that lasted more than ten years. Yet both it and the Americans who suffered through it recovered rapidly to become the economic and manufacturing behemoth that saved the world in the 40s. Trump’s agonizing decision isn’t about the economy. He’s gambling the lives and health of Americans against protecting short term corporate profits to preserve his re-election chances.

Thank God there’s another source of leadership filling the breach – our governors and mayors. Instead of letting cable networks shape your thinking, check out the daily briefings of our forward-looking governors. There are several every day on television and online: Andrew Cuomo in New York, Gavin Newsom in California, Phil Murphy in New Jersey, Larry Hogan in Maryland, Andy Beshear in Kentucky, Mike DeWine in Ohio, Gretchen Witmer in Michigan…and more.

Each has its own issues and timelines, but they have things in common that you’ll never see in a Trump briefing. There’s no grandstanding or competing for credit and accolades, bragging about false accomplishments or playing the blame game. What you’ll see consistently from these natural leaders is compassion, truth, unifying assurance, and strength. I regularly listen, and I hear no partisanship or buck-passing, no threats to people who voice disagreement, and a willingness to hear and respond to questions no matter who asks them.

As Trump continues living his own reality, trying to force the country into prematurely “re-opening for business” and undermining all the mitigation steps that we’ve taken, (and might have taken many weeks earlier if someone had been able to muzzle him,) we should be thankful for our governors. Realizing they cannot depend on the federal government for anything but misdirection and chaos, they are forming their own coalitions. The east coast compact is New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware, and Rhode Island. The west’s is California, Oregon, and Washington.

The compacts will devise regional approaches to loosening restrictions on businesses and social distancing that reflect local conditions. Both will have priorities uncontaminated by politics or self-interest. Number one will be protecting the lives and health of Americans. Two will be restoring functioning local economies to assure maintenance of food supplies and the financial survival of both families and businesses.

They’re prepared to defy and ignore the President if need be. They know that in the end, the federal government will have to get in line and follow suit. Whether they work in Congress or the White House, they have no choice. There’s an election in November, and the voters are watching.

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Emergency Powers and the Election

Posted on April 10, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 10, 2020

Much has been written about Donald Trump’s leadership or lack of it during the COVID-19 pandemic. But as has been the case throughout this administration, we must be careful not to get distracted and miss a more general menace. In coming months the most serious threat we face may be to our basic freedoms.

From the outset, the President has disdained anything that limited his personal power, and he continues to do so during the pandemic. He has effectively purged his administration of anyone who disagreed with him or tried to limit his sphere of action until, much like Richard Nixon in the waning months of his presidency, he is surrounded by yes-people. He recently removed two Inspectors General who in the course of fulfilling their statutory obligations, rendered decisions inconvenient to Trump. Most recently, he nullified the provision of the $2.2 trillion stimulus law that required independent oversight of a $500 billion relief fund, stating clearly that he intended to ignore that provision.

We’re entering a time when Trump’s lack of respect for law and the Constitution may be the most important issue we face. A few weeks after his inauguration, I posted an article titled: ”Is it Fair to Compare Trump’s Rise to Power with Hitler’s?” It was relevant then, and still is. I did not suggest that Trump intended to lock his enemies away in concentration camps and gas them. I (and many others) examined the ruthlessly efficient manner with which Adolf Hitler dismantled the Weimar Republic’s Constitution and replaced it with one of the vilest tyrannies in modern history.

Specifically, I addressed the striking similarities between Trump’s style of politics and leadership, and Hitler’s. The comparisons were easy: extreme populism, scapegoating of targeted minorities, contempt for the legislature, attacks on the press and judiciary, and zero tolerance for disagreement and dissent. They remain valid today as nothing in Trump’s demeanor or actions has changed.

Hitler solidified his personal power by using emergency declarations to force the Reichstag (parliament) to grant him virtually complete supremacy for the duration of the perceived crises. Hitler never relinquished that power. The issue became relevant this week when the U. S. Supreme Court upheld Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s suspension of abortion services for the duration of the pandemic, ostensibly to conserve medical resources for COVID-19 patients. The Court based its decision on Jennings vs Massachusetts, a 1905 case in which a private citizen challenged the right of the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts to fine him for refusing a smallpox vaccination.

The issue was when the State (in that case Massachusetts, but the concept applies to the federal government as well) has the right to restrict the liberty of a citizen to protect the health of the general public. To understand the implications of Jennings vs Massachusetts in the context of COVID-19, I turned to a study by the National Center for Biotechnology Information in the National Institutes of Health.

According to the study, ‘the Court recognized that some aspects of liberty … which were deemed “fundamental,” were subjected to the “strict scrutiny” test: the Court determined (1) whether the government could prove that challenged law served a purpose so “compelling” that it was justified in taking action and (2) whether what the law required or forbade was “narrowly tailored” to achieve that purpose and did so with as little interference with individual liberty as possible.’ That is of great interest now, because the Court went on to specify that voting was a fundamental liberty.

There is currently much controversy over the general applicability of Jennings vs Massachusetts to our current health emergency, particularly with respect to the coming election.  We saw the first shot in that skirmish fired last week in Wisconsin, when Governor Evers attempted to postpone the presidential primary to avoid violating social distancing rules, but was overruled by the Supreme Court in a clearly partisan decision. We’ve seen more disturbing evidence of what is likely to occur in coming months as the President declared war on House proposals to allow only mail-in voting so the election is not affected by public health concerns.

Many people fear that Trump will be unconstrained in his attempt to consolidate and retain power. Will he try to use emergency powers to influence, postpone, or cancel the election? I believe without fear of exaggeration that this is a pivotal moment in our history. It’s no time to get lost in the weeds. If there was ever a time to be vigilant, it’s now.

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Voting in the Time of a Pandemic

Posted on April 7, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 7, 2020

Since becoming president, Donald Trump has in some ways been remarkably consistent. He has thumbed his nose at the rule of law and ignored the Constitution. He has attempted to nullify Congress’ oversight obligation and attacked every federal judge who declared one of his executive actions unconstitutional. He bristles at any suggestion that anyone has the right to hold him accountable.

In more subtle ways, he couldn’t be more inconsistent. He postures like a high stakes poker player, holding his cards close to his vest, lying, exaggerating, and contradicting himself, while claiming to have the most transparent administration in history. The master of insult and artless vulgarity knows no bounds when attacking people who disagree with him; yet, in recent weeks, in the heart of the coronavirus pandemic, he told Governors that if they didn’t treat him nicely, he wouldn’t talk to them. And he accuses every journalist who asks questions that challenge his decisions or address his misstatements of being nasty and not doing their jobs.

Trump is most inconsistent in the matter of state versus federal responsibility and authority. The most contentious issue in the early days of our democracy was the debate over the rights of individual states versus the reach of the federal government. This has been a constant issue during the coronavirus pandemic though Trump is neither a states’ rights advocate nor a federalist.  He possesses no political ideology beyond the accumulation of personal power. 

Even ardent Libertarians agree that the Executive has an essential role in the defense of the nation. We generally think of that in military terms, but since the administration decided to take it seriously, last week, it has been describing the fight against the pandemic as a war. Trump refers to the mobilization of resources and personnel as a military operation; yet, while he strutted as the all-knowing master of the situation, he  reneged on his responsibility to individual states, claiming it’s Governors who should be held accountable. (Remember, accountability is the most obscene word in Trump’s limited vocabulary.)

The state Governors have been the pandemic response leaders, as Trump and the federal bureaucracy in general were caught flatfooted and remained weeks behind in every decision. Trump accepted no personal responsibility for assuring that states in crisis, notably New York, but soon to be followed by others, had the resources necessary to protect their citizens. Facing rising demands and opposition, he reluctantly allowed FEMA (which he called useless early in his presidency) and the Army Corps of Engineers to do their jobs and redeployed two Navy hospital ships to help, actions for which he now claims full credit.

The conflict between state and federal authority during the pandemic took a bizarre turn yesterday, when Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers (D) issued an executive order to postpone today’s presidential primary election and extend the deadline for absentee voting. The Republican legislature got the State Supreme Court to stay the decision, and the U. S. Supreme Court ordered the election to occur as scheduled.

The federal court, with Trump appointees in the majority, argued that Evers’ decision would disenfranchise some voters. I have no idea what that means, since forcing thousands of people into close quarters was likely to cause hundreds or thousands of new infections. What is more disenfranchising than being dead?

The Wisconsin decision occurred three weeks after Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) took essentially the same action because in-person voting violated CDC and state pandemic guidelines for social distancing. The difference between Ohio and Wisconsin was that Ohio’s Republican legislature supported DeWine’s decision, and when a federal court rejected it, DeWine ordered his Public Health Director to issue an emergency declaration which executed the order, ignoring the judicial decision.

Clearly, the Republican agenda changed since March. On the surface there’s no reason why Republicans care when the Democratic primary is held or who votes in it. Joe Biden looked like a sure winner, and with Bernie Sanders on the verge of conceding the nomination the primary was almost irrelevant. So why take the unusual step of rushing a Supreme Court decision in hours?

The New York Times suggests that the Wisconsin case “stands as a first test case in what both national parties expect to be a protracted fight over changing voter rules to contend with the pandemic…” Many Democrats want Trump to issue an emergency declaration authorizing mail-in voting next November in the event the pandemic still poses a major health threat. Republicans believe that would allow more people to cast ballots, and conventional wisdom says that would benefit Democrats.

If you think COVID-19 has been exciting, wait until the voting rights battle heats up. Don’t let yourself be lulled into apathy after surviving the virus. The fight over the November election could be the greatest threat our democracy has ever faced.

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Lest We Forget . . .

Posted on April 3, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, April 3, 2020

At a time of crisis with Americans dying at an exponentially increasing rate, I’m torn between possibly worsening our country’s divisiveness and persisting in telling necessary truths. The Trump administration daily makes that choice easier by continuing to shirk its responsibility to manage the COVID-19 pandemic.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was the first national figure to say it, and yesterday, the Boston Globe editorial board echoed her: the President is going to have the blood of Americans on his hands. We don’t yet know how many, but if we trust the consensus of epidemiologists and other infectious disease experts, Trump’s deliberate refusal to act for three months may cause up to two million unnecessary deaths.

For three years, Trump’s missteps did not have immediate life and death consequences, although parents of children who died in captivity on our southern border might disagree, and farmers who saw their livelihoods wrecked by Trump’s trade war might feel the same. But as the number of pandemic-related deaths doubles every two or three days, we cannot tolerate lies, alternate facts, or political spin.

The ongoing disconnect between the President and every competent medical expert is unlike anything we’ve seen in a century. Each day wasted without a consistent national approach to mitigating the spread of the virus costs lives; yet, we continue to see Trump having to be dragged kicking and screaming to tell the truth. In an administration in which facts are variable commodities, it’s essential that we document everything, lest people forget in November.

More than half of us questioned Donald Trump’s fitness to lead the country, concerned that someone driven by lust for wealth and power who suffers from a serious narcissistic personality disorder couldn’t be trusted in a crisis. Trump has demonstrated how right we were to be concerned every day since COVID-19 erupted in Wuhan, China. Our intelligence services understood the severity of the problem in Wuhan in December. Trump was informed of the likely consequences more than three months ago. He even bragged last week that he knew there would be a pandemic before anyone else.

But Trump doesn’t like inconvenient truths. He has spent his life in business avoiding them, leaving a trail of lies, litigation, and financial devastation in his wake. His fraudulent populism masks a more important truth. Trump cares about working people, the poor, and the middle class only in terms of capturing their votes. His allegiance is to corporate America and those Americans among the most wealthy who will do anything to preserve their fortunes. When he was told that COVID-19 was likely to come to America and kill millions, his first and only consideration was preventing panic in the financial markets.

The likelihood that millions of Americans could die if he ignored the experts never stood a chance in Trump’s priorities. It was a bothersome abstraction at best for a man who consistently prefers his own uninformed opinions to well established science and experience. Trump hates being told he’s wrong, and the COVID-19 crisis has shown him at his worst. Concern for the lives of the people he swore to defend was never a consideration until the results of his criminal malfeasance started to be felt.

Doctors Fauci and Birx told Trump what we’d face. They explained that if cases doubled every two days there would a thousand times as many in twenty days and a million times as many after forty days. But most people think linearly. Concepts like exponential growth are not intuitive for them. Thus Trump remained focused only on being re-elected, and it was impossible to convince him that action was urgent, if preparing the country was likely to crash the economy.

He thinks of himself as a high-rolling gambler, but there was a lot more at stake this time than failing hotels in Atlantic City. A president who is totally lacking in compassion who considers everyone who disagrees with him an enemy cannot possibly lead in a crisis that requires him to choose between his own self-interest and the nation.

Donald Trump could have handed Dr. Fauci the podium. He could have told the truth and begun averting the worst case in January. According to all the mathematical models, that might have meant the difference between 100,000 and 2,000,000 American deaths. Choices are rarely as black and white as this one, yet he dragged his feet and completely failed to protect the country.

We won’t know how many lives will be lost as a result of Trump’s malfeasance for months. I intend to tell the truth every day, lest we forget when it’s time to hold him accountable on Election Day.

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After Sheltering in Place – What’s Next?

Posted on March 28, 2020 by alanpzendell

Alan Zendell, March 28, 2020

As one of the more vulnerable senior population, I’ve been thinking about what will happen after the corona virus pandemic runs its course, at least in its initial wave. One of the most challenging aspects of managing a pandemic is a lack of meaningful data. That occurs in two principal ways.

One is that much of what we think we know about the virus comes from past experience with other, similar ones. But as epidemiologists and virologists continually remind us, each virus is unique, and inferring the future behavior of this new one is risky.

There’s been a lot of speculation about a “second wave,” or a seasonal revival of COVID-19 next winter. That’s based on anecdotal evidence from previous epidemics like the Spanish Flu of 1918, in which the second and third waves killed most of the 675,000 Americans who perished from it. That number is huge, but we must keep in mind that medicine has advanced greatly in the last hundred years, and 1918 was the year of our greatest involvement in World War One. Many of our medical professionals were overseas and the constant movement of millions of troops in the United States and Europe made it impossible to slow the spread of the disease.

Will COVID-19 be as deadly? We don’t know. Initial data suggest a far lower fatality rate than the Spanish Flu, but possibly a higher rate of infection without quarantines, sheltering in place, and other distancing measures. That’s extremely significant since our population has more than tripled since 1918, and the population density of our urban centers has increased dramatically. We don’t really know what will happen next season or if COVID-19 will mutate into something either more or less dangerous than itself.

Another source of uncertainty is the number of reported active cases. Our data always lag reality. We won’t have an accurate timeline of how many people were infected until after the pandemic passes. Our country wasted so much valuable time in being able to test large numbers of people, we have no idea how many are infected.

As I write this my television screen tells me that nearly 112,000 Americans have tested positive for the virus. But that number could be low by orders of magnitude. Tens of millions have undoubtedly been exposed by now, but we probably won’t know definitively for years. CDC projections suggest that half our population, more than 160 million people may contract COVID-19. As Bill Gates said earlier this week, the only way to know for certain is to test every American.

Need a reality check? If COVID-19’s fatality rate in the United States is one percent and 160 million people are infected, that implies 1.6 million deaths.

My wife and I are sheltering in place, as directed by our governor. I’m guessing we may have to continue to do so until at least Memorial Day. After that, what will normal look like? Say the spread of the virus is reduced to zero by July. We end social distancing and start interacting with friends and family again. But half the population will already have the virus in their systems – viruses in our bodies never go away, they just become dormant. Will that pose a risk for people who followed the rules and remained virus-free?

Since I’m basically ignorant about everything medical, I consulted with a physician I trust (my daughter-in-law.) She assured me that even if I touch, hug, and kiss people who are still hosting the virus, I won’t catch it from them unless they are actively symptomatic. I have complete confidence in her, but there’s still the caveat that although we know that’s true for other viruses, we won’t be certain about this one until after the fact.

Another thing we discussed was “herd immunity,” which is a designation that is easily misinterpreted. Herd immunity occurs when so many members of a community have weathered the virus and developed individual immunity, there’s no place left for it to spread. From the point of view of people who haven’t been exposed, that means there’s no one left to catch it from. Big sigh of relief number two – except that this conclusion too is based on assuming that COVID-19 behaves the way previous viruses did.

All things considered, all of us elderly folks who continue to follow the rules and shelter in place, limiting the likelihood of exposure for the next few months can be reasonably assured that when life returns to something like normal next summer, we can hug each other without fear of dying. At least until the anticipated second wave hits, but I’m confident we’ll have a vaccine by then.

No one knows for sure, but life always has its uncertainties.

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