Capitalism

Progressives Show Strength in Democratic Primaries

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

It looks like Progressive candidates, all three with Mayor Mamdani’s endorsement, swept Democratic Party primaries in New York on Tuesday against candidates with Party support. (Paywall).

“Some of the night’s most potent victories for Mamdani’s branch of the party saw DSA-backed political newcomers Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier defeating establishment-endorsed candidates, signaling a potent fusion of Mamdani’s grassroots popularity with the DSA’s organizing machine. Avila Chevalier attended a pro-Palestinian rally in 2023 in New York City the day after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel that was criticized for including speakers who appeared to justify the violence.”

“Elsewhere, former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander, also backed by Mamdani, soundly beat incumbent Rep. Dan Goldman in a heated election that also centered on U.S. policy toward Israel and the war in Gaza. Lander supports blocking military aid to Israel.”

This is an extraordinary result, and it’s not confined to New York:

“Progressives have romped through Democrats’ spring primaries, notching a series of wins across both safe and competitive districts and upending House and Senate Democrats’ battleplans. Left flank candidates Randy Villegas and Matt Dunlap trounced the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s preferred picks in a pair of battlegrounds in California and Maine.”

Two of the winners are aligned with the Democratic Socialists of America, and Brad Lander defeated an incumbent Congressman, Dan Goldman, who held the seat since 2022 and was on the impeachment prosecution team. Lander defeated him by 2-1 with support for Israel the main issue.

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COVID Common Sense? Or Covidiocy?

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

Mick Staton thinks it’s time to apply some “common sense” to Virginia’s coronavirus response. From the Bull Elephant:

In just over four months the number of confirmed covid-19 cases in Virginia has reached nearly 89,000.  Of those confirmed cases,  a little over 2,100 people have died [over 2200 now].  We can argue about inflated death numbers or under-counted people who have the virus but have never been tested all we want, but all of that is pure speculation, and cannot be quantified or counted.  People who feel sick are getting tested.  If you don’t feel sick and you test positive for the antibodies, do you really qualify as a victim of a disease you never knew you had?  For now, let’s just deal with confirmed numbers.

Virginia has a population of about 8.536 million people.  Based on the confirmed numbers listed above, only about 1% of the population of Virginia has contracted this virus, and 0.024% of the population of Virginia has died from it.

Virginia hit its highest number of daily reported cases on May 25th of this year at 1,439.  When we once again compare that to our population of 8.536 million people, that means the greatest chance anyone had of contracting this disease on any given day is about 0.01%.

Mr. Staton thinks that a lockdown needed to happen based on what we knew four months ago, but now thinks it was not necessary then – and certainly not now – on the grounds that COVID isn’t really that much worse than the flu at the end of the day.  After all, only 90K Virginians have gotten this deadly disease, and only 2100 2215 have died from COVID since the pandemic started.

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It’s the Robot Economy, Folks

~ R. Stanton Scott ~ Leave a comment

David Atkins made a good point yesterday at The Washington Monthly after former Clinton staffer Nick Merrill shot back at Presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg for suggesting that economic anxiety indeed played a role in Donald Trump’s 2016 win:

So, in the argument between Merrill and Buttigieg, who is right? They both are. And the fact that Merrill doesn’t understand that point is part of the problem; and it’s a sign of what the 2020 Democratic nominee must fix.

One cannot even begin to talk about this issue without acknowledging that the white working class is quite literally dying. Mortality rates for middle-aged white Americans have been ticking upwards for nearly 20 years, led primarily by a sharp rise in “deaths of despair”—suicide, drug abuse, and alcohol abuse—among those without college degrees. According to research, these deaths are primarily driven by a lack of good jobs and the dysfunction that economic anxiety creates in the social fabric.

Buttigieg is right that Trump pretended to offer solutions for these voters specifically, and that certain aspects of Clinton’s messaging did not convey the urgency that people in these communities feel about their circumstances. It’s no accident that “learn to code” has become a scornful joke on both the right and the progressive left.

Merrill is also right that the solutions Trump offered were racist, vitriolic, and full of false promises. Trump blamed economic and social problems on immigrants, promised to use his supposed skill as a negotiator to fix trade deals and bring jobs back, and promised to use his bully pulpit to strongarm companies into keeping existing factories open and getting new ones built.

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