…in just the way you’d expect them to.
Trump courts more black voters
[Hat tip: John Hinderaker at Powerline.]
If this ends up actually working, Democrats will be in trouble:
President Trump is opening 15 urban campaign field offices in an aggressive bid to improve his performance with black voters, who for decades have been an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency.
Sleek and situated in retail shopping districts to generate foot traffic, this unique collection of regional “community centers” is a critical component of the Trump campaign’s multimillion-dollar strategy to double in 2020 the 8% support the president received from black voters nearly four years ago…
Five offices are slated for Florida: Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa, and Miami. In North Carolina, branches are opening in Charlotte, Raleigh, and Greensboro. Others will be located in Atlanta, Detroit, Columbus, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and Milwaukee.
These cities were probably very carefully chosen, too, as places where changing even a small percentage of black voters’ views to Trump’s side will have the most bang for the buck in terms of being meaningful in winning the state. Note that there are none in New York or California cities. Perhaps the calculation is that that would be wasted effort in states so overwhelmingly blue.
I’ve written before about the effort by Trump – and black conservatives such as Candace Owens – to appeal to black voters. If such a campaign is at all successful, it would be a nightmare for the left. The Democratic Party counts on a nearly monolithic support from black voters to win many states, and any significant defection from that allegiance could be very significant.
Trump is wise to use some resources on this. Perhaps the effort won’t pay off, but if it reaches some sort of critical mass it could be key. Black voters vote Democratic these days in such overwhelming numbers for many reasons, some of it historical and dating back to the 30s and FDR and then the 60s and the Civil Rights legislation. Barack Obama being a Democrat didn’t hurt any, either. But I don’t get the impression that black voters are leftist in ideology, and (as many have pointed out) there is a rather broad streak of social conservation among black voters.
You can see some of the history in this chart:
What you can’t see in that chart is that until FDR, black voters were reliably Republican. You can read a comprehensive article about the switch under FDR here (I haven’t read it). At the time, though, the switch to the Democrats by black voters was just part of a large switch to Democrats among voters generally. It was sparked by the Great Depression and FDR, who received about 61% of the general popular vote in 1936 – and, according to the chart I put up, 71% of the black vote. in 1940 that rose to 62.5% for FDR in the overall vote, and black voters went for him 67%, according to the chart. So, not all that different.
But those percentages for the black voters and the Democratic candidates held, even during the Eisenhower years, and in 1964 there was another huge leap to the almost monolithic Democratic voting among black people that we still see today.
Until now.
It’s an uphill battle. Some of this affiliation with the Democrats is – like most political affiliations – force of habit and surrounding culture. If a person grows up knowing almost all Democrats, it’s hard to break the mold. That’s why black spokespeople such as Owens might be very important.
Here’s a question
Are Democratic leaders afraid of Sanders because they don’t want socialism?
Or are they afraid of him because they think he’s too open about his plans for socialism, and they think that would ruin his chances for election and would lead to Trump’s second term and perhaps even the flipping of the House?
I’ll tell you my answer: for the majority, it’s the second. But for a dwindling few, it’s the first.
On coronavirus (COVID-19) so far [Part I]
[NOTE: I’ve decided this needs to be at least a two-parter, because there’s so much to be said. Here’s Part I.]
I haven’t written too many posts on the new coronavirus (COVID-19) because we know quite little, and much of what we read about it in the MSM probably is incorrect. Nevertheless, it’s what we have to work with right now.
You keep hearing “don’t trust the Chinese on this.” And I agree. But that also means that we can’t trust the people who at least theoretically know the most about it, because they’ve had the largest numbers of cases. And it also sets the scene for cinematic apocalyptic imaginings to rush in, ideas that many in the MSM are only too happy to entertain, the better to raise ratings and to hurt Trump. A twofer.
Prognosticators don’t want to be caught flat-footed if this becomes a much much bigger deal than it already is. People have learned more and more in recent years not to trust governments and bureaus and bureaucrats. So all of that is operating, too.
But here’s what I’ve gleaned so far.
First, some general statements. I’ve read that for infectious diseases, lethality and ease of contagion are ordinarily (not always) somewhat in opposition. That makes sense, because if a disease is quickly and highly lethal, the sufferer will have much less opportunity to be walking around with it in his or her most contagious stages, and therefore will tend to infect fewer people.
That’s why many illnesses that are highly widespread – take the common cold, which is called “common” for a reason – are usually mild (although tell that to the cold sufferer). And yet even such seemingly innocuous illnesses have some lethality, in that (for example) a cold can lead in the susceptible to pneumonia, which is far more likely to kill.
Pneumonia is something we’re all familiar with because, like the common cold, it’s reached a relatively stable rate of infection and, although far less common than the cold, it’s something not especially uncommon. And unlike COVID-19, it’s far from new. But pneumonia can kill, and you might be surprised to learn how often. Pneumonia statistics are as follows:
For US adults, pneumonia is the most common cause of hospital admissions other than women giving birth. About 1 million adults in the US seek care in a hospital due to pneumonia every year, and 50,000 die from this disease.
That’s a death rate of 5%. And not all these people are old or ill to begin with, either (see the link for more), although many are.
I’ve also seen discussions of the 1918 flu in comparison with COVID-19. The 1918 flu was a pandemic, both worldwide and more lethal than ordinary flu (which can also kill). And the death rate in 1918? The truth is that no one really knows what the death rate was in those who contracted the disease. One reason is that in those days, reporting rules were often nonexistent, even in the US. Here’s an account that focuses on the state of Washington, for example (the term “Spanish flu” is used in the excerpt, and although this is a misnomer it was a common term for it):
For several reasons, tracking the progress of the pandemic in the state with much accuracy is impossible. First, influenza was not a disease that had to be reported to state health authorities, at least not during its most virulent phase in the fall of 1918. Voluntary reporting was extremely sporadic, as will be seen. Deaths needed no diagnosis and were faithfully recorded, but overall tallies of the infected must be considered rough estimates, even when impressively specific.
Second, the flu in 1918 and early 1919 came in three distinct waves — a usually mild form in the spring and summer of 1918, followed by the deadly strain in the closing months of that year, and ending with a return of usually (but not always) milder disease in the early months of 1919, not fully tapering off until 1920.
To further frustrate public-health authorities, the Spanish flu killed both directly and by leaving victims vulnerable to secondary infections with bacterial pneumonia, which was often fatal even in the absence of the flu, particularly in the elderly or infirm. This muddled the causality picture. But because the Spanish flu had proven so stunningly contagious and pneumonia was so often found during autopsies of flu victims, the federal Census Bureau decided to use a single category in its mortality statistics for 1918: “deaths from influenza and pneumonia (all forms)” (Mortality Statistics, 1918). As frustrating as it is to epidemiologists and life-insurance actuaries, all statistical studies of the effects of the 1918 pandemic are riddled with uncertainty and approximations.
The difficulties are obvious. And that passage describes the situation in the US, which had relatively good reporting (and probably lower death rates as well) compared to so many other countries:
Although the death toll attributed to the Spanish flu is often estimated at 20 million to 50 million victims worldwide, other estimates run as high as 100 million victims—around 3 percent of the world’s population. The exact numbers are impossible to know due to a lack of medical record-keeping in many places.
What’s more – and what can be confusing – death rates can refer to two different things. The first one is the overall death rate from the disease in the general population, and the second is the death rate from the disease in all people infected with it.
More about the death rate in 1918, which not only is unknowable for sure but seems to have varied widely by country:
Worldwide, an estimate of the mortality of the 1918–1919 pandemic is 50 million deaths, with a range of up to 100 million deaths. Taking the 50 million figure, this was about 2.5% of the world population. By contrast, in the United States, mortality was on the order of 0.5%. Clearly, the rest of the world was struck more severely, on average, than the United States.
So, if 2.5% of the world’s entire population died (and that’s using the lower total death figure of 50 million), we can safely say that the death rate in those infected had to have been way higher. This estimate is that about a quarter of the world’s population contracted the 1918 illness, and the death rate in the entire population from it was 2.8%, which by my calculations would give a death rate in the infected of four times that, which would be somewhere (using 2.5% or 2.8%) between 10 or around 11 per cent. That’s very high, much higher than anything that’s been reported for COVID-19 so far. It seems that the 1918 flu had some highly unusual characteristic for flu, which was that it was both very contagious and unusually lethal. It also happened to have killed a disproportionate number of people in the prime of life rather than just the very old or very young, which does not seem to match the COVID-19 pattern so far either.
Most estimates I’ve seen so far about the death rate in COVID-19 are that it’s around 2.5% of people who are infected (not of the general population). However, there are several possible problems with this. One is that doctors may be missing a large number of mild or even asymptomatic cases, which would make the actual death rate much lower than that. Another is that it’s not just the death rate but the pattern of deaths that’s important. Most of the deaths have occured in the elderly and especially the very elderly. And almost all of them (so far) have been in China. Obviously, the death toll will keep rising, and not just in China, but we don’t know at what rate. We also don’t know whether the geographic pattern will continue, or whether reports that infection rates may be going down in China are true or not.
Italy has more cases than other countries in Europe right now. This is especially mysterious. But it may have something to do with this [emphasis mine]:
More than 3,000 tests for coronavirus have been carried out [in Italy] over the last few days, although authorities are still trying to identity “patient zero” – the person who brought the virus to the region. The first man infected, a researcher at Unilever, came down with symptoms after attending a dinner at which there was a colleague who had recently returned from China, who tested negative for the virus.
“The peak in Italy is partly due to all the tests being done,” said Roberta Siliquini, a former president of Italy’s higher health council. “We have found positive cases in people who probably had few or no symptoms and who may have overcome the virus without even knowing it.”
The Italian government has been criticised for hastily cancelling flights to and from China as, without coherence across Europe, people have been able to fly to other European cities and enter Italy from there.
That’s because Europe has open borders, so if some European countries are letting people in from China, this affects every country in Europe and it’s hard if not impossible to trace whether people have had any contact with anyone who recently came back from China.
I’ll add just one more thing, and then close Part I down, because it’s already way long. Despite rumors and even reports of transmission when people are asymptomatic, there’s no hard evidence of it so far. That doesn’t mean it’s not happening.
Reading Maus
[NOTE: Years ago I downsized and got rid of a lot of books. But since I’d had a ton of them to begin with, I’ve still got a lot, although nothing like the original number. And of course, I keep adding to them, although not at a very fast clip; I try to use the library most of the time. I don’t like Kindles or audiobooks, so when I purchase a book it’s always a real three-dimensional book of the old-fashioned kind.
The other night I was up late looking for a certain book and couldn’t find it. As I searched, I discovered that I was missing about six key books in my library. So I set about asking some close friends if they might have them, since I sometimes lend such things and lose track. Sure enough, a few of the books came back to me. One was the first volume of the graphic novel Maus.
That motivated me to look up an old post I’d written, a review of the book. And reading it made me decide to publish it again. So here it is.]
I recently reread the two-volume graphic novel Maus, by Art Spiegelman. It struck me once again, as it did the first time I read these books, that they should not work on any level. And yet, against all odds, they constitute a bona fide masterpiece.
Why should they fail? Let me count the ways. Because of our over-familiarity with the genre, as well as the risk of trivialization, Holocaust stories are inherently difficult to write, especially by people such as Spiegelman who did not directly experience the horrors. He chooses to write in the form of the graphic novel—in other words, a lengthy cartoon. This genre should be especially offensive as a medium for telling so deeply horrific and monumental a tale.
What’s more, Spiegelman decides to depict the protagonists as various animals, which might have served to underline the cartoon aspects as well as dehumanizing the story: the hunted Jews are mice, the Nazis are cats, Poles are pigs, Russians bears, Americans dogs. And he intersperses his own experience of typical and somewhat pedestrian intergenerational angst and parent-child strife with the searing Holocaust sufferings of his parents.
How is it that Spiegelman manages to succeed? He begins slowly, by introducing his father Vladek but concentrating on their present-day post-Holocaust American life (the book was first published in the mid-80s). The man is so crotchety and annoying, so stingy and testy, that the reader shares Spiegelman’s frustration with him. And then the son gets the idea of interviewing his father about his experiences during the war, and the story begins to shift gear into a very different time and place.
Part of the power of the book comes from the idiosyncratic, colorful, and yet laconic way Vladek expresses himself, in accented English that conveys his practical and canny nature. The use of animals to portray the different ethnic and national groups stops seeming strange and becomes powerfully symbolic, keeping the reader from ever forgetting for a moment that these identities were the most salient characteristics of the world in which Vladek and his fellows lived, marking him and his fellow Jews as hunted prey and others as predators, helpers, or neutrals.
The reader learns at the outset that Spiegelman’s mother is dead. Although she came through the Holocaust seemingly intact, she committed suicide when Art was a young adult. As Vladek’s story introduces the reader slowly to the person she was, it becomes more and more apparent that the love between the two was an extraordinarily powerful force, and largely responsible for her wartime survival. Vladek was able to at least temporarily transfer some of his own remarkable gift for endurance to his wife. He was very clever and resourceful. But “clever” and “resourceful” are mild words to describe his stunning ability to find a way out of almost any situation.
Virtually all Holocaust survivor stories involve large elements of both luck and skill. But, having read many such tales, I think I can safely say that Vladek’s history involves more of the latter than any other such story I have read. He is always planning ahead, always thinking, always ingratiating himself with those who might be able to help him in the future. He pretends to have knowledge and training he lacks, and then he makes it his business to learn those skills and to learn them quickly and well (shoemaking, tinsmithing). Although starving, he manages the extraordinary feat of controlling his hunger in order to save food to use as bribes or gifts in ways that can help him in the future.
As Vladek’s past emerges in his own words, the reader—and his son Art—learn the source of many of the man’s maddening quirks. What appears from the perspective of the bountiful America of the 1980s to be a miserly and rather nasty need on the old man’s part to save and hoard seemingly useless things is revealed to be the same impulse that allowed him to live while so many others died. The angry Vladek who is so mean to his second wife (another Holocaust survivor) still mourns the first wife he loved so deeply. The man who maddens son Art with his clinginess and demands is the same person who lost almost every member of his large family, including his first child, in ways that retain their power to horrify even those who are familiar with the Holocaust.
It is said that to know all is to understand all. By the time Art has finished interviewing his father and writing the book, he has come to understand as best he (or any other person who did not directly experience the Holocaust) can what motivates the man, and to respect those very traits of his that originally drove the son nearly crazy. In one of the final panels of the book, Vladek, now very ill and lying in bed, sleepily addresses Art by the name of his deceased first son Richieu who died as a young child in the war. This especially moving moment demonstrates the fusion of the past with the present, and the fact that the dead still exist in the mind, untethered to time.
The strength of Maus is that it tells two tales simultaneously: an almost unimaginably terrifying story of suffering and heroic survival is interspersed with the story of the ordinary middle class life of an American family in which Old World parents give birth to a New World son. No one is spared and no one is glorified, and yet the final message amidst the horror and cynicism is of the power and depth of love.
Here’s a thread to talk about the South Carolina primary
It’s happening Saturday.
Or, you can just chat.
I was rushed today – as I previously mentioned – and somehow I originally thought the primary was today! I guess I just can’t wait.
That “I just can’t wait” was sarcasm. But actually, the length of the campaign season does make me antsy.
On coronavirus COVID-19
I wrote a rough draft last night for a huge post about coronavirus. But I got a very late start today due to an excess of busyness with other, non-blog things, as well as other topics and posts.
It happens sometimes.
So that coronavirus post isn’t coming today. But I just wanted to let you know that I’m not ignoring the topic, and that a post or maybe even a 2-parter should be coming soon.
You can talk about COVID-19 here, though, if you like. A very very short summary of my stance at the moment is that (a) we don’t know much (b) and yet there’s a ton of misinformation and/or misleading information out there; and (c) a lot of people are trying to stir up premature panic, and have been quite successful in doing so.
Lots of facts about marijuana
I happen to have come across this article about the state of knowledge on marijuana, now that it’s legal in so many states. It is an interview with Kevin Hill, associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and director of the Division of Addiction Psychiatry at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. The following are some excerpts from Hill’s remarks:
We know a lot more about both the benefits and the risks of cannabis use, although I would say that the rate and scale of research has not kept pace with the interest…
Unfortunately, the loudest voices in the cannabis debate often are people who have political or financial skin in the game, and the two sides are entrenched. Pro-cannabis people will say that cannabis is the greatest medication ever, and harmless. Others — often in the same field that I’m in, people who treat patients, people who do research with cannabis — will at times misrepresent the facts as well…
I think the greatest example is when you talk about the addictive nature of cannabis. You can become addicted to cannabis, though most people don’t…It’s less addictive than alcohol, less addictive than opioids, but just because it’s less addictive doesn’t mean that it’s not addictive. There’s a subset of people — whom I treat frequently — who are using cannabis to the detriment of work, school, and relationships…I often compare cannabis to alcohol. They’re very similar in that most people who use never need to see somebody like me. But the difference is that we all recognize the dangers of alcohol. If you go into a room of 200 high school kids, they know it’s dangerous and binge drinking among high schoolers is way down. But if you ask that same group about cannabis, you’re going to get all different answers. Data that suggests that although cannabis use among young people is flat — that’s another misrepresentation, that it’s going up — the perception of risk among those young people is going down. So, while everyone’s talking about it, and stores are opening in Brookline, in Leicester, and all over the state, adults and young people are not clear about the risks.
There’s a great deal more at the link. I suggest, if you’re interested in the topic – which I certainly am – that you read the whole thing.
Buttigieg exploits a child’s emerging sexuality for political purposes
Pete Buttigieg decided it was a good idea to have a nine-year-old child join him on stage at a campaign event in Denver on Saturday to talk about his sexuality.
If you didn’t think the end was near, think again. Most of us are wishing for an asteroid extinction event at this point. The child sent a question to Buttigieg asking him to help him “be brave like you.” Cue endless virtue signaling from clapping weirdos who think it’s totally normal that a 9-year-old is thinking about gay sex.
Actually, some 9-year-olds do think about sex. What they think about it is sometimes “Ick!” But whether it’s “ick” or whether they are eagerly anticipating it or even fantasizing about it – the latter of which is probably more common these days, now that children are exposed to far more sexuality earlier and almost everywhere, including in school – please let them be, rather than encouraging some sort of public declaration.
And I don’t care whether the child is being urged to declare his gay sexuality or his hetero sexuality. Either way, it’s a tremendously inappropriate exploitation of a child. But that seems to be standard operating procedure these days.
[NOTE: Video at the link.]
Israel, Socialism, and Bernie “Corbyn” Sanders
The editorial board of the NY Sun writes, in a piece entitled “Democrats Debate: Senator Sanders Emerges in the Garb of Jeremy Corbyn”:
Where in the blazes were the rest of the Democrats on the stage when Israel was brought up in Charleston? How could they let slide Senator Sanders’ libels of its elected premier? It took none other than Israel’s foreign minister, Yisrael Katz, to put Senator Sanders’ dishonest, ad hominem remarks on Israel into proper relief — as so “horrifying” that those who support the Jewish state would be unable to support Senator Sanders for president.
But the answer to their question is rather simple: Where were they? The same place they were when Barack Obama set out to systematically and publicly humiliate and isolate Netanyahu. The same place they were when, in one of his final acts as president, Obama stabbed Israel and Netanyahu (as well as Trump) in the back:
President Barack Obama has decided to go out with a bang: In a stunning diplomatic rebuke of Israel, the United States on Friday abstained on a controversial United Nations Security Council resolution demanding an end to Israeli settlements on Palestinian territory, allowing it to pass easily.
By abstaining — instead of vetoing the resolution, as the United States has reliably done to similar measures for decades — the Obama administration allowed the highly symbolic measure to make it through the chamber.
It was the first time in nearly 40 years that the Security Council has passed a resolution critical of Israeli settlements. It was also a firm rebuke of both Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who had strongly argued against it, and President-elect Donald Trump, who had taken the highly unprecedented move of weighing in Thursday and pressing for the measure to be vetoed.
So why would the Sun editors be surprised by the crickets meeting Sanders? And I wouldn’t call Sanders the “Corbynization” of the Democratic Party; certainly not the cause of it. He’s the result of it.
The Sun editors continue:
The catastrophe in Charleston was a reminder, if one were needed, that the Democratic front-runner is cut from the same cloth as the leader of the Labor Party in Britain, Jeremy Corbyn. He is another socialist from a Jewish background who for years spent his political capital apologizing for Israel’s enemies. It’s hard not to conclude that one reason Mr. Corbyn’s party met a historic defeat was the hostility to the cause of Zion.
One phrase there is curious: “another socialist from a Jewish background.” I have never heard, nor can I find at the moment, any reference to Corbyn being Jewish or even “from a Jewish background” – which, depending on the writer, can mean anything up to some great-grandparent or other having been Jewish whereas every other ancestor is not. Googling Corbyn’s religion, all I get is this sort of thing:
He has denied being an atheist but has not publically committed himself to any particular faith. Before becoming Labour leader he did an interview with the Christian magazine Third Way in which he talked very positively about some of the values held by those with faith. He acknowledged he had many atheist friends who wanted nothing to do with faith at all, but that he himself was more relaxed.
It is worth pointing out that his father was a professing Christian and Corbyn himself went to a Christian school.
So I don’t know what the Sun is referring to and haven’t seen anything suggesting it’s the case.
The Sun editors are correct, though, that Corbyn is “another socialist.” Not only is that the case, but he’s another socialist who (like Corbyn) calls himself a “Democratic socialist,” as though that matters. There are two ways socialism can take over a country. The first is democratically, according to election law in the country involved. The second is through some sort of revolution or coup. I suppose there’s a third – administratively, when a centralized governmental bureaucracy takes over by a series of agency decisions and executive orders.
Does the mechanism matter all that much, when socialism stunts the economy and liberty of the people? I suppose it’s better if the government has been elected, because then one can say “you made your bed, now lie in it.” But how much does it really matter? Look at Venezuela. And look at how often the people are lied to (or just ignorant) when they first cast their votes for socialism.
n 2005, Venezuela’s President, Hugo Chavez, told the World Economic Forum
“[T]here is no doubt in my mind […] that it is necessary to transcend capitalism […] through socialism, true socialism, with equality and justice. […]
We have to re-invent socialism. It can’t be the kind of socialism that we saw in the Soviet Union, but it will emerge as we develop new systems that are built on cooperation, not competition […]
“We must transcend capitalism. But we cannot resort to state capitalism, which would be the same perversion of the Soviet Union. We must reclaim socialism as a thesis, a project and a path, but a new type of socialism, a humanist one, which puts humans and not machines or the state ahead of everything.”
The Soviet Union hadn’t been ‘real socialism’. Venezuela would be.
We all know how that turned out.
Another primary…
…another debate.
You can talk about it here.
Biden says he’s a candidate for the US Senate
I’m all for forgiving candidates who make a few gaffes. But Biden goes way beyond the usual threshold.
Now he’s said: “I’m a Democratic candidate for the United State’s Senate. Look me over. If you like what you see, help out. If not, vote for the other Biden. Give me a look though, okay?”
You might say “well, maybe he meant ‘from’ rather than ‘for.'” Well, it’s still not a great advertisement for his mental acuity. And what “other Biden”? Was that his attempt at a joke? As in vote for me, or vote for me? Or has he developed a multiple personality disorder? Or is he pushing his son as an alternative?
Biden’s candidacy has turned into a very sad exercise.