Netanyahu leads, but needs some defections to create a coalition government

The New Neo Posted on by

Israeli politics is nothing if not complicated. And the last few elections – which have come with great rapidity, in an effort to break an impasse – have been especially complex in their results. But the upshot is that until now it has been impossible to form a coalition.

Yesterday’s election was still another attempt to break that jam. In the meantime, the anti-Netanyahu forces have mounted Lawfare against him, with multiple corruption charges that I’ve already discussed at some length in this previous post.

And yet, to the intense frustration of his enemies, Netanyahu appears to have gained seats in yesterday’s election rather than lost them. But feeding his critics’ hope is that fact that he still hasn’t won enough seats to not have to continue to wheel and deal to form a coalition government:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s bloc of right-wing and religious parties remained on the edge of obtaining a blocking majority in the next Knesset late Tuesday night after the Central Election Committee completed counting 4,156,479 votes from 10,305 of the 10,615 regular polling stations, some 97% of all polling stations.

Among the votes that have already been counted, Netanyahu’s Likud won 36 seats, which together with Shas’s 10, United Torah Judaism’s seven and Yamina’s six would be 59 – two seats short of the 61 MKs needed for a majority.

Absentee ballots from IDF soldiers, prisoners, diplomats and other emissaries were to be counted Tuesday night…

Altogether there are some 400,000 votes that have yet to be counted.

Military votes tend to be on the right, but I have no idea whether there would be enough of them to make a difference.

How can Netanyahu get to a working coalition? Here’s an article about it:

The MKs decided that they would continue to coordinate as one bloc under Netanyahu’s leadership in order to form a right-wing government as soon as possible. They also decided to not rule out adding other parties except the Joint List…

Netanyahu said in his victory speech early Tuesday at Expo Tel Aviv that he would form a nationalist government. He did not rule out adding parties from the Center and Left, but the Likud crowd shouted at him not to form a national unity government with Blue and White…

Netanyahu’s spokesman Yonatan Urich told Army Radio on Tuesday morning that Likud officials had already spoken to four possible defectors from parties to the left of Likud. MKs suspected of being on that list issued denials.

Blue and White is a party that was formed for the express purpose of running against Netanyahu in the 2019 election, and the party’s head, Benny Gantz, is strongly opposed to Netanyahu.

Will Netanyahu succeed this time? Maybe:

It was not immediately clear who they could convince to defect from the opposition. Under Israeli law, Netanyahu will have 28 days to do so or risk the process collapsing, leading to the unappealing possibility of a fourth election later this year…

Regardless, Monday’s result – the best for Likud in all three [recent] elections – was a stunning turnaround for a man two weeks away from the start of a major criminal corruption trial.

Again, for details of the charges in that “major corruption trial” please see this previous post.

My gynecologist on the topic of “Medicare for All”

The New Neo Posted on by

Yesterday I had my regular exam at the gynecologist. At the end of the visit, I was discussing with my doctor the issue of how often Medicare reimburses for visits at this point, and what are the reasons that restriction can be overridden.

She sighed in frustration and said that Medicare makes the doctors jump through a lot of hoops. And then added (even though she knows nothing of my politics), “If this Medicare-for-All thing passes, all the doctors are going to quit.”

I was surprised not so much by what she said as that she said it to me at all. I sort of chuckled and nodded, and then the visit was over. But where I live I just about never – and I mean never – hear anyone these days make an anti-leftist comment without prior knowledge that they’re talking to someone who already agrees with them. What’s more, this doctor is quite young; I’d say in her 30s. And yet she didn’t hesitate to say it.

I take that as a good sign.

Super-Duper Tuesday

The New Neo Posted on by

After the votes are counted on Super Tuesday the race for the nomination always starts looking more clear. So that should be the case by tomorrow, even in this murkier-than-usual season.

There are lots of prognostications; for example, see this from FiveThirtyEight:

Biden is now about twice as likely as Sanders to win a plurality of pledged delegates, according to our primary model, which gives him a 65 percent chance of doing so compared with a 34 percent chance for Sanders. This represents the culmination of a trend that has been underway in the model for about a week; it started to shift toward Biden once polls showed the potential for him to win big in South Carolina — and it anticipated a polling bounce in the Super Tuesday states if he did win big there. Still, even after South Carolina, Biden’s plurality chances had risen only to 32 percent, compared with 64 percent for Sanders. That means the polling bounce from the events of the past few days has been bigger than the model anticipated.

So they seemed to be saying that just a few days ago they were predicting a 2 to 1 chance that Sanders would win a plurality (not a majority) of the delegates, not just on Super Tuesday but on the first ballot at the convention. And now that ratio has suddenly reversed, more or less. Neither prediction is what you’d call very persuasive or powerful, and what’s more there’s this:

To be clear, however, there is still a lot of uncertainty. We’ve been talking about delegate pluralities, which obscures the fact that the most likely outcome in the model is still that no one wins a majority of pledged delegates. And we should note that the lack of a majority does not necessarily imply a contested convention. For instance, if Biden enters the convention with 46 percent of delegates and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg with 10 percent, they could strike a deal where Bloomberg delegates vote for Biden on the first ballot.

All of that is pretty obvious, IMHO. Of course Biden was going to get a bounce from his South Carolina victory plus the two dropouts (as well as others) suddenly endorsing him. That was one of the main points of Buttigieg and Klobuchar quitting – to elevate the sagging flagging Biden. But he doesn’t help his own cause by incidents like this:

However, it’s not like the Democratic voters have so many choices left that make any more sense than Biden. If I were a Democratic voter, I know I would be depressed right about now. Hey, I’m not a Democratic voter, and I’m still depressed that someone as obviously past his prime (and his prime was never particularly good) as Biden and/or as radical, raging, and just plain not healthy as Sanders can be the frontrunners in any major party. But that’s the way it is – unless someone from the outside swoops down and rescues the party, which I very much doubt will happen.

And another sad thing is that I think whoever is nominated, the 2020 election will be close. I know a lot of people think it will be a blowout for Trump, but I’m not one of those people. The nonstop propaganda war against Trump, plus his very own personality which some love and some hate, has made this election closer than I think it should be considering his accomplishments as president.

My theory on another reason Buttigieg and Klobuchar had no reluctance to drop out

The New Neo Posted on by

I have little doubt that Buttigieg and Klobuchar were promised something for dropping out of the race in such a timely fashion. But my guess is that another reason they dropped out with such alacrity is that neither ever expected to be the Democratic nominee in the first place. They were always positioning themselves to be VP or to get other favors of some sort from the eventual nominee, and their speedy and well-timed withdrawal from the race has only enhanced their positions in that respect.

So far so good for Netanyahu in Israeli election

The New Neo Posted on by

“So far so good” means exit polls:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu planned to declare victory in Israel’s election on Monday, a spokesman for his party said, after television exit polls showed him just a seat short of a governing majority in parliament.

A win for Netanyahu, after inconclusive ballots in April and September, would be testimony to the political durability of Israel’s longest-serving leader, who fought the latest campaign under the shadow of a looming corruption trial…

“A giant victory for Israel,” Netanyahu, 70, tweeted after the projections were released.

His main challenger, former armed forces chief Benny Gantz of the centrist Blue and White party, stopped short of conceding defeat in his own posting on Twitter, telling supporters he would “continue to fight for the right path, for you.”

Et tu, Klobuchar?

The New Neo Posted on by

The rumor is that Amy Klobuchar will be stepping out of the race and throwing her weight (such as it is) behind Biden.

Interesting. Assuming that’s true, the winnowing is happening rather quickly – before Super Tuesday.

But it’s not that dissimilar to what happened to the GOP field in 2016. There was Trump, course, the eventual winner. Cruz, Trump’s final opponent, didn’t drop out till May 3. Rubio left March 15. Kasich stubbornly limped along till May 4. Carson left on March 4. The rest of the field left prior to Super Tuesday. So on Super Tuesday there were five major candidates.

The Democrats seem to be narrowing down to four candidates prior to Super Tuesday: Sanders, Biden, Bloomberg, and Warren. Is Tulsi still around? Was she ever? If she’s still officially in the running, it’s only de jure. De facto she’s really nowhere.

Warren seems to be finished, too, but she’s not admitting it. That would leave the three elderly white guys, two of them Jews (at least nominally) and from New York. But it does seem (at least for the moment) as though the Democratic “establishment” is throwing its considerable weight behind the flawed Biden rather than the flawed Bloomberg. They will not support the flawed Sanders; it he wins the nomination, it will be against their wishes and efforts.

Somewhat like Trump in 2016. I’m not comparing Trump to Bernie except in one way: the attitude of the respective party powers-that-be to their candidacies. Of course, in 2020, the GOP is quite staunchly behind Trump, so that is a big change from 2016.

How about some facts on COVID-19?

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve written several posts already, trying to offer the main facts so far as they emerge. But I see so much stuff out there that’s not only obvious fear-mongering, but just plain incorrect.

It’s true that we don’t yet know exactly how this illness works and can come to no firm conclusions. That always takes a while with something that appears novel. But so far there’s been absolutely no indication that this is going to be an illness that’s hugely different and hugely worse than so many that have come down the pike in recent decades. However, you wouldn’t know that from most of the MSM coverage.

If you’re interested in voices that seem more fact-based, you should take a look at this from the New England Journal of Medicine. An excerpt (emphasis mine):

On the basis of a case definition requiring a diagnosis of pneumonia, the currently reported case fatality rate is approximately 2%.4 In another article in the Journal, Guan et al.5 report mortality of 1.4% among 1099 patients with laboratory-confirmed Covid-19; these patients had a wide spectrum of disease severity. If one assumes that the number of asymptomatic or minimally symptomatic cases is several times as high as the number of reported cases, the case fatality rate may be considerably less than 1%. This suggests that the overall clinical consequences of Covid-19 may ultimately be more akin to those of a severe seasonal influenza (which has a case fatality rate of approximately 0.1%) or a pandemic influenza (similar to those in 1957 and 1968) rather than a disease similar to SARS or MERS, which have had case fatality rates of 9 to 10% and 36%, respectively…

A robust research effort is currently under way to develop a vaccine against Covid-19.10 We anticipate that the first candidates will enter phase 1 trials by early spring. Therapy currently consists of supportive care while a variety of investigational approaches are being explored.11 Among these are the antiviral medication lopinavir–ritonavir, interferon-1?, the RNA polymerase inhibitor remdesivir, chloroquine, and a variety of traditional Chinese medicine products.11 Once available, intravenous hyperimmune globulin from recovered persons and monoclonal antibodies may be attractive candidates to study in early intervention. Critical to moving the field forward, even in the context of an outbreak, is ensuring that investigational products are evaluated in scientifically and ethically sound studies.

But that tone is much too sober to serve the twin MSM/left purposes of attracting viewers and hurting Trump economically. However, at least for the moment, something seems to be calming the stock market.

Maybe it’s even the fact that Biden won South Carolina and might have a whisper of a chance of stopping the Bernie runaway locomotive – although I’m not sure why the election of a somewhat-addled mediocrity such as Biden would be soothing. Perhaps the thought is that he will continue business-as-usual and be quite malleable.

The message to take from COVID-19 is that we are too dependent on China. Trump has long been aware of that, although not necessarily because of novel viruses. But let’s just add that to the mix, because novel viruses emerge from China with some regularity. COVID-19 may be the most recent, but it won’t be the last.

For those on this blog of a certain age, you can reminisce (like me) about the Asian flu of 1957 or the Hong Kong flu of 1968:

Asian flu of 1957, also called Asian flu pandemic of 1957, outbreak of influenza that was first identified in February 1957 in East Asia and that subsequently spread to countries worldwide. The 1957 Asian flu was the second major influenza pandemic to occur in the 20th century; it followed the influenza pandemic of 1918–19 (also known as Spanish flu) and preceded the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968. The Asian flu outbreak caused an estimated one million to two million deaths worldwide and is generally considered to have been the least severe of the three influenza pandemics of the 20th century.

The 1957 outbreak was caused by a virus known as influenza A subtype H2N2, or Asian flu virus. Research has indicated that this virus was a reassortant (mixed species) strain, originating from strains of avian influenza and human influenza viruses. In the 1960s the human H2N2 strain underwent a series of minor genetic modifications, a process known as antigenic drift. These slight modifications produced periodic epidemics. After 10 years of evolution, the Asian flu virus disappeared, having been replaced through antigenic shift by a new influenza A subtype, H3N2, which gave rise to the Hong Kong flu pandemic.

In the first months of the 1957 Asian flu pandemic, the virus spread throughout China and surrounding regions. By midsummer it had reached the United States, where it appears to have initially infected relatively few people. Several months later, however, numerous cases of infection were reported, especially in young children, the elderly, and pregnant women. This upsurge in cases was the result of a second pandemic wave of illness that struck the Northern Hemisphere in November 1957. At that time the pandemic was also already widespread in the United Kingdom. By December a total of some 3,550 deaths had been reported in England and Wales. The second wave was particularly devastating, and by March 1958 an estimated 69,800 deaths had occurred in the United States.

There certainly was newspaper coverage then, and news filtered down to children – including me. But somehow the country didn’t self-destruct.

Bye Bye…

The New Neo Posted on by

Buttigieg.

It was going to be hard for white Democrats, both party elites and voters, to mobilize behind a candidate with such weak support among people of color as the center-left alternative to Sanders.

So Buttigieg’s departure may have seemed sudden, but it’s likely that the former mayor was going to struggle on Super Tuesday and possibly run out of campaign funds. So this decision is a face-saving move for him.

That said, I don’t think Buttigieg’s departure is solely due to his struggles. Elite voices in the Democratic Party have been worried that the multiple center-left candidates in the race — Biden, Buttigieg, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, etc. — would divide the non-Sanders vote, potentially allowing the Vermont senator to amass a huge lead in delegates on Super Tuesday while his rivals finished below 15 percent in many states. South Carolina is only one state, but Biden’s resounding win there suggests that the former vice-president can combine older, moderate voters, black and white, into a big coalition in a way that Buttigieg probably could not. So my view is that Buttigieg stepped aside in part to help the center-left bloc of the party consolidate around Biden. To some extent, he was being a team player.

That’s from FiveThirtyEight. Selfless Pete, falling on his sword for the good of the moderates in the Party (which he’s really not). Others have a slightly different take.

Like this guy:

Clever. Trump is insinuating what a lot of people are thinking, which is that some person or people either twisted Buttigieg’s arm or made it worth his while, or both, to drop out in order to hurt Sanders and help Biden. And Trump is also doing a fair amount of concern-trolling of the Bernie Bros, reminding them of the way they believe they got screwed by the Party in 2016. The hope on Trump’s part is that if Biden gets the nomination, Bernie’s supporters stay home.

Perhaps that’s true. But perhaps it’s as I wrote on February 12:

In 2016 I thought if only either Cruz or Rubio (or other contenders) would drop out, all the others’ votes would go to the last Trump-opponent standing, and that person would win. But as time went on, I didn’t see that happening. I saw Trump getting a significant percentage of the votes of each person as that person exited. I began to realize that Trump could get the whole thing.

And I think something similar has a good chance of happening with Bernie. Will it? I certainly don’t know, but I see it as a strong possibility.

Time will tell.

Biden up, Steyer out

The New Neo Posted on by

The Democratic primary voters of South Carolina have spoken and Biden has won a resounding victory there.

I can’t quite imagine voting for someone as addled as Joe. But then again, consider the alternatives. Bernie Sanders came in a distant second, and Steyer is taking his marbles and going home.

Fifty-five percent of South Carolina voters in this primary were black. That’s a very different demographic than in the previous primary states.

Now, on to Super Tuesday. Here are the forecasts from FiveThirtyEight, with a chart. Sanders is heavily favored, with strong showings predicted for Biden and – of all people – Bloomberg (587 for Sanders, 305 for Biden, and 211 for Bloomberg, with the rest left behind in a cloud of dust).

But that FiveThirtyEight article was written on February 26, before tonight. Will Biden get that old-fashioned Joementum?

Ulanova vs. all the other Juliets

The New Neo Posted on by

Galina Ulanova was one of the most famous Russian dancers of the Soviet era. I saw her in person when I was very very young and she was close to 50 and nearing the end of her dancing days.

She was best in “real” roles where she played girls or women rather than sprites or fantasies. By the time the film I’m going to be highlighting here was made in 1954 she was 44 years old, no spring chicken in ballet terms, and the closeups aren’t kind (she was never a great beauty anyway). Films aren’t a good way to see ballet, but they’re all we have of Ulanova at this point.

Her proportions were not those of today’s ballerinas, nor of course was her technique or style, which some think is overdramatic. I don’t agree with that. She is always, always, always, expressing a character, never just doing steps and carefully showing off like so many of today’s dancers. Their emotional restraint and physical prowess were not her interests. She doth teach the torches to burn bright, even at the age of 44 without the forgiving distance a stage and theater provides.

The video I’m talking about is unfortunately unable to be embedded here; it must be watched at YouTube. So please go here and view minutes 21:24-23:00. This is a short variation where Juliet is introduced at the ball.

The second scene is from around 30:09 to 33:05 at the same video. It begins with a lift to which you should pay particular attention (you’ll see it again later, when she is an 86-year old teacher, in the next-to-last video I will post -and that one can be embedded, unlike this one). She originated the role of Juliet in this production. The male dancer, her Romeo, is a handsome guy but also far from a teenager or being able to pass as one. He’s not much of a dancer, either, although in those days standards for male dancers were very very different than now, and significantly lower. But he’s very much in the style of the time: strong and masculine. And boy, can he lift! The two of them make those lifts look like the easiest and most natural things in the world. They are most assuredly not (again, I refer to 30:09 to 33:05):

And here Ulanova is at 86, still showing em how it’s done:

No one today is even remotely like her. But then maybe no one was like her, even then.

Here’s a sampler of some excellent dancers of today – or of a little while ago (it’s not Ulanova who is number 2; that’s a mislabeling). They are so careful, so unspontaneous, and for the most part the tempos are slow and ponderous. I have to say, though, that the last dancer in the group, Ferri, is someone I saw in person, and this video doesn’t capture how wonderful she actually was in person. Very different from Ulanova, but still great: