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      in US Politics

      Joe Biden supporters won't believe in victory until it is theirs | Greg Jericho

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      A defining characteristic of progressive voters around the world is that they believe they can lose an election when ahead in the polls, and that they cannot win an election when they are behind in them.
      To be fair there is some justification for such belief. Progressives have become quite good at losing elections they should win.
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      As we all look to the US presidential election this coming week, those working, hoping, and praying for a Biden win remain ever distrustful of the polls that have Biden up by eight points.
      Maybe we should not trust them, but we all know that were Biden down eight points, no one would think there was any hope left.
      The different attitude was nicely summarised by former Republican party consultant Stuart Stevens, who told Battleground podcast last week:

      I seem to remember losing to the Democrats in the popular vote every time since 1988, except 2004, so it’s like ‘you guys are winning, we’re losing’ and I just think there is a timidity to the idea that this can’t be a huge victory for Joe Biden … If I ran the Democratic party I would say ‘Look, this is ours, there is more of us than them, we just have to go and take it … rout them, rout them from the field and know that you are just.

      It’s true that since 1988 the Democratic candidate has won the national vote in six of the seven presidential elections (and is almost certain to do so again this time). And yet they have won just four of those times.
      The US electoral system, with its allocation of winner-takes-all electoral college votes, is so disjointed from the national vote that 538’s Nate Silver estimates that if Biden was ahead 1% in the popular vote he would only have a 6% chance of winning the election.
      Add in legitimate concerns about voter suppression (both before and after the election) and Biden supporters won’t believe the victory is won until he has his hand on the Bible delivering the oath of office.
      And even then …
      After all, we are talking about a country in which Walmart has announced that it is temporarily taking ammunition and guns off its shelves out of fear of violence in the wake of the election result. It is such a stunning announcement you kind of gloss over that this means guns and ammunition are normally on the shelves of Walmart stores.
      We’re also talking about a country where 40% of Florida voters in a recent poll said they thought Donald Trump was “compassionate” and 43% thought he was “truthful”. Words no longer have meaning at such times.
      In the past month everyone has been waiting for an “October surprise”.
      But the Trump party’s (that rancid combination of the Republican party and conservative media) attempt to smear Biden by way of his son were as arousing to voters as watching Rudy Giuliani “tuck in his shirt” while lying on a bed.
      Only the deluded and the desperate cared.
      But what about good economic news that will turn voters back to Trump? Late this past week there were reports of “record” GDP growth figures, with headlines that in the September quarter America’s economy grew 33%.
      It didn’t.
      America for some bizarre reason likes to annualise quarterly growth. The economy actually grew 7.4% in the September quarter after falling 9% in June – both figures were records.
      The US economy remains 3.5% smaller than it was before the pandemic took hold. There are also 11 million fewer Americans employed than there were in February. That is not a boom.
      But nothing – neither the polls, the economy, nor the horrendous spread of the virus – will give Biden supporters any sense that the election is his to win.
      And fair enough – the stakes are too high.
      A Trump victory would signal the failure of the US democratic experiment and the triumph of authoritarianism. Given his administration’s utter inability to deal with the virus it would also mean not only many more deaths but also a brake on the global economy for many years to come.
      It would also end hopes for limiting climate change at a global level.
      On the other side of the ledger is the hope a Biden administration with a Senate majority might be able to undo some of the damage and do some good over the next four years.
      There is no balance, and so we hold on, hoping there remains some good news for 2020 to deliver. More

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      in Elections

      US economy bounces back but deeper trends hint at enduring woe

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      The US economy bounced sharply back from the record-setting slump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, according to government figures released on Thursday, handing Donald Trump a key talking point days before the election.
      According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis gross domestic product (GDP) rose at an annualized rate of 33.1% between July and September and was up 7.4% compared to the previous quarter. The previous record was a 3.9% quarterly increase in 1950.
      Trump was quick to claim credit, tweeting the figures were the “Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close.”

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      GDP number just announced. Biggest and Best in the History of our Country, and not even close. Next year will be FANTASTIC!!! However, Sleepy Joe Biden and his proposed record setting tax increase, would kill it all. So glad this great GDP number came out before November 3rd.

      October 29, 2020

      But the numbers show the US still has a long way to go to escape the devastation wrought by Covid-19 and were boosted by extra unemployment payments, business loans and direct payments, none of which have been replenished for the fourth quarter.
      The news comes just five days before the US election and is the last major economic release before polls close. Even before the figures were released the Trump campaign released ads boasting: “FASTEST GDP GROWTH IN HISTORY.”
      Big issues remain for the economy, however. The growth rate announcement came on the same day that the labor department announced that another 751,000 people filed for unemployment claims last week and the unemployment rate, at 7.9%, is twice as high as it was in February before the pandemic struck the US.
      A closer look at the numbers shows that the US’s economic woes are far from over. Thursday’s figures follow an equally historic slump in the second quarter. The US economy shrank by a revised annual rate of 31.4% between April and June, its sharpest contraction since the second world war, as much of the country went into lockdown to control the virus.
      The annual rate suggests the economy will continue on its current trend for the rest of the year. But such huge swings make the annualized figures misleading – no one expects such massive losses or gains to continue but most economists expect the US economy to be smaller at the end of the year than it was at the beginning.
      Gus Faucher, chief economist at PNC, said the figures represented “real growth” but added “there is still a long way to go before we get back to normal.”
      The decision to reopen much of the economy has provided a considerable boost, especially to consumer spending, which drove much of the recovery. But it comes as coronavirus infections are soaring in the US. Covid cases hit new highs over the weekend and the US now has the largest number of infections, more than 8.6m, and deaths, over 225,000, in the world.
      There are also signs that the recovery has slowed in recent months. Unemployment claims remain at historically high levels and the number of new jobs being created has dropped month on month. The economic situation for women, people of colour and teenagers remains difficult. The unemployment rate fell to 7.9% for the US population overall in September. For Black Americans it was 12.1% and for Black teens (16-19) it was over 20%.
      GDP is the broadest measure of the economy and includes personal consumption, business investment, government spending and net exports. The figure has often been criticized as a measure of economic health – GDP growth has, for example, done little to address growing income inequality.
      For some still feeling the impact of the pandemic and its attendant recession the latest GDP news was little comfort, especially as Congress remains deadlocked over further stimulus relief.
      Tim Swartz in Mesa, Arizona, stopped receiving unemployment benefits on 5 September after the unemployment office flagged an issue with his payments. When the pandemic hit he had to stop working as an Uber and delivery driver to care for his five children, including one with special needs. His wife works full-time as a medicine technician at a facility for Alzheimer’s patients.
      “I cannot get any answers from anyone on the phone or through emails. I’m behind on rent and utilities,” Swartz said. He has now received an eviction notice. “I’m not sure how we will pay the outstanding balances for rent and utilities,” he said.
      “Many of us are losing hope along with everything we have worked so hard for,” said Swartz. Three of his children had to recently return to online learning after exposure to classmates who tested positive for coronavirus, further delaying his return to work. “Without any relief package to help keep the economy going I don’t see much growth in the near future and unfortunately even darker times ahead for American families.” More

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      in US Politics

      Investors should prepare for worst over US presidential election

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      Opinion polls in the US have long pointed to the strong possibility of a Democratic party sweep in the election on 3 November, with Joe Biden winning the presidency and Democrats gaining control of the US Senate and holding on to the House of Representatives, putting an end to divided government.
      But if the election turns out to be mostly a referendum on Donald Trump, Democrats might win just the White House while failing to retake the Senate. And one cannot rule out the possibility of Donald Trump navigating a narrow path to an electoral college victory, and of Republicans holding on to the Senate, thus reproducing the status quo.
      More ominous is the prospect of a long-contested result, with both sides refusing to concede as they wage ugly legal and political battles in the courts, through the media, and on the streets. In the contested 2000 election, it took until 12 December for the matter to be decided: the supreme court ruled in favour of George W Bush, and his Democratic opponent, Al Gore, gracefully conceded. Rattled by the political uncertainty, the stock market during this period fell by more than 7%. This time, the uncertainty could last for much longer – perhaps even months – implying serious risks for the markets.
      This nightmare scenario must be taken seriously, even if it currently seems unlikely. While Biden has consistently led in the polls, so, too, had Hillary Clinton on the eve of the 2016 election. It remains to be seen if there will be a slight surge in “shy” swing-state Trump voters who are unwilling to reveal their true preferences to pollsters.
      Moreover, as in 2016, massive disinformation campaigns (foreign and domestic) are under way. US authorities have warned that Russia, China, Iran and other hostile foreign powers are actively trying to influence the election and cast doubt on the legitimacy of the balloting process. Trolls and bots are flooding social media with conspiracy theories, fake news, deep fakes and misinformation. Trump and some of his fellow Republicans have embraced lunatic conspiracy theories such as QAnon and signalled their tacit support of white supremacist groups. In many Republican-controlled states, governors and other public officials are openly deploying dirty tricks to suppress the votes of Democratic-leaning cohorts.
      On top of all this, Trump has repeatedly claimed – falsely – that mail-in ballots cannot be trusted, because he anticipates that Democrats will comprise a disproportionate share of those not voting in person (as a pandemic-era precaution). He also has refused to say that he will relinquish power if he loses and has instead given a wink and a nod to right-wing militias (“stand back and stand by”) that have already been sowing chaos in the streets and plotting acts of domestic terrorism. If Trump loses and resorts to claiming that the election was rigged, violence and civil strife could be highly likely.
      Indeed, if the initial reported results on election night do not immediately indicate a sweep for the Democrats, Trump would almost certainly declare victory in battleground states before all mail-in ballots have been counted. Republican operatives already have plans to suspend the counting in key states by challenging such ballots’ validity. They will be waging these legal battles in Republican-controlled state capitals, local and federal courts stacked with Trump-appointed judges, a supreme court with a 6-3 conservative majority and a House of Representatives where, in the event of an electoral college draw, Republicans hold the majority of state delegations.
      At the same time, all of the white armed militias currently “standing by” could take to the streets to foment violence and chaos. The goal would be to provoke leftist counterviolence, giving Trump a pretext to invoke the Insurrection Act and deploy federal law enforcement or the US military to restore “law and order” (as he has previously threatened to do). With this endgame apparently in mind, the Trump administration has already designated several major Democratic-led cities as “anarchist hubs” that may need to be put down. In other words, Trump and his cronies have made clear that they will use any means necessary to steal the election; and, given the wide range of tools at the executive branch’s disposal, they could succeed if early election results are close, rather than showing a clear Biden sweep.
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      To be sure, if early results on election night show Biden with a strong lead even in traditionally Republican states such as North Carolina, Florida or Texas, Trump would find it much harder to contest the result for more than a few days, and he would concede sooner. The problem is that anything short of a clear Biden landslide will leave an opening for Trump (and the foreign governments supporting him) to muddy the waters with chaos and disinformation as they manoeuvre to shift the final decision to more sympathetic venues such as the courts.
      This degree of political instability could trigger a major risk-off episode in financial markets at a time when the economy is already slowing and the near-term prospects for additional policy stimulus remain grim. If an election dispute drags on – perhaps into early next year – stock prices could fall by as much as 10%, government bond yields would decline (though they are already quite low), and the global flight to safety would push gold prices higher. Usually in this type of scenario the US dollar would strengthen; but, because this particular episode would have been triggered by US-based political chaos, capital might actually flee from the dollar, leaving it weaker.
      One thing is certain: a highly contested election would cause further damage to the US’s global image as an exemplar of democracy and the rule of law, eroding its soft power. Particularly over the past four years, the country has increasingly come to be regarded as a political mess. While hoping that the chaotic outcomes outlined above do not come to pass – polls still show a strong lead for Biden – investors should be preparing for the worst, not only on election day but in the weeks and months thereafter.
      • Nouriel Roubini is professor of economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business. He has worked for the International Monetary Fund, the US Federal Reserve and the World Bank.
      © Project Syndicate More

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      in US Politics

      Trump's hopes fade in Wisconsin as 'greatest economy' boast unravels

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      Coarse, cruel, chaotic. Donald Trump has been called a lot of things. Even some of his supporters have had a hard time embracing the darker aspects of his personality. Until recently they have, however, trusted the president on one one vital issue: the economy.But with just 16 days to go until the election, there are clear signs that Trump’s claims to have created the “greatest economy we’ve ever had in the history of our country” are unravelling.Perhaps nowhere is that more worrying for Trump than in Wisconsin.Losing Wisconsin ended Hillary Clinton’s presidential chances in 2016. Famously she didn’t campaign there, presuming a win that was snatched from her by Trump’s promises to end unfair trade practices that had hurt the state’s dairy industry and to bring back manufacturing jobs.Until February, Trump could have confidently boasted that he had made good on his promises. Unemployment had fallen to record lows in the state, manufacturing was coming back – albeit at the same, snail-paced crawl that it had under Obama. The headline figures looked good. Then came the coronavirus – a disease that is now ravaging the state and has, in its wake, exposed the fault lines beneath those headline figures.The virus and the economy now seem to have morphed into some hideous hybrid, and the fragile recovery that followed the first peak in infections is now being threatened by new spikes in infections. Last week Wisconsin reported 3,747 cases in one day, its highest level since the outbreak, and more than California’s daily average, a state with six times Wisconsin’s 5.8 million population.“The economy is always big. It’s just this year it is so intertwined with the pandemic that is hard to separate them,” said Mark Graul, a Republican strategist who ran George W Bush’s re-election race in Wisconsin in 2004.Had the pandemic never happened and the economy been humming along, “that’s all President Trump would be talking about” – but now all anyone is talking about is the virus and what it is doing to the economy.A recent CNN poll found Trump and his rival, former vice-president Joe Biden, tied among registered voters at 49% apiece on who would handle the economy better. Back in May, 54% of registered voters said Trump would handle the economy better, compared with 42% for Biden.Graul expects a close race. Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin by just 0.77% in 2016. The polls currently have Biden ahead by a clear 6.5% in the state, but in a year that feels like no other anything can happen between now and 3 November.In this volatile environment, progressives have been making gains with voters, reflecting on the fragility of the economy Trump had hoped would re-elect him.Earlier this month, the advocacy group Opportunity Wisconsin held a town hall with Wisconsinites from around that state, who talked about how they see Trump’s economy. It wasn’t a pretty picture.For an hour on Zoom, the Democratic senator Tammy Baldwin led a discussion with dairy farmers and cheese makers talking about friends and neighbors going out of business even before the pandemic began. University of Wisconsin history professor Selika Ducksworth-Lawton spoke powerfully about how the virus has devastated communities of color in the state. “For marginalized communities, this has been awful. There have been some people who have referred to it almost as an ethnic cleansing,” she said. “We have failed at the most basic requirements of a nation state.”But perhaps the clearest example of the problems that preceded the pandemic, and have been sadly highlighted by it, came from Kyra Swenson, an early childhood educator from Madison. “I’m a teacher, I’m not a business owner. I don’t have a lot of wealth. It’s just me and my husband trying to make life swing for ourselves and our two kids,” said Swenson.Even before the pandemic, she said she felt she was getting very little help. Early childhood educators make about $10 an hour in Wisconsin and receive no benefits. “We don’t get a retirement account. We don’t give two hoots about what Wall Street is doing. We are not investing in that. We are trying to pay our rent, pay for food.”A third of Wisconsin’s early childhood educators are on federal assistance “because that is how hard it is for us to make it.”Trump’s biggest policy achievement – a $1.5tn tax cut that was billed as a “middle-class miracle” – actually increased her family’s taxes, she said. “It didn’t benefit us. That’s the reality.”And the Trump administration’s response to the pandemic has been “terrifying”, she said. She thinks it is no coincidence that Wisconsin’s rates have spiked since children and college students went back to school – a move that came after Trump said children could not spread the coronavirus, an opinion that has been widely debunked. “It didn’t have to be this bad,” she said.Changing mindsOpportunity Wisconsin, aided by the progressive advocacy organization the Hub Project, has had remarkable success turning opinion around on Trump’s economic success through targeted messaging. But it has had big obstacles to overcome, not just because changing opinions is notoriously hard.The Republicans have been remarkably successful in their economic messaging, not least in Wisconsin. Since Ronald Reagan, the Republican party has promulgated the idea that there is a simple formula for economic success: lower taxes, less regulation and smaller government. That message, repeated over and over for 40 years, helped Wisconsin shift from a bastion of progressive politics to a union-bashing laboratory for rightwing economic experiments led by Scott Walker, the former governor, and Paul Ryan, the former House speaker, and backed by the Koch brothers. More

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      in US Politics

      Stock Market America is booming. So is Unemployment America | Lloyd Green

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      The chasm between the two Americas – “Unemployment America” and “Stock Market America” – made starkly visible this spring, has not disappeared. Instead, the divide has widened.America’s stock indexes have weathered the pandemic; the country’s job markets less so. On Thursday, the labor department reported nearly 900,000 new unemployment claims and Columbia University announced that 8 million Americans had fallen into poverty since May.Meanwhile, the number of Covid-19 cases continues to climb, the Affordable Care Act stands in legal jeopardy, and Amy Coney Barrett, the president’s latest pick for the supreme court, will not tell us if she believes that Medicare and social security pass constitutional muster. The New Deal may yet be undone.On that score, language that soothed the White House and Republicans may come back to haunt them at the ballot box. According to polls, older voters are prepared to vote for Joe Biden, a Democrat, in a marked departure from elections past.Donald Trump, not to mention many Republicans in Congress, do not seem to understand that for millions of older Americans, social security and Medicare are not nice-to-haves or cushy benefits handed out at the benevolent whims of the state. Rather, they are the earned benefits of a lifetime of work. According to US government data, social security benefits constitute about one-third of the income of the elderly, and for many even more.According to the New York Times, in February, at the same time that the Trump administration was declaring that the virus was not a big deal, the president’s top advisers tipped off the gods of the markets and the Republican donor base that the outbreak would be worse than the administration was saying publicly. Trump and his minions acted as if they believed the public could not handle the truth even as Wall Street dumped its holdings.Against that backdrop, preserving healthcare and retirement is the least they can do. But we know they won’t. Both the president and Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, have spoken openly of cutting or “adjusting” entitlements. Then again, McConnell laughs about the failure of Congress to deliver Covid relief.On the campaign trail, the populist rhetoric of Trump’s 2016 campaign has given way, in 2020, to self-pity and personal resentments. The president wants us to feel his pain even as it appears that he is incapable of feeling ours. His relationship with his core supporters grows ever more asymmetric.When Trump’s refusal to wear a mask in public is taken as a sign of defiant courage, the body politic is certainly ailing. Half of Americans view their personal situations as better than they were four years ago. At the same time, however, nearly three in five voters see the country as being in worse shape than at the outset of the Trump presidency.When Trump’s refusal to wear a mask in public is taken as a sign of courage, the body politic is ailingWith nearly 220,000 people dead from the disease, the state of the Union is definitely hurting. The much touted “V”-shaped recovery is slow in coming, if it ever arrives.Don’t look to election day to bind the nation’s wounds. The realities that led to Trump’s electoral college upset are still with us.The gaps between the rural US, white evangelicals, white voters without college degrees and the rest of the country have not disappeared. Military suicides are up by a fifth and death by opioids has returned. Beyond that, the issue of immigration retains its potency.True, the president may have given his base a sense of calm but the causes of grievance have not gone away. What David Brooks once described as an idyllic urban existence, Bobos in Paradise, appears to have turned into a hell for everyone else. Expect Trumpism to live on, regardless of what happens on 3 November and the days that follow.A definitive Biden victory stands to provide the US with a president whose political legitimacy is less open to question or attack. Unlike George W Bush in 2004 or the incumbent, a Biden win would likely be accompanied by a majority of the popular vote.Beyond that, Biden does not carry Clinton-era baggage. The former vice-president is not a child of 1960. Likewise, no one has ever seriously accused the reflexively centrist “man from Scranton” of being a radical. Together, that would help lower the temperature for a bit, anyway, and that counts.The two Americas will not disappear any time soon. At most, we can at least hope for some civility, and God knows we can use it. More