Bullet Point Thoughts On 2020 National Election- The Most Bizarre Ever?

I thought I'd offer some bullet point thoughts on 2020 National Election. . . And wasn't it the most bizarre ever?

These bullet points are mostly collected from National Notice tweets (hence the hyperlinks*) as I reacted to the unfolding of the election.  Collecting them caused me to think, generation a few more for the collection.  (Most of these bullets/tweets are my authorship, but a few extra thoughts were so prevalent in the twitterverse that I just picked their expression in tweets from others.-- I think you'll be able to tell which are which.)

(* Note:  In many of cases clicking through to the tweet will take you to links to the facts or an article upon which the tweet is based.)

"Bullet Points" refers to the convention of preceding short thoughts with a 'bullet" dot.  National Notice often gets quite a few compliments for "connecting the dots."  Today we won't be trying so hard to do so.  Mainly, we hope that each of these bullet points presents some pith that is worth spending some time with in reflecting on the big picture of the election overall.  But that shouldn't prevent you from experimenting; you are welcome to experiment on your own in connecting "the dots." 

We are coming out of an election cycle where people, very invested in seeing things certain ways, have often been censoriously impatient with wider ranging viewpoints.  Hopefully, with my offers of things to think over without telling you what to think, you won't reject the thoughts here as just being too "dotty."

     •    Why were the polls so very, very wrong, predicting a Biden landslide and huge Democratic victories?  Certainly there’s been analysis loquaciously offered. And none of that we’ve seen is at all satisfactory.

    •    When the polls are so very wrong (i.e. predicting Biden landslide, huge Democratic victories) two contrary explanations can both be a bit true together: 1.) The polls misled, 2.) Votes went uncounted.- Warning: Any distrust of this election makes you a Trump' conspiracist. . .  (These questions apply to the polls being wrong in 2016 as well.)  

    •    As we fascinate over how wrong the national election polls were, it is interesting to ask ‘what did Google know’ and could Google ever have been that wrong? And if Google had information, where did it go?

    •    Democrats running as Republicans lost ground to the Republicans even when the Republicans should’ve been especially vulnerable. Guess the Republicans do it better.

    •    Given that the polls were so very, very wrong, predicting a Biden landslide and huge Democratic victories, questions never got asked about why Biden and the DNC were running such a lousy campaign when they were running it and it would have made a difference.

    •    (If you can believe the polls) The support racist misogynist Trump got from White men declined. 26% of his votes were from non-white voters: 32-35% of Latino vote, doubling his support from Black women from 4% to 8%, White women went from 53% to 55%, and Black men went from 13% to 18%.  

    •    Not since 1960, in other words, not for 60 years, has a Republican gotten as high a percentage of the non-White votes as Donald Trump did in this 2020 presidential election.  Support from the LGBTQ community doubled from 14% to 28%.  

   •    More people voted for Trump in 2020 than 2016. In almost all traditionally Democratic voting cohorts greater percentages voted  for Trump, but this was made up for by greater Democratic turnout, which may have been due to new Covid-inspired voting procedures. If no Covid, then what?  

    •    Two reasons to suspect Covid prevented 2020 Trump win: 1.) Dems lost percentage of base but won b/c of turnout facilitated by easier voting, & 2.) Media constantly berated Trump on virus handling. 

     •    @RaniaKhalek It’s pretty crazy to think that if it wasn’t for Covid-19 Trump would have likely won by a lot...

    •    Fox News exit poll: 72% of voters want change to government run health care system, 78% racism is a problem, 70% pathway to citizenship for immigrants, 72% concerned about climate change, 70% increased spending on renewable energy . AND. .60% say government should do more (at 42:00)   

     •    @krystalball Nov 4 Fox News exits had 70% backing govt healthcare and big majorities for climate action. Florida passed $15 minimum wage with 60% of vote. Dems could have run on these things but instead they chose some vague sanctimonious soul of the nation bullshit.   

    •    During this election the economic effects of a worldwide pandemic were stripping people nationally of their jobs and healthcare, but both candidates for president were opposing providing healthcare for all, Biden promising to veto Medicare for All if passed.

    •    We had w/ Black Lives Matter, perhaps the “Largest Movement in U.S. History” w/ the majority of U.S voters supporting it by a 28-point margin, and we elected president the author of the 1994 mass incarceration crime law and the “Top Cop” Kamala Harris?  

     •    Worthwhile to remember: Notwithstanding that we’re facing existential threats, this was the least issue-based national election for any of us living today. That includes the 2016 where Trump addressed issues more often than Hillary Clinton.  

    •    Correlations: Democratic cosponsors of Medicare for all won, opponents got defeated; Green New Deal cosponsors likewise win. “The more Democrats in swing districts ran on the Right, the fewer votes they were likely to receive.” 

      •    @jacobinmag   The Democratic leadership went into this election with a strategy: stick to the center, avoid the Left, and promise bipartisanship. When the results proved disastrous, guess who they decided to blame: the Left.

    •    NPR signals us to go right?: Is NPR too dutiful a conduit for mainstream media “wisdom” that Biden won laudably as a centrist while the Democrats lost ground this election b/c the swing votes and regions needing to be won “are simply not that progressive”?

    •    NPR began this segment discussing the purported need for the Democrats to move Right with a quote to that effect from Democratic House member Abigail Spanberger not noting she's a former CIA operative or how badly she just did in her own campaign.  

    •    Following declaration of a Biden win, NPR teaches its listeners that “progressives” such as Elizabeth Warren are too “polarizing” plus scary to the financial industry to put in the Biden cabinet. 

    •    NPR showcases kindly offered Republican advice that Democrats wouldn’t have lost electoral ground if only they had run more to the right. Who’s expected to swallow that poppycock?: Democrats? NPR Listeners?

    •    Dashing hopes, reducing expectations: NPR (thank you very much) cautions that Biden will be constrained in addressing climate change because of gridlock and the countervailing force of the Republicans who prevailed in this election.

    •    Remember?: Biden worried (Iowa- Dec.) that the Dems might get too many seats in election w/ Republicans “clobbered.”  "I'm really worried that no party should have too much power. .  You need [the GOP as] a countervailing force."- Guess he got his wish!

    •    Wall Street is very happy with the election: Biden the president with a Republican Senate and reduction of Democrats in the House as an excuse for gridlock and Biden to deliver on his promise that NOTHING WILL CHANGE.    

    •    Stragedy? Is “stragedy” the right word to describe how the DNC corporate Democrats strategically connive to set it up that they always “have to” concede to Republican demands? 

    •    Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz Oct 28, 2020 US presidential elections are often very close because the US populace is deliberately kept evenly split between two ideological camps with a lot of emotional hostility and very little policy difference, ensuring they're kept divided against each other and united for the machine. 

    •    Retweeting 5/11/'19 National Notice article as reminder: While a “divided” America excuses government inaction, the vast majority of Americans, supermajorities, are actually united on what they want to see done with respect to most of the top, most important issues.  

    •    Assessing 2020 as most bizarre presidential campaign race ever, we're duty bound to remember the primaries w/ mucho shenanigans pulled to squelch Bernie & Republican Michael Bloomberg (seller of NYC libraries) ran as a Democrat collecting Dem's voter data.

    •    It almost seems as if the more tedious suspense there is in the networks declaring a presidential winner, the more one is supposed to emotionally invest in rooting for Biden whom we (Bernie supporters) never liked in the first place. Is it supposed to work that way?     

    •    Seeing Biden election jubilation several multiples of Obama ‘08, yet Obama promised (didn’t deliver) hope and change and voted against Iraq war; Biden says “no fundamental change”+ manipulated us into Iraq war. Why do we accept these shifting expectations? And with joy?

    •    @yashalevine entire cities cheering for a rightwing neoliberal bully with dementia. what a time to be alive. not a time to not be heavily medicated.

     •    @aaronjmate Two months ago, Kamala told CNN that Russian interference -- undefined, of course, because who needs details? -- could cost Biden the election. Since Biden won, expect us to now hear zilch about "Russian interference." It's outlived its partisan utility.

     •    @LeeCamp This is how you know the “Russian interference” crap was a lie all along - 

    •    Being skeptical or suspicious about our elections (for a huge segment of the population) is out of fashion for 2020. 2016 we had a conspiracy theory about Russia influencing the election (wrong reason for suspicion).  2020 we trust in the system. 

    •    Department of Homeland Security: election was "most secure" in U.S. history"; elections ensure technology is not "a single point of failure"; measures ensure "your vote is counted correctly"; You should have confidence their integrity, don't "overreact."  

    •    Super-tweeter Tim Wu tweeted that George W. Bush had done a "solid" by official recognition of Biden's election with congratulations.   Our National Notice response: Eager to extricate Trump from the 24/7 news cycle or not, this has too strange a resonance given that when all is said and done G. W. Bush did not win Florida in 2000. It should be enough for Biden to have simple won on the votes, not via GWB pronouncements of congratulation. 

    •    Still relevant Democracy Now headline from Oct 21, 2020: Joe Biden Vets Republicans for Cabinet Positions, Won’t Disclose Names of Major Fundraisers 

     •    BIDEN's Cabinet Looking WORSE Than Expected! (Jimmy Dore)

    •    Still relevant and not all that dated: Krystal and Saagar: Biden’s Floated Cabinet Is RETURN Of The Clinton-Obama Swamp (Oct 14).

    •    Panel: Floated Biden Cabinet Like West Wing Episode From Hell (Nov 9 from Krystal and Saagar).  

    •    Saagar Enjeti REVEALS How The SWAMP Will Run Top Levels Of Biden White House (Nov 19) 

    •    @RaniaKhalek Michele Flournoy [proposed Pentagon Chief] sits on the board of Booz Allen & helped negotiate tens of millions of $$$ in military contracts at Boston Consulting Group. Susan Rice [proposed Secretary of State] backed handing over Libya and Syria to a collection of extremist groups that literally brought back slavery! Is this a joke?

    •    One Third of Biden's Pentagon Transition Team Hails From Organizations Financed by the Weapons Industry- The president-elect is drawing from hawkish think tanks funded by arms companies. 

    •    If you think of war as a racket, then all the military appointments to administrations such as Biden’s (Trump’s too) are just more examples of more swampy conflicts of interest. . .  Absolutely no better than the other examples and in other ways tragically much worse.  

    •    Doors Revolve- Going to work alongside what’s shaping up as Biden’s hawk & Wall Street cabinet: Corporate Blue Broadcaster MSNBC & CNN “news” staff; 1 MSNBCer who was already secretly writing Biden’s speeches, plus at least another MSNBC 3 and 1 from CNN.

    •    Cecilia Muñoz, Who Defended Family Separations Under Obama, Joins Biden Transition Team- “Muñoz often justified Obama’s harsh immigration enforcement policies, including the administration’s deportation of thousands of Central American children” 

    •    Climate Activists Condemn Biden’s Appointment of Rep. Cedric Richmond, a Major Fossil Fuel Ally- Sunrise Movement: A betrayal- one of Biden’s first hires “has taken more donations from the fossil fuel industry  . . than any other Democrat.”    

    •    Does continuing preoccupation, and being on tenterhooks with concern about whether Trump will be successfully ushered out of office tend to make off limits dismay about how Biden’s cabinet is shaping up as swampy, corporate, and militaristic?  

    •    Will the two Senate runoff races in Georgia help Democrats regain balance of power?: Both Democratic candidates oppose Medicare for All and Green New Deal although polls say Georgia voters want those things.   

    •    Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll: Nearly two-thirds of Georgia voters, about 63%, believe the U.S. is not doing enough and should do more to combat climate change. But the two Democratic candidates in Senate runoff elections don’t support the Green New Deal. 

    •    @politico Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her top lieutenants had a stark warning for Democrats today: swing too far left and they’re all but certain to blow their chances in the Georgia runoff that will determine which party controls the Senate. 

My Experiment With “Russian Doll” Tweets (Tweets Starting From Bernie Sanders Suspending His Campaign To Michael Bloomberg Being Declared U.S. Treasury Secretary In The Event of Marshal Law– And Back Again!)

I’ve just experimented with creating a chain of “Russian Doll” Tweets.

Maybe it’s cabin fever from spending too much time alone indoors sequestered away from friends and community . . .

. . . or maybe, it’s that this Russian Doll Tweet exercise I’ve engaged in is solace, providing the illusion of an organized structure for information as we experience overload.  The inflow of news and information about coronavirus that spins around us seems so disorganized and unhelpful, at least to me, the 24/7 news cycle pelting us with statistics that inadequately describe multiple unknowns.

My Russian Doll Tweets (from @WhiteMDD, my personal Twitter account, not the @NatNotice National Notice Twitter account) started with noting that I still have the option of voting for Bernie Sanders in the primaries (I am a New Yorker), and those tweets went eventually to the observation that Michael Bloomberg’s buying up of Democrats’ voter data (follow the links) might have the outcome of Bloomberg’s being appointed U.S. Treasury Secretary if marshal law is declared in the wake of a “failed” national election.  (I apologize for my spelling, which on Twitter I can't go back to correct.). .

. . Twitter allowed me to create the chain because, with Twitter, you can retweet another tweet "with comment" to make a new combined Tweet.

But the only way, through Twitter, to open the Tweets and enjoy them Russian Doll style is to start with the last tweet about how Bloomberg becomes U.S. Treasury Secretary and follow it back to how I will still able to vote for Bernie Sanders even if he is not running a campaign I can financially contribute to.

However, via the posting here, I can give you the choice of enjoying the Russian Doll tweets in either direction:

To read them backward you can go to Twitter. . .

(Also, please note that some of the individual tweets, as you will see, themselves have links embedded in them that can take you to some interesting, informative places.)

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

. .  or go to the Part II end of this article.  To read them forward, as they were written, from the first, start below with Part I:

PART I

Here are the Russian Doll tweets in the order they were tweeted.

Tweet: Bernie’s suspension of it means I can no longer contribute $ for him to use in a campaign almost impossible to really run in a virus environment, but b/c he remains on all ballots collecting delegates I can still vote for him as reality continues to endorse him and Biden dements.

Tweet: And I still regret that Bernie is not more of a fighter, willing to challenge whether Biden really, truly, and honestly gained and holds the delegate lead purportedly given him by the media despite evidence to the contrary such as the highly discrepant exit polls.

Tweet: While I fume that Bernie suspended his campaign, I find his “suspension” speech seductively good. Am I just a sucker? Or is my cynical suspicion resulting in a crippling rejection of “hope.” (“Hope”? That was the Obama promise.) https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/9/bernie_sanders_drops_out_of_race

Tweet: On @democracynow @noamchomskyT offers “hope” that a “Biden” administration would be better than a Trump, even an Obama administration, b/c it would be more susceptible to the influence of a newly assertive left awakened by Sanders campaign; & address . . https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/10/noam_chomsky_trump_us_coronavirus_response

Tweet: Would a “Biden” admin be susceptible (more than Trump’s) to the influence of newly assertive left and finally address climate chaos, income inequality, militarism, etc.- The Sanders list? Biden “conceding” to lower Medicare age to 60 puts him far to the right of other Dems.

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: But there are those that think rather than wonder about the possibilities of how Continuity of Government (“COG”) concerns would be handled in a demented “Biden” administration we should worry if there will be any national elections at all. https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/09/standing-on-the-precipice-of-martial-law/

Tweet: Those worrying that Marshall Law would bring in unconstitutional Continuity of Government changes in the wake of a “failed” election include @_whitneywebb who has been writing of these worries since before the virus arrived. https://twitter.com/blacklistednews/status/1242240104644505600?s=21

Tweet: If Marshall Law is declared in the wake of a “failed” election we might, to give it cover, get something like the absolutely inane “National Unity Cabinet” proposed by bombastic NY Times columnist Tom Friedman! https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/10/bide-a10.html

Tweet: In the Tom Friedman “National Unity Cabinet” the country might get if Marshall Law is ushered in in wake of a “failed” election, Michael Bloomberg would be U.S. Treasury Secretary in exchange for spending billions to scoop up the Democrats’ voter data. https://twitter.com/whitemdd/status/1249017082987118593?s=21

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

PART II

Here are the Russian Doll tweets in the order they can be followed backward through Twitter.

Tweet: My experiment with “Russian Doll” tweets: Keep clicking on the retweeted tweet and see what I mean. 

Tweet: In the Tom Friedman “National Unity Cabinet” the country might get if Marshall Law is ushered in in wake of a “failed” election, Michael Bloomberg would be U.S. Treasury Secretary in exchange for spending billions to scoop up the Democrats’ voter data. https://twitter.com/whitemdd/status/1249017082987118593?s=21

Tweet: If Marshall Law is declared in the wake of a “failed” election we might, to give it cover, get something like the absolutely inane “National Unity Cabinet” proposed by bombastic NY Times columnist Tom Friedman! https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/04/10/bide-a10.html

Tweet: Those worrying that Marshall Law would bring in unconstitutional Continuity of Government changes in the wake of a “failed” election include @_whitneywebb who has been writing of these worries since before the virus arrived. https://twitter.com/blacklistednews/status/1242240104644505600?s=21

Tweet: But there are those that think rather than wonder about the possibilities of how Continuity of Government (“COG”) concerns would be handled in a demented “Biden” administration we should worry if there will be any national elections at all. https://off-guardian.org/2020/04/09/standing-on-the-precipice-of-martial-law/

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: It is time to start referring to a possible “Biden” administration in quotes because with Biden dementing it is far from clear who sent from the DNC would be running things.

Tweet: Would a “Biden” admin be susceptible (more than Trump’s) to the influence of newly assertive left and finally address climate chaos, income inequality, militarism, etc.- The Sanders list? Biden “conceding” to lower Medicare age to 60 puts him far to the right of other Dems.

Tweet: On @democracynow @noamchomskyT offers “hope” that a “Biden” administration would be better than a Trump, even an Obama administration, b/c it would be more susceptible to the influence of a newly assertive left awakened by Sanders campaign; & address . . https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/10/noam_chomsky_trump_us_coronavirus_response

Tweet: While I fume that Bernie suspended his campaign, I find his “suspension” speech seductively good. Am I just a sucker? Or is my cynical suspicion resulting in a crippling rejection of “hope.” (“Hope”? That was the Obama promise.) https://www.democracynow.org/2020/4/9/bernie_sanders_drops_out_of_race

Tweet: And I still regret that Bernie is not more of a fighter, willing to challenge whether Biden really, truly, and honestly gained and holds the delegate lead purportedly given him by the media despite evidence to the contrary such as the highly discrepant exit polls.

Tweet: Bernie’s suspension of it means I can no longer contribute $ for him to use in a campaign almost impossible to really run in a virus environment, but b/c he remains on all ballots collecting delegates I can still vote for him as reality continues to endorse him and Biden dements.

Reflections On What It Means To Be Retreating More Into Virtual Existence In Fear Of A Virus

This is not intended to provide any sort of conclusion as to where to draw the line about appropriate cautions to take as we make our individual and collective decisions about dealing with Covid-19.  Still, I feel it’s essential to reflect on certain things as we adopt unfamiliar, new and unnatural ways of living and societally interacting.

As we are increasingly prompted to convert all our social and interpersonal dealings into a virtual, through-the-internet verisimilitude replication of the lives that we used to lead, some kind of existence that is ethereally Matrix-like, it is important to remember how the internet was built for data-scraping and surveillance.  Amazon, with its strange history and ties to the U.S. Military and intelligence communities, already knows far too much about everyone already, and our encouraged wholesale retreat into manifesting our interactions in exclusively digitally ways will only be making the big internet monopolies more formidably ginormous and powerful.  A lot of us now find ourselves on Zoom conferencing discovering its merits as one of the prime candidates for virtual meeting options– Zoom sends your data to Facebook even if you don't have a Facebook account–  And Facebook has a record of coordinating, Big Brother style, with groups like the Atlantic Council and Cambridge Analytica that affected the 2016 election.  Let’s also remember that internet technology, knowing what it knows about us as it collects information about us for that purpose, can manipulate us as well.  It is routinely hired out to do so.

Heretofore, some of the antidote for the control of control and ubiquity of the internet was to take a break and go where the internet’s reach and influence might peter out: Have face-to-face, peer-to-peer personal interactions, read physical vs. digital books, assemble together in real meetings, assemblies and forums, listen to and support the kind of live radio that the internet cannot squelch, censor or take away.  It is part of the reason that I, as a co-founder of Citizens Defending Libraries have been fighting for the continuation of traditional libraries with physical books and trained human being librarians. . .  It is part of the reason I support WBAI radio, 99.5 FM, the Pacifica station in New York that is New York City's only truly listener supported public radio station.

. . . You may have noticed that a spin-off of the coronaviris effects has been the closure of most libraries.  We would hope that this is not subsequently cited as additional evidence that this public commons is a public asset society can now dispense with.  Meanwhile, the public’s habits of hanging out in the shallower digital internet world will, perforce, be reinforced as we live protecting ourselves from the virus.

. . . With the emphasis on digital substitution you may not have noticed that lock downs and new rules against groups of more than a certain number of people gathering, for instance restricting groups to no more than ten, leaves by the wayside the First Amendment right of assembly guaranteed by the Constitution.  Why was the right of public assembly one of the first enumerated rights?  Seasoned activists are well acquainted with the fact that when opposing war, or agitating for rights including, for instance, healthcare, the clicking of Facebook posts to like them or even generating acerbically astute and insightful Tweets, just doesn’t cut it and hardly equals the impact of crowds getting out into the streets.

We are also in the middle of a national election.  I recently joked (before some of the new really strict new controls) that those in power were coming up with a prohibition on future Bernie Sanders’s rallies, but that they weren’t bothering with an equivalent rule for Joe Biden rallies because Biden doesn’t draw any crowds.  Is there a virtual substitute for the formidably energetic Bernie troops knocking on doors; something they will not now be able to do?  Telephone calls are not the same as face-to-face knocking on doors.

Nothing is the same as face-to-face and knocking on doors because human beings were not built for virtual existences.  We are social animals designed for the social bonds that come from real interactions.  When we are infants, the mother holding the child generates the hormone oxytocin, which promotes the bond between the mother and child.  Same thing when a father holds the baby.  It is a physical thing.  The same hormones are generated when owners pet their pets, in both the pet owner and the pet.

Oxytocin from human closeness not only generates, builds and strengthens the bonds between human beings, it actually confers benefits like building up the immune system, calming us, and making us more capable.  It is ironic that, as we go into isolation to avoid getting sick with the coronavirus, we may actually, through our isolation and physical separation, be weakening our immune system’s ability to respond to and for us to survive the virus if we get infected. . .  Thinking about how important human physical touch is, holding a hand, giving and receiving a hug, I feel, in depth and achingly for the afflicted patients who must recover separated and physically apart from their loved ones.

When email took over as the new default method of communication, the phenomenon of “flaming” was widely recognized as an unfortunate byproduct. Email communications, and some internet communications can be launched instantaneously with the press of a button.  It’s not like a letter that sits around to be mailed the next day when more sober instincts might prevail.  With the disinhibition of not dealing with another person face to face, communications can be extra harsh, especially if exchanges back and forth escalate into a “flame war.”  Even face-to-face communication can be hard; you have to realize and know what you want to say; you have to say what you actually mean; other people have to hear what you actually say and they have to understand, without misinterpretation or incorrect filled-in suppositions, what you actually mean.  All of these things are harder over the internet without all the moment-to-moment micro-adjustments you can make speaking to somebody face to face as you intuitively sense from another’s physical body in the room responding, the ongoing success as opposed to misdirection of your communication.

Added to this is the way that our ongoing fear-based enforced physical separation from others can enhance our suspicions of others.  We walk through the streets now socially distancing each other and maintaining six-feet gaps like wary gunslingers in a Hollywood western.  Fear turns on our lizard brains, and these distances can enhance the instincts toward unhealthy “othering.” This comes just at a time when the obvious solution to get through our current crisis is more community cross-support for resilience.  Covid-19 could not be a more perfect and obvious “my health is your health/your health is my health” argument for Medicare for all.  With massive, nationwide layoffs because of the Covid-19 health crisis, millions of Americans are now losing their “if you like your private employer health plan, you can keep it,” health insurance right at the time when they need it most.  This is notwithstanding Joe Biden’s very recent statement that if the Democrats pass Medicare for all he will veto it if he is elected president. . .

In many ways, Americans are now in a particularly vulnerable time if anyone wants to deploy the typical kind of divide and conquer tactics that neutralize the public’s ability to organize for common goals and make our democracy work.  One of the most valuable big picture overviews available right now about the way things stand is Naomi Klein's Intercept video about the fork in the road decisions ahead of us as we face the Coronavirus crisis (Coronavirus Capitalism — and How to Beat It): Either we could go the route of improving and making our society more resilient the way FDR did in dealing with the Depression of the 1930s, or, instead, another round of disaster capitalism maneuvers could be effected.  We know that the 2008 financial crisis was mishandled by pumping money into wealthy investment funds, banks, and corporations at exactly the time that asset prices were low and temporarily suppressed, prices for things like the homes of people in the Main Street economy, and those assets and homes were then bought up by those hedge funds, banks and corporations. . .  It was one of the greatest wealth transfers ever, increasing wealth inequality in America.  Plus it was paid for with taxpayer money.  The people who lost their homes paid the taxes that financed those tilted economy buy ups that deprived them of ownership.

It's exceedingly hard to maintain a big picture consciousness when news about the virus is frenetically reported with rotating reports of the very latest statistics in different countries, different cities, different regions of different countries, the world, and then starting over again at the beginning for updates because by the time the end of the list is reached, the numbers have already up-ticked.  Alternatively, a fairly good big picture overview doesn't require drowning in the latest moment to moment statistical data: our health care system is at the point of being overwhelmed, the United States is in many ways inexcusably ill prepared for such a pandemic; and, additionally, we are not doing many of the sensible things we could be doing, and yes. . .  people should be cautious  One day, a time may come when we look back at 2020 and say, "that was a very peculiar election–how do that ever happen?"; and if, as we might  hope, the virus finally exits center stage and exact memories of it recede just the way we now have to work to remind ourselves of the 1918 flu (which occurred during the Midterm elections of President Woodrow Wilson's wartime presidential tenure), we may answer: "Oh, that's right, that was during the coronavirus crisis when we were so all distracted and worried about other things."

The coronavirus crisis feels a lot like the 2008 financial crisis and 9/11 wrapped up into one.  It is worth remembering how with the distractions of 9/11 (and the tag-team Anthrax attacks that closely followed), we, as a nation, just as with the 2008 financial crisis, also made a series of really bad decisions as we were distracted from big picture truths.

There are silver linings to our new world.  Families where parents are now working at home are spending more time together, building stronger bonds.  They are experiencing the opposite effect of the separation and isolation that is making our larger world feel so relentlessly dystopian these days.  Some may even experience the new quieting down as meditative, and it may feel as if there is also some shift away from things materialistic.  We may feel closer to some essential truths about what is truly valuable.  That is not to say that all family groups have equal tools to deal with what could feel like a pressure cooker of forced togetherness.

Not everybody has a family that they live with, and that can be unfortunate.  For many their sense ongoing family and human togetherness was achieved by getting out in the world and physically spending time communing with other people.  The virtual is an inferior substitute: Before the virus ever arrived, it has been noted how often people who spend a great deal of their time on platforms like Facebook for their companionship and for their “friends” can wind up depressed.

One last good thing to note is that it does seem that we are, for the most part, presently being good to each other despite the human separations being forced on us and the digital substitutions being offered for our existence.  Hopefully, still being good to each other, we will all be communally together again, in a real physical sense, soon.