An Ordinary Joe: The Right Man at the Right Time

Although I was born in San Antonio, TX, into a military family, my parents and grandparents were from Wilmington, Delaware. So I consider myself a native Delawarean, and as such have been very familiar with Joe Biden for many years. I am ten years younger than he, and I attended the University of Delaware nine years behind him. I consider myself an independent-leaning progressive, but nowhere close to a radical leftist. As such, up until early February I believed that the very last thing the Democrats needed in a presidential candidate in 2020 was an old white guy. Of course, like the majority of Americans, I wanted first and foremost a candidate who would put an end to the reign of King Donald I. As I listened to the prospective candidates, I thought there were a few, primarily progressive moderates like Mayor Pete, Amy Klobuchar, and Kamala Harris, who could overcome their relative inexperience and were smart enough to do it by surrounding themselves with experienced players. They were also highly effective communicators who could clearly articulate real policies without being preachy.

I don’t have to tell you what happened next. Our government botched the response to the Covid 19 pandemic worse than literally any nation in the world, and by a huge margin. The subsequent economic collapse, followed by the nationwide, continuing protest of police brutality towards minorities rounded out an unlikely and disastrous trifecta of crises. Our populace is in a state of simultaneous numbness and shock, with people’s reactions being everything from totally ignoring it all (although it’s pretty hard to ignore the economic impacts) to panicked self-isolation. We appear rudderless, not to mention woefully incompetent, to the rest of the world. I’m not going to list all of the honest mistakes, petty disputes and culture warring, and criminal negligence that have resulted in almost 140,000 American dead as of today; far better pundits than I are doing that work daily. We look at other countries’ successes and we still fail to realize that we know how to fix this; we just don’t have the national will to do it. Of course, the leadership vacuum is a huge contributor to our failure as a nation, but we ourselves are most to blame.

So that’s what we lack, but what do we need? Well, let’s imagine that we elected a leader with 40 years of experience in the labyrinthine ways that our government actually works. Who has eight years of experience as our Vice President. Who was hired in that role because of the decades of hands-on experience in foreign policy and cordial relationships with our allies, not to mention the begrudging respect of our adversaries. Of one thing you can be sure: If elected, he will assemble a team of experts in their fields, listen to their advice, tolerate their dissent, and base decisions on carefully thought-out logic and accepted science, rather than surround himself with fawning, spineless sycophants living in daily fear of (and often contempt for) their leader.

Oh, but you say, “What about all his shortcomings; his questionable votes on so many issues; his shameful handling of the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings in 1990?” Joe Biden would be the first person to admit that he’s been wrong and made mistakes, but even his fiercest adversaries across the aisle never question his patriotism and loyalty. No one can work for 40 years at the highest levels of our government and not make serious mistakes. “But, he’s old and senile, or worse, suffering from actual dementia.” Almost anyone who has followed his career, and certainly anyone from Delaware, will tell you that Joe has been the master of the malapropism since he first entered the senate in 1973 at age 31. A comparison of his current speaking and writing ability with our current president would serve him very well, to say the least. He is in excellent health for his age, exercises regularly, and is not overweight. I don’t call the current president nasty names. I still have respect for the office, though it appears tarnished and cheapened to me, most of my countrymen, and people around the world, to the dismay of our allies and the joy of our foes. 

But there is one outsized reason that I changed my mind about Joe for president, fully acknowledging his mistakes and shortcomings.

And that is empathy. Joe has been through hell and back in his personal life, losing a wife and a one year old daughter just weeks after his election to the senate, and his beloved son Beau to cancer in 2015. Due to these and other experiences, Joe has deep and genuine empathy for all those who are suffering grief and any kind of loss, not just family deaths. He deeply cares about the plight of minorities and women, and is the perfect man to battle the Coronavirus to its knees. He is by nature not a cynical man. He is the anti-Trump when it comes to empathy; that much is indisputable.

It's time we put our faith and our fate in the hands of an ordinary Joe.

Portland, OR

July 14, 2020

(And watch Joe's new Texas ad here.)

American Suicide 2020

It should have been a 9/11 moment in America. A WWII-like show of national unity. And make no mistake, there is plenty of “Let’s put our differences and politics aside and work through this together” going on around the nation since the Covid 19 pandemic invaded our land. But there exists a sizable and very angry and vocal minority who have effectively turned a public health crisis and national emergency into another chance to throw one of their juvenile temper tantrums, throwing around words like “liberty” and “tyranny” while having not the slightest clue as to the nuanced meanings of these important concepts. If you ever would have told me that the simple and empirically effective tactics of social distancing and mask-wearing in public would become a political and cultural war, I would have requested that you share whatever you were smoking. But look at the protests, social media assaults, and yes, real assaults that are occurring daily because some dumb, impotent, assault weapon-toting white assholes, who have never tasted real oppression in their lives, are throwing hissy-fits over not being able to visit the barber shop or tattoo parlor. Oh, the tyranny!

Although admittedly suffering a bad case of “outrage fatigue” like most conscious Americans, I truly never thought it possible to rise to the DEFCON 1-like level of total absurdity to which the current administration has sunk. Ignoring specific and repeated warnings from medical experts and scientists from around the world for almost two months, not even trying to conceive, much less implement, a plan to prepare the nation they supposedly serve, and blatantly lying about the nature and scope of the pandemic, Trump and his cult have unquestionably promulgated a disaster of cosmic proportion, the effects of which will be felt for years, if not decades.

And it continues.

Week after week over the last three months, the situation has worsened, and to a degree far outstripping our worst original fears. And we get nothing but lies, incompetence, and stupidity from our so-called leaders. Lies like claiming the virus is under control, that no one could have ever predicted such a thing and blaming the previous administration for their lack of preparedness (the Obama administration left a 69-page playbook literally titled “Playbook for Early Response to High-Consequence Emerging Infectious Disease Threats and Biological Incidents”), among literally hundreds of others. Incompetence like utterly failing to get out in front of the virus’ spread by aggressively pursuing and implementing a national testing plan, completely botching the acquisition and distribution of PPE and other medical supplies without any kind of coordinated plan, going so crazy far as to have Jared Kushner construct a shadow organization to control said distribution. (Not to put too fine a point on it, but Kushner has zero experience in this field and completely blew the mission.) And stupidity? Too harsh? How about repeated claims that the virus would “disappear like magic”, that “no one understands what the virus is “(we do), and of course, possibly the dumbest thing Trump has ever said – and that’s a high bar – which deserves to be quoted in full:

 "So I asked Bill a question some of you are thinking of if you're into that world, which I find to be pretty interesting. So, supposing we hit the body with a tremendous, whether its ultraviolet or just very powerful light, and I think you said, that hasn't been checked but you're gonna test it. And then I said, supposing it brought the light inside the body, which you can either do either through the skin or some other way, and I think you said you're gonna test that too, sounds interesting. And I then I see the disinfectant, where it knocks it out in one minute, and is there a way you can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. Because you see it gets in the lungs, and it does a tremendous number on the lungs. So it'd be interesting to check that. So you're going to have to use medical doctors, but it sounds interesting to me, so we'll see. But the whole concept of the light, the way it goes in one minute, that's pretty powerful."

Absent a vaccine or even a proven drug therapy, we know how to confront this pandemic. We know from the success of many other countries, who (all but one, Sweden) have committed to early and aggressive testing, tracing, and isolating, immediate near-total lockdown, and a national commitment to social distancing and mask-wearing. What we have implemented on a completely scattershot basis due to the absence of any national plan has been weak, incomplete, and only partially effective. Where other countries have made a national commitment to eradicating Covid 19 from their nation, our catastrophic failure to act early and decisively has doomed us to mitigation efforts to “flatten the curve.” That this is the best we can do is a direct result of the president’s failure to lead.

And what to make of his constantly changing and frequently contradictory statements on the coronavirus? Searching for some thread of consistency in his typically unhinged remarks and tweets, I have noticed a few things. First, he has never really believed in testing, primarily because it will make his “numbers” look worse. Face it folks, he doesn’t care a whit about you, me, or how many people die. It’s obviously all about his reelection, which looks increasingly unlikely. Second, he is an anti-vaxxer, and has been for years. He has frequently claimed that both testing and vaccination are highly overrated, and that “we may not even need a vaccine.” And third, it is painfully obvious that he does not believe in even the weak and unspecific guidelines that came from his own task force. A very interesting editorial in the New York Times last week by Thomas Friedman (I am not normally a fan) posited: Has Trump Decided to Follow Sweden and Just Not Told Us? Friedman says:

“Sweden has chosen moderate social distancing, keeping a lot of its economy open, while trying to protect the most vulnerable and letting those least vulnerable — those most likely to experience the coronavirus either asymptomatically or as a mild or tough flu — continue to work, get the virus and develop immunity to it. Then, when enough of them are immune, they can sound the all-clear for the vulnerable. That’s Sweden’s strategy, but it is too early to say it’s the right answer.

If you listened to Trump last week you heard a president who was all over the place. One day he talked as though he wanted to follow Sweden in getting a lot of people back to work, even if many more would get infected. Another day, he boasted that we’re testing just like China — only more so. Another day he disputed the need for testing at all.

In brief: Trump talks like China, envies Sweden, prepares for neither and insists that his strategy is superior to both."

I think Trump is trapped. He's doing his best to distract the populace with his shiny objects, the latest and most ridiculous of which is his Obamagate fantasy. He knows there will more deaths, and probably lots more, but he feels that he needs the economy to rebound if he is to have any chance at all in the fall. How else to explain the “opening” of the country, when not a single state has achieved even phase one of the three-phase guidelines provided by the task force. As I’ve written before, the choice between battling the pandemic and restoring the economy is a false and dangerous one. Virtually every expert has decried this move. Even Time Magazine, in their May cover story, weighs in with an article called “There’s a Right Way to Reopen America: This Isn’t It.” But even the liberal media like CNN, as they report the experts’ opinion, will not come out and say the truth: this is suicide for the America we know and love. Plus, the disinformation, already an epidemic on its own, has worsened. Completely predictably, people are already pointing at the lack of a spike in infections in Georgia, the poster child for stupidity in “reopening, after just one week. The incubation period for Covid 19 is up to two weeks. You don’t have to be a scientist to figure out what happens next.

I am typically a glass-half-full optimist, but the only slight ray of hope I see is that maybe enough people will be smart enough to wear masks and continue rigorous social distancing and lobbying their leadership for a real testing regimen for workplaces and particularly schools. In fact, over two thirds (68%) of Americans feel that the states are relaxing restrictions too soon.

Trump famously claimed that he could "stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody" and "not lose any voters." Epidemiologists have estimated the 90% of the deaths in the USA form Covid 19 could have been prevented by early action from the national leadership. Today we stand at 86,537 deaths in the USA; 90% of that number is 77,883. To the Trump cult and the conscience-challenged Republican party, I say: Maybe your boy could shoot "somebody" and not lose your vote, but what if he let 77,883 of your fellow American die in loneliness and agony?

Does he still get your vote?

Portland, OR

May 15, 2020

A Dispatch from the Left Coast

To say these are some strange days would be the understatement of the century. We are all challenged by this new normal of “shelter in place,” a term which I seriously dislike and is virtually meaningless. How about “self-isolation?” That seems a bit more literal to me. In any case, I have been self-isolating since Friday, March 13^th. 22 days as of today, April 2^nd. I am not quarantined; I have been to the supermarket twice, ditto the liquor store, and go for a walk around our local park once a day, rain or shine. We have also picked up to-go food once a week or so, mainly to support our neighborhood restaurants. It’s been quite the adjustment for a guy who follows the euro model of shopping for groceries every single day, composing the evening meal as I wander the aisles.

As someone who enjoys socializing, I miss our near-daily happy hour glass of wine at The Fields Bar and Grill, a small, upscale sports bar just a block and a half from our Pearl District condo here in Portland, OR. Communication by text, Facebook, and FaceTime has been a decent substitute, and I can’t imagine what it would be like without any electronic communication capabilities. Our daughter has set up a weekly family get-together via Zoom, where we play games, have trivia contests, or share a family dinner, all in the virtual world. Like anyone who has been paying attention, I wish I would have bought some Zoom shares about a month ago!

When the schools first closed and the stay-at-home order for Oregon was issued, I was appalled when, on my daily walkabout, I saw 20 or 25 children all playing in close proximity on the playground, with a dozen or so parents congregating with no regard for social distancing. Then Oregonians started to die, which put an instant end to the cavalier attitudes of some folks. I am extremely proud of my Pearl District neighbors, 100% of whom are taking self-isolation and social distancing very seriously. 

If you feel frustrated by your states’ “doubling rate,” where state-wide cases double every 2-5 days, take a look at the west coast states as illustrated in the graph above. Washington, the first and one of the hardest hit states, has dramatically slowed the growth of the virus, and California is in the process of “flattening the curve” as well. But look at Oregon. As of yesterday, we had over 600 cases of Corvid 19, compared to over 6,000 in Washington state and over 10,000 in California. We have seen 19 deaths in Oregon so far, with none of the deceased under 65 years old (more than 2/3 over 80) and all 19 (100%) had underlying medical conditions. As testing in Oregon has dramatically increased over the last two weeks, the new cases and deaths per day have not doubled, much less skyrocket as i states like Louisiana and Florida. We have yet to have a single day with over 100 new cases, and the cases per day have been fluctuating between 40 and 80 per day, but most significantly have not been going up every single day, and there is, so far, no doubling rate here. At least for now, our curve has been flattened.

Obviously, all that could change very quickly, but there is reason for optimism. I point these numbers out not to gloat over my state’s performance, but rather in the hope of driving home the point that if we all rigorously adhere to the stay-at-home directives and maintain social distancing, there is indeed a light at end of this very dark tunnel.

Stay safe and healthy, all of you.


Portland, OR
April 2, 2020