Kevin Drum

A blog of my opinions. Plus charts and cats.

  • Trump’s Tulsa Rally Is Boring and Poorly Attended

    June 20, 2020

    Wow. It looks like the big Trump rally in Tulsa is a big bust. First of all, hardly anyone showed up:


    The outside overflow event was canceled completely, and the stage was torn down hours before the start of the main indoor rally:

    But worst of all, it sounds like Trump’s schtick is boring. Apparently he can’t even get much applause when he attacks Joe Biden. Twitter, as always, has up-to-the-minute coverage:

    This is mostly just a low-energy repeat of 2016. That might not work so well in 2020.

  • Yet More Revenge From the Trump Administration

    June 20, 2020

    This is also from yesterday, so I missed it, but honest to God, the balls on these guys:

    The top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, who has investigated President Trump’s closest associates, was refusing to leave his position on Saturday after Attorney General William P. Barr tried to fire him, setting up an extraordinary standoff over the independence of law enforcement and the president’s purge of officials he views as disloyal.

    Mr. Barr abruptly announced the resignation late Friday night of the prosecutor, Geoffrey S. Berman, United States attorney for the Southern District of New York….But Mr. Berman then quickly issued a statement denying that he was leaving. “I have not resigned, and have no intention of resigning, my position,” Mr. Berman said, adding that he had learned that he was “stepping down” from a Justice Department news release.

    There’s a bunch of crap that goes along with this, mostly excuses about how this isn’t really retaliation for doing too good a job of investigating Rudy Giuliani, but none of it matters. This is, obviously, retaliation for doing too good a job of investigating Rudy Giuliani.

    Needless to say, even Trump and Barr wouldn’t have the nerve to do something so obvious if they thought there was the slightest chance of their fellow Republicans refusing to go along. But Republicans have gone along with every other instance of Trump’s retaliation against anyone who doesn’t toe the line, so there’s no reason to think they’ll suddenly revolt over this one.

  • Juneteenth Should Be a National Holiday

    June 20, 2020

    Image of Sports/Newscom via ZUMA

    From yesterday:

    In the wake of the nationwide outcry over the killing of George Floyd, bipartisan calls have amplified to name Juneteenth — June 19, which commemorates the end of slavery — a federal holiday. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif, teased the bill Thursday night, telling MSNBC, “Together with my colleagues Cory Booker, Tina Smith, and Ed Markey, we are proposing that Juneteenth be a national holiday. And we are dropping that bill saying that Juneteenth should be a national holiday.”

    This is a great idea, and the more I hear about it the better it sounds. I’ve heard arguments that Juneteenth is a little bit arbitrary, since it commemorates only the day that Texas finally announced the Emancipation Proclamation, and that instead we should celebrate the passage of the 13th Amendment, which is when slavery in the United States was truly abolished. But this is an argument that, even if it’s offered in good faith, is all head and no heart, yet another example of white people trying to hijack a Black movement. The whole history of Juneteenth is interesting, but the key to it is that Black Americans celebrate it and that’s the day that many of them want to observe.

    Beyond that, I like the coincidental placement of Juneteenth shortly before July 4th. Both are important and both are starting points: July 4th is the start of the long road to democracy, which took nearly 200 years to finally reach full enfranchisement; Juneteenth is the start of the long road to Black freedom, which is at 155 years and counting. That gives us a two-week period that commemorates the history of both of these things, which is a far more effective opportunity for education than the current method, which is usually to invite Black writers to write July 4th op-eds about how Independence Day is really Independence for Whites Day. Placing Black writers into this position is unfair to them and unfair to history. Here’s hoping this bill passes the Senate unanimously.

    And for CEOs and HR departments who complain that company policy allots only 10 days off and this means getting rid of some other holiday, just suck it up and give your workers 11 days off. It won’t kill you.

  • Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: June 19 Update

    June 20, 2020

    Here’s the coronavirus death toll through June 19. There’s nothing really new to report, so instead let’s take a look at Tulsa, Oklahoma, home of President Trump’s big rally tonight:

    That sure doesn’t look like a place where you want to take any chances, does it? Like, for example holding a huge indoor rally where nobody will be wearing masks because masks are for sissies. In the technical parlance, this is the kind of gathering that has a good chance of turning into a “superspreader” event, which has turned out to be a big driver of COVID-19 growth. But then again, maybe they’ll get lucky. I dunno. Do you feel lucky, Donald? Well, do you, punk?

    The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

  • It’s Early, But Trump Sure Looks Like He’s In Trouble

    June 19, 2020

    Joe Biden has a big lead over Donald Trump in the national polls right now, but we political sophisticates all know that what really matters is the Electoral College. I haven’t been paying much attention to this because it’s still too early for polls to be very meaningful, but I got curious anyway and hopped over to 538 to get the straight dope. Here it is:

    The “blue wall” of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, which doomed Hillary Clinton in 2016, now appears to be pretty rock solid again. Even Ohio and Georgia look winnable for Biden.

    It’s still too early to take this too seriously. Trump hasn’t started campaigning in earnest, and neither has Biden. Plus, you know, stuff might happen between now and November. Still, things are not looking too good for Trump right now. Tentatively, then, hooray!

  • State Department Official Resigns Over Trump’s Racism

    June 19, 2020

    From the Washington Post:

    A senior State Department official who has served in the Trump administration since its first day is resigning over President Trump’s recent handling of racial tensions across the country — saying that the president’s actions “cut sharply against my core values and convictions.”

    Mary Elizabeth Taylor, assistant secretary of state for legislative affairs, submitted her resignation Thursday. Taylor’s five-paragraph resignation letter, obtained by The Washington Post, serves as an indictment of Trump’s stewardship at a time of national unrest from one of the administration’s highest-ranking African Americans and an aide who was viewed as loyal and effective in serving his presidency.

    Taylor is no squish. She’s a lifelong Republican who has served in Mitch McConnell’s office, in the White House, and then in the State Department. She’s also a Black woman who apparently reached her limit over President Trump’s revolting actions, particularly over the past few weeks.

    Next up: maybe a few white appointees could resign too? That would be nice.

  • Coronavirus Growth in Western Countries: June 18 Update

    June 19, 2020

    Here’s the coronavirus death toll through June 18. Does anyone know of a really good article that explains the German miracle? Did they adopt different countermeasures than, say, France and Belgium? Did they adopt them earlier? Did everyone in Germany take them more seriously? Or what? It’s not just that they’ve had the best response to the pandemic; they’ve had the best response by light years among large countries. There are other countries that have also done well (Denmark, Norway, Austria, Greece, Switzerland), but they’re all a fraction of the size of Germany.

    Or, for that matter, I’d be interested in a good piece that looks at all the countries with low mortality rates and tries to tease out what they did right. Any suggestions?

    The raw data from Johns Hopkins is here. The Public Health Agency of Sweden is here.

  • Lunchtime Photo

    June 18, 2020

    This is my mother’s workbench. Actually, it was originally her father’s workbench, which she inherited many years ago. It’s probably close to a century old at this point.

    November 10, 2019 — Garden Grove, California

  • We Need More Women on Police Forces

    June 18, 2020

    That's a lotta testosterone on the march there.Alicia Armijo/ZUMA

    Want to reduce the toxic masculinity that defines so many militarized police forces in the US? Rosa Brooks says part of the answer is obvious:

    Decades of research show female officers can handle hostile and violent suspects as well as their male counterparts, but a 2017 Pew survey found only 11 percent of female officers reported they had ever fired their weapon while on duty, compared with 30 percent of male officers. Female officers were also less likely to believe aggression is more useful than courtesy, less likely to agree some people “can only be brought to reason the hard, physical way” and less likely to report their jobs had made them callous.

    These attitudinal differences are reflected in behavior. Controlling for differences in assignments, studies show female officers are significantly less likely to use force than male officers, more likely to display empathy and more likely to de-escalate fraught encounters. One study, for instance, found female officers were 27 percent less likely than male officers to “exhibit extreme controlling behaviors such as threats, physical restraint, searches, and arrest” in their interactions with citizens. Another concluded suspects arrested by female officers were less likely to be injured.

    Hire more women. Reduce discretionary encounters between police and civilians. Change the rules on use of deadly force. End no-knock warrants. Reform the qualified immunity standard. Train, train, and train again on de-escalation. There are so many things we could do if we were really serious about reforming policing in America.