Biden Bites Back

There's an underlying current in the presidential election campaign that could alter the dynamics of the race, and it's undoubtedly the economy.  Wall Street - still in a bull market despite COVID-19 - is expecting the economy to improve enough by October, and some - but not all - investors hope that the higher Dow helps Trump win re-election, because Trump has been so good for investors.  He hasn't been good for anything else, but he's been good for investors.  And polls still show Trump leading Biden on the economy, so if economic numbers go up just before Election Day, Biden's numbers could go down.  So Biden has moved to counter that.

This past Thursday, Biden went to his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania and unveiled an economic plan that promises $400 billion in government procurement of American-made products, $300 million in research and development, more investments in clean energy and a 28 percent corporate tax rate, up from 21 percent.  The idea, as indicated in the slogan in the picture above, is to build America back and make the country better than it was before COVID-19.  This all comes on the heels of a task force Biden had with Bernie Sanders and other progressives to produce a compromise economic strategy that includes greater support for the Affordable Care Act but eschews a Green New Deal program, indicating that the far left and the center-left in the Democratic Party are concentrating more on what unites them than what divides them.

Trump, of course, has accused Biden of ripping off his economic policy - although Biden's populist message espouses policies more labor-friendly than the corporate-friendly policies Trump has been pursuing despite his own populist rhetoric - and Trump's charge is undoubtedly meant to recall the 1987 plagiarism scandal that derailed Biden's first presidential campaign, when the showman-President Biden had hoped to succeed was Ronald Reagan.  But Biden should have more credibility on populist economics because of his background and his past support from labor.  His economic speech isn't and shouldn't be the final word.  But it's a good start.

Nevertheless, Biden still has some challenging days ahead.  His lead in the polls suggests that he may be peaking too soon, and there are numerous things that could being his numbers down besides an improving economic outlook - like a COVID-19 vaccine being announced before Election Day, which suddenly became a possibility when Pfizer announced it was getting close to one.  There could, of course, very well be problems with casting ballots as a result of the pandemic.  And Trump's politicized Justice Department could find a way to go after Biden on charges that he had helped spy on the Trump campaign when he was Vice President.  But cynical, amoral investors who shrug off the pandemic and racial inequality are, for now at least, still his biggest hurdle.  That, not Kanye West, is what Americans, especially Democrats, should be focusing on now.     

Inside Information

I can't keep up with all of this coronavirus news.  I want to write about everything else going on the world, but there's nothing else going on in the world.

I'm a little late in commenting on this, and I can't add much to it, but here it is: As you already know, U.S. Senator Richard Burr (R-NC), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, privately warned attended of a luncheon in North Carolina about a month ago that the coronavirus outbreak was going to hit America and hit it hard, calling it "probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic," and then proceeded to sell stocks before the market tanked.  Where did he get this information and why didn't he tell anyone else?

Because Burr (above) shared information in private rather than keep it to himself, he doesn't believe that he violated any insider-trading laws, but just to make sure he didn't, he's asked the Senate Ethics Committee to investigate him.  Wow, what integrity.  No one is buying this.  Consider this reaction from a leading pundit: "He [Burr] must resign from the Senate and face prosecution for insider trading . . ..  He had inside information about what could happen to our country, which is now happening, but he didn't warn the public . . ..  Instead, what did he do? He dumped his shares in hotel stocks so he wouldn’t lose money."  The pundit's name? Tucker Carlson.

You know you screw up badly when you are a Republican and you tick off Tucker Carlson.

Equally appalling is the situation of appointed Republican U.S. Senator Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, who also sold stocks before COVID-19 eighty-sixed the Dow and who is - MAXIMUM BIG SURPRISE! - married to Jeffrey Srpecher, the chairman of the New York Stock Exchange! Burr sold only (only?) $628,000 to $1.72 million in stocks, but  Loeffler sold between $1,275,000 and $3,100,000 in stock.  Forbes magazine's Jack Brewster (who, by the way, wrote a very good opinion piece about Joe Biden's stutter for Newsweek) reported that both Burr and Loeffler were downplaying the coronavirus crisis even as they were unloading their portfolios. 

While Burr and Loeffler sold their stocks directly, two other senators had their stock sold by third parties before the market tanked, one Democrat, Dianne Feinstein of California and one Republican, James Inhofe of Oklahoma.  I'm willing to give both of them the benefit of the doubt because of their different situation - even the insufferable Inhofe, who was one of the eight senators who voted against an earlier coronavirus relief bill.  But Burr ought to take Tucker Carlson's advice, and Loeffler, running in a special election to complete the remainder of former Senator Johnny Isakson's term, should not be given the opportunity to do so.  

Uppers and Eppers

This past Friday, the Dow Jones average, the NASDAQ, and the Standard & Poor's 500 all hit record highs - but while not indicative of a healthy economy for everyone (it's not the Dow's average that matters, it's yours), Trump can and does point to these numbers for evidence that the economy is sound.  That's enough to convinced overworked and underpaid Americans that there's greater opportunity and social mobility for them than there actually is, and Democrats seem unable to turn anyone on to the truth.  

Meanwhile, the Jeffrey Epstein story - the case involving the onetime Trump pal with having sex with minors - has brought down Labor Secretary Alex Acosta, who got Epstein out of a jam back when he was the prosecutor in that case back in 2007.  Further investigation suggests that it might bring down Trump, though that remains to be seen.  I haven't really commented on this story because I think the story has commented on itself.  

Trumptonite

You might remember the Mississippi rock band 3 Doors Down, not to be confused with Three Dog Night.  Back in 2000 (let that sink in for a moment), they were a top band on what passed for rock radio in America, and they were apparently hoping to replace the Allman Brothers Band as the Beatles of the South.  But, like so many rock bands that proliferated in the quarter century after the grunge revolt, they were gone almost as soon as they'd arrived, and to this day I still can't name a single member of 3 Doors Down without checking out their Web site or their Wikipedia biography.  By 2017 they'd fallen so far that they were one of the (very) few pop acts to accept an invitation to play at Trump's inauguration; their appearance suggested imagining the Beatles not having another hit after "Love Me Do" and playing a Tory rally on the occasion of Margaret Thatcher's assumption of the prime ministership of Great Britain seventeen years after.  As a result of this gig, 3 Doors Down lost numerous fans, shrinking their already pathetically small audience.

Ironically, their only hit of any consequence was a song called "Kryptonite."

Since 3 Doors Down killed their already-dead careers with their Trump gala gig, many Trump watchers have been patiently waiting for the one thing that would destroy Trump's Presidency - the equivalent of kryptonite, the one thing that could kill Superman.  This past week proved once and for all that nothing - and I mean nothing - can kill his political career.  Trump imposed steel tariffs on our closest allies - Canada, Mexico, the European Union countries - and our ex-friends vowed to retaliate.  At that news, the stock market plunged a couple hundred points. Then the next day, he leaked the latest unemployment statistics before the Labor Department could officially release them, sending stocks back up.  A friend of mine says Trump did this to manipulate the stock market to his advantage.  Maybe.  But he did manipulate the news to his advantage; thanks to the good jobs report and the headlines about a robust economy, you don't hear much concern about tariffs.

All right, so import taxes that could undermine future American economic growth didn't kill him.  How about the aftereffects of Hurricane Maria, and the news that, while only 64 people on the island of Puerto Rico died directly from the storm, over 4,600 Puerto Ricans died indirectly from the hurricane's damage - mainly because of the interminable blackouts and the disruption of the territory's services?  Certainly Trump's failure to react sufficiently to the damage from Maria would kill his Presidency!  That is, until the National Hurricane Center announced that the 2018 hurricane season, having just gotten under way, is expected to be an average season, lessening the chances of another storm like Maria, which allowed people on the mainland to shrug off last year's hurricane season as old news.  So what if Puerto Rico was turned into a wasteland? So what if Puerto Rico isn't even prepared for even a storm just short of Category 1 status? >:-(

But of course, there was the North Korean situation.  Trump felt the need to cancel his summit with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, which denied him to burnish his foreign policy credentials (even though he actually has none.  What a setback.  Until the North Koreans and the Trump administration worked out their differences over the proposed meeting.  Now the summit is back on.  Trump is back on top.

Nothing can kill him.

At this point, we have to realize that if Trump's Presidency is going to be brought down, it won't be brought down by circumstances beyond his control.  Whether or not he survives depends on a strong opposition.

It's too bad that the Democratic Party is prone to kryptonite poisoning.

3 Doors Down records, anyone?