Somewhat surprisingly Pete Buttigieg and Tom Steyer have exited the contest for the Democratic nomination for president. “Surprisingly” because it was just three days before “Super Tuesday”, when 14 states holding about a third of all of the committed delegates were voting. I don’t think that running out of money or cutting their losses are credible explanations. To me the most credible explanation is that their exits are strategic in nature—based on polls and performance they realize that neither will emerge as the eventual nominee and their presence merely sucks a few votes away from other candidates who are more likely to win.

I don’t think that either Tom Steyer or Pete Buttigieg would have made a good president and I doubt I would have voted for either of them.

Now the field is limited to Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, and Amy Klobuchar. I don’t believe that either Sen. Warren or Sen. Klobuchar actually has a chance at this point. Sen. Warren, presumably, pulls some votes away from Bernie Sanders while Sen. Klobuchar pulls from Biden.

By all appearances Bernie Sanders has a base of support of a little more than 15% of primary voters while Biden has a floor of about 8%. As candidates have left the field, Biden’s floor has risen to about 15% while Sanders’s has stayed about the same.

As the number of acknowledged diagnosed cases of COVID-19 rises again in China, indirect evidence of what is happening there is beginning to emerge that might challenge the official reports. The most dramatic, reported by the BBC, is NASA pictures contrasting Chinese air pollution in January and today:

Satellite images have shown a dramatic decline in pollution levels over China, which is “at least partly” due to an economic slowdown prompted by the coronavirus, US space agency Nasa says.

Nasa maps show falling levels of nitrogen dioxide this year.

It comes amid record declines in China’s factory activity as manufacturers stop work in a bid to contain coronavirus.

China has recorded nearly 80,000 cases of the virus since the outbreak began.

There’s also a comparison with the same period last year so it’s not merely seasonal variation.

Maybe the Chinese authorities are operating through an abundance of caution, minimizing the scale of the outbreak to reduce the likelihood of panic. That wouldn’t be particularly nefarious—our authorities are doing the same thing even as the media try to heighten concern. Or maybe they’re reporting what they’re actually finding.

Additionally, the Wall Street Journal reports that the manufacturing purchasing managers’ index in China has fallen to a record low:

BEIJING—Official gauges of China’s factory and nonfactory activity plunged to record lows in February as the nation’s economy struggled to resume normal production as it faced the coronavirus epidemic.

The official manufacturing purchasing managers index tumbled to 35.7 in February from 50 in January, indicating a deep contraction. February’s reading from the National Bureau of Statistics on Saturday was the first official data for a full month of economic activity in China since the coronavirus began affecting the economy in late January.

The index dropped to 38.8 in November 2008, when the financial crisis prompted steep losses on Wall Street and sent shockwaves through the global economy. The 50 mark separates expansion from contraction.

Adding to the gloom, China’s nonmanufacturing PMI, also released on Saturday, sank to a record low of 29.6 in February from 54.1 in January. The nonmanufacturing PMI covers such services as retail, aviation and software as well as real estate and construction.

The factory index indicated contraction for most of 2019, hit by a trade war between the U.S. and China. It didn’t cross back into expansion until late last year, when trade tensions between the two sides eased.

The February result came in far below the median forecast of 43 by economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal. Purchasing by manufacturers is a leading indicator of business activity because factories buy supplies in anticipation of demand.

Saturday’s results show a “relatively large impact” from the epidemic, Zhao Qinghe, an analyst with the statistics bureau, said in a statement accompanying the data release. March’s readings should improve because of authorities’ efforts to help companies, especially manufacturing firms, resume production, he said.

Here’s what FiveThirtyEight said in anticipation of the South Carolina primary:

Here, according to our model, is what the post-Super Tuesday delegate count could look like following a big Biden win in South Carolina. Keep in mind that these represent the average of thousands of simulations; individual outcomes will vary based on factors such as Biden’s margin of victory in South Carolina, whether anyone drops out before Super Tuesday, and so on.

An outcome like the one in the table wouldn’t be a disaster for Sanders, by any means. He’d still be projected to end up with 578 delegates, on average after Super Tuesday, counting both delegates won before Super Tuesday and on Super Tuesday itself. In other words, Sanders would still pick up 39 percent of the total delegates awarded so far. Biden would be next with 430 delegates (29 percent), with Michael Bloombeg in third with 200 delegates (13 percent).

But you can also see how momentum could start to turn against Sanders. By “momentum,” I don’t mean something ineffable, but rather the shifts in the polls that could occur as the result of Super Tuesday, as well as decisions by other candidates to stay in the race or drop out.

Biden didn’t just get the most votes in the South Carolina primaries. He won by almost 30 points, more than their “big win” scenario. Sanders actually won a lower percentage of the votes than he did in 2016. Frankly, I doubt that any facts will be able to debunk the claim that Sanders will broaden the base because that’s his greatest chance for victory in November. But the facts actually say that most Democrats are voting against Sanders. His supporters are, essentially, the same “BernieBros” that supported him in 2016.

What I believe is happening now is that most Democrats want to defeat Trump but they also prefer an actual Democratic candidate over Sanders. Nonetheless, I hear whispers of a bolshevist strategy to demand the nomination on the basis of a plurality of the committed delegates.

Let’s consider a few scenarios of what may happen in November.

A. Sanders wins by a popular vote and electoral landslide and has broad coattails.

Sanders’s supporters are already preparing a slate of like-minded candidates to oppose more moderate Democrats. At least some of those are likely to be elected. He does not come into office with the Democratic Party apparat but with appointees of his own choosing. Sanders will rule by executive order and will be abetted by like-minded judges. Republicans lose the Senate and aren’t in a position to block Sanders’s agenda.

B. Sanders wins narrowly and does not have broad coattails.

Sanders comes into office with the usual suspects, the Democratic Party apparat, and governs pretty much as Obama did. Republicans hold the Senate and are in a position to block Sanders’s agenda.

C. Sanders is nominated and loses big in November.

That would be a disaster for Democrats but not for the Democratic establishment. They would live to fight again. Trump would claim and have a mandate.

D. Sanders is nominated and Trump wins about the way he did in 2016.

Four more years of Trump vs. The Resistance.

E. Any candidate other than Sanders is nominated in the Democratic Convention and his supporters vote for whomever that is.

This is the dream scenario for Democrats but IMO that’s exactly what it is—a dream.

F. Any candidate other than Sanders is nominated in the Democratic Convention but his supports do not vote for whomever that is. Trump wins big.

This is the real nightmare scenario for the Democratic Party. I don’t know if it will be able to survive such a schism.

I think the likelihoods are C, D, and F, in that order.

Once upon a time in the mists of the not-too-distant past Chicago celebrated four holidays with parades and other commemorations: St. Patrick’s Day for Chicago’s Irish population, Pulaski Day for its Polish population, Columbus Day for Chicago’s Italians, and Martin Luther King’s Birthday for Chicago’s black population. There were others but those were the biggies. Pandering? Heck, yes.

Now the Chicago Tribune reports it’s goodbye, Columbus:

Columbus Day will no longer be observed in Chicago Public Schools — and the group behind the city’s annual Columbus Day parade is already pushing to reverse that decision.

“This is a slap in the face of the more than 500,000 Italian Americans in Chicago, and the 135 million Italian Americans worldwide,” said Sergio Giangrande, president of the Joint Civic Committee of Italian Americans, in a statement provided to the Tribune.

Giangrande said the group “is challenging CPS’s decision and has mounted a campaign to reverse this action.”

Following similar moves in other school districts and cities, the Chicago Board of Education voted Wednesday to drop Columbus’ name from the October school holiday in favor of an observance of Indigenous Peoples Day.

This, too, is pandering but for the life of me I can’t tell to whom. Chicago actually has a substantial population of Native Americans but it’s closer to 65,000 than 500,000. There are other populations who have like numbers—Chinese, South Asians, Filipinos, and so on. There are probably more Lithuanians in Chicago than that.

I find this report from ABCNews very disturbing:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it has been alerted to the first manufacturing shortage of an unnamed drug due to the deadly novel coronavirus outbreak that began in China and has now reached the U.S..

FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn said the agency has been “closely monitoring” the medical product supply chain “with the expectation” that the outbreak of the novel coronavirus would “likely” have an impact.

“A manufacturer has alerted us to a shortage of a human drug that was recently added to the drug shortages list,” Hahn said in a statement Thursday night. “The manufacturer just notified us that this shortage is related to a site affected by coronavirus. The shortage is due to an issue with manufacturing of an active pharmaceutical ingredient used in the drug.”

Have they never heard of second sourcing? If the issue is intellectual property, perhaps we should be re-thinking that. If harm due to the lack of availability of a pharmaceutical induced by poor planning is not actionable, it certainly should be. Supply chains aren’t supposed to be Rube Goldbergs. When they are it’s negligence.

As of today President Donald Trump’s approval rating is at the highest point of his presidency, his disapproval rate the lowest, and the difference between the two just 4 points, according to the RealClearPolitics Index. Even more importantly it is trending in the right direction for him. I think that Trump’s opponents should avoid rooting for coronavirus or economic decline in the hope that will change the trend. It isn’t a good look.

Meanwhile, Fareed Zakaria goes to the effort of devoting his Washington Post column to refuting the claim that Bernie Sanders’s version of “Medicare for All” resembles anything in Sweden or Denmark:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) says that his proposals “are not radical,” pointing again and again to countries in Northern Europe such as Denmark, Sweden and Norway as examples of the kind of economic system he wants to bring to the United States. The image he conjures up is of a warm and fuzzy social democracy in which market economics are kept on a tight leash through regulation, the rich are heavily taxed and the social safety net is generous. That is, however, an inaccurate and highly misleading description of those Northern European countries today.

Take billionaires. Sanders has been clear on the topic: “Billionaires should not exist.” But Sweden and Norway both have more billionaires per capita than the United States — Sweden almost twice as many. Not only that, these billionaires are able to pass on their wealth to their children tax-free. Inheritance taxes in Sweden and Norway are zero, and in Denmark 15 percent. The United States, by contrast, has the fourth-highest estate taxes in the industrialized world at 40 percent.

Sanders’s vision of Scandinavian countries, as with much of his ideology, seems to be stuck in the 1960s and 1970s, a period when these countries were indeed pioneers in creating a social market economy. In Sweden, government spending as a percentage of gross domestic product doubled from 1960 to 1980, going from approximately 30 percent to 60 percent. But as Swedish commentator Johan Norberg points out, this experiment in Sanders-style democratic socialism tanked the Swedish economy. Between 1970 and 1995, he notes, Sweden did not create a single net new job in the private sector. In 1991, a free-market prime minister, Carl Bildt, initiated a series of reforms to kick-start the economy. By the mid-2000s, Sweden had cut the size of its government by a third and emerged from its long economic slump.

I think the issue is even more basic. It’s a category error. What Sweden and Denmark have isn’t socialism at all—it’s social cohesion, something a lot easier to promote when most of your society belongs to the same ethnic group and are, at least, cultural Lutherans. That they are rethinking their whole approach in the face of mass immigration is telling.

As I and others have pointed out no large, diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-confessional polity has ever implemented socialism without totalitarianism. The odds on the United States being the first are extremely low.

I see the New York Times has finally gotten around to seeing what I’ve been claiming for some time, with evidentiary support from master strategiests Rahm Emanuel and James Carville:

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, hear constant warnings from allies about congressional losses in November if the party nominates Bernie Sanders for president. Democratic House members share their Sanders fears on text-messaging chains. Bill Clinton, in calls with old friends, vents about the party getting wiped out in the general election.

And officials in the national and state parties are increasingly anxious about splintered primaries on Super Tuesday and beyond, where the liberal Mr. Sanders edges out moderate candidates who collectively win more votes.

Dozens of interviews with Democratic establishment leaders this week show that they are not just worried about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy, but are also willing to risk intraparty damage to stop his nomination at the national convention in July if they get the chance. Since Mr. Sanders’s victory in Nevada’s caucuses on Saturday, The Times has interviewed 93 party officials — all of them superdelegates, who could have a say on the nominee at the convention — and found overwhelming opposition to handing the Vermont senator the nomination if he arrived with the most delegates but fell short of a majority.

The only way that Sanders can forestall that eventuality is by actually winning a majority of votes in some caucuses. The preponderance of the evidence suggests that won’t be the case in South Carolina and it’s even possible that Biden will win big there (by 20 percentage points or more). Maybe California.

And as Rahm Emanuel has warned, denying Sanders the nominations risks fracturing the party. The fracture would be between Democrats and non-Democrats so I think that’s a risk they should take.

David Brooks declaims that Bernie Sanders marks the end of liberalism in his New York Times column. After listing some of Sen. Sanders’s past and present support for communist dictators he says:

I say all this not to cancel Sanders for past misjudgments. I say all this because the intellectual suppositions that led him to embrace these views still guide his thinking today. I’ve just watched populism destroy traditional conservatism in the G.O.P. I’m here to tell you that Bernie Sanders is not a liberal Democrat. He’s what replaces liberal Democrats.

continuing

Populists like Sanders speak as if the whole system is irredeemably corrupt. Sanders was a useless House member and has been a marginal senator because he doesn’t operate within this system or believe in this theory of change.

He believes in revolutionary mass mobilization and, once an election has been won, rule by majoritarian domination. This is how populists of left and right are ruling all over the world, and it is exactly what our founders feared most and tried hard to prevent.

If only that were the case! Sen. Sanders is trying to rise to power by gaining a minority (the largest number of delegates but falling short of a majority) of a minority (Democrats), holding the threat of bolting and taking his supporters with him over the heads of the Democratic establishment.

He concludes:

There is a specter haunting the world — corrosive populisms of right and left. These populisms grow out of real problems but are the wrong answers to them. For the past century, liberal Democrats from F.D.R. to Barack Obama knew how to beat back threats from the populist left. They knew how to defend the legitimacy of our system, even while reforming it.

Judging by the last few debates, none of the current candidates remember those arguments or know how to rebut a populist to their left.

I’ll cast my lot with democratic liberalism. The system needs reform. But I just can’t pull the lever for either of the two populisms threatening to tear it down.

I wish I could say, “Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win”, but I just don’t have that confidence.