What caught my eye about Timothy Shenk’s op-ed in the New York Times, declaiming that Elizabeth Warren is “the wrong kind of radical” was its implied taxonomy of political stances. Here’s an example of what I found interesting:

This election was supposed to be Ms. Warren’s opportunity to prove that she could do a better job executing Mr. Obama’s strategy than Mr. Obama himself. Rather than calling for a Sanders-style political revolution, she would remake the Democratic establishment from within. In 2018 alone, she raised or donated more than $11 million for over 160 Democratic congressional candidates. She launched a charm offensive with leading progressive activists and staked out bold positions on subjects ranging from impeachment to reparations to the wealth tax.

Underlying all of this was her conviction that she could rally the Obama coalition — young people, African-Americans, Hispanics and liberal white college graduates, with just enough of the white working class to win the Midwest — behind policies that took on the 1 percent. Then she would staff her administration with the best of the Democratic wonkocracy rather than the next generation of Goldman Sachs alumni.

If Sen. Warren is a radical who wants to change practically everything except the Democratic Party itself, what sort is Sen. Sanders? He, too, wants to change practically everything but he also wants to change the composition of the electorate, bringing in millions of imaginary young people who actually vote (for him).

I am no radical but I see a grave need for reform. I, on the other hand, think that the institutions most in need of reform are our political parties and the politicians that lead them. It should not be possible other than through dumb luck to become a multimillionaire over a lifetime of what is laughingly called “public service” but that is presently too common to be the result of mere dumb luck.

Scenarios like Rahm Emanuel’s, in which after serving in the Clinton Administration he reportedly plopped himself down in the offices of a series of private equity managers, demanding a million dollar salary in exchange for his contacts, something known in the trade as a “Rolodex hire”, after the old-fashioned device for holding address cards, should be deemed sufficient to render one unfit for public office. Instead, influence peddling, pay for play, and other forms of corruption are not just tolerated but expected. They’re a perk of office.

In that respect Sen. Sanders is little different from Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren or practically every other officeholder you can name. That has to end. Unless it does any other reforms will either be stalled or futile. Start by reforming the Democratic Party. Its ties to the financial sector, cemented in place during the Clinton Administration should be severed or at least attenuated. The big banks received their payoff when they weren’t nationalized in 2009.

One might ask why I emphasize the Democratic Party rather than the Republicans who have just about the same problem. Mostly because unless the Democratic Party is reformed we won’t see a lot of reform in my lifetime. In Illinois there’s a real, proximate need. The mayor of my city and all city-wide elective offices, the president of the county board, the governor and all statewide elected officials, my Congressional representative, and both of my senators, are all Democrats and that is unlikely to change in my lifetime whatever else happens. The Republicans could all become saints and Illinois, Cook County, and Chicago would continue to elect Democrats.

Most of Steven Taylor’s observations in his post-mortem of the Super Tuesday primaries at Outside the Beltway are commonsensical but I want to concur with his last observation in particular:

I think that the veep nominee has to be a either a woman or a minority (or a minority woman). I think more than that, the veep nominee has to be a non-septuagenarian. It, therefore, will not be Elizabeth Warren (that’s as bold a prediction as I am willing to make).

A couple of other remarks. First, if Biden becomes the nominee, whomever he picks for a running mate must be no worse a campaigner than he. That’s a very low bar but, since so many of those who’ve been running for president are such lousy campaigners, it bears mentioning.

Second, it has been my observation that the old rules about running mates are obsolete and that there has occasionally been a sort of aspirational quality to running mates. I don’t know what that would say about a prospective Joe Biden running mate. Biden may be a moderate by present-day Democratic officeholder standards but he’s still quite progressive—his ADA rating is a little higher than Barack Obama’s.

And now Chuck Schumer is doing much what I said he should—he’s backpedaling on the remark of which I took note in an earlier post. The Washington Post reports:

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that he misspoke when he said that two justices appointed by President Trump to the Supreme Court would “pay the price” for a vote against abortion rights, but he defended his passion on the issue, saying his anger reflected that of “women across America.”

Schumer’s remarks on the Senate floor came a day after his comments at a rally outside the Supreme Court prompted a rare rebuke of a sitting member of Congress by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., who said in a statement that “threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous.”

“I should not have used the words I used yesterday. They didn’t come out the way I intended them to,” Schumer told Senate colleagues Thursday. “I’m from Brooklyn. We speak in strong language. I shouldn’t have used the words I did, but in no way was I making a threat. I never — never — would do such a thing.”

In case you think the pushback on the remarks is just coming from a bunch of Republicans, here’s Laurence Tribe’s reaction to Sen. Schumer’s original statement:

“These remarks by @SenSchumer were inexcusable,” he tweeted. “Chief Justice Roberts was right to call him on his comments. I hope the Senator, whom I’ve long admired and consider a friend, apologizes and takes back his implicit threat. It’s beneath him and his office.”

I think that what happened was a Kinsley gaffe—Sen. Schumer got carried away in the moment and said what he really thinks.

At any rate I hope this is the end of the matter but I fear it won’t be. As I have pointed out many times before highly agonistic speech is to be expected in this era of video communications. It’s both effective and affective. Social media influencers are not long form journalists.

An editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald urges the countries of the world to “come together” to fight the coronavirus outbreak:

Australia and other countries must start to work together to fight this virus. For one thing, given that China has the vast majority of known cases, it is vital to share its experience of things like how to track the disease and how to treat it. The WHO says China is now playing a very positive role in this regard.

Another area where international co-operation is vital is increasing aid to countries with weak health systems. The major hotspots outside China include Iran and Italy but scores of other countries are on high alert for major infection. While Australians panic-buy toilet paper, it is in our interest to send aid to Indonesia or the Pacific islands. A full-blown coronavirus epidemic there could threaten regional stability.

The US in 2014 deployed troops to Liberia as part of a global effort to stop the disease.

Trust between countries will also be crucial when Australia eventually is ready to drop the hugely costly travel bans that are strangling the tourism and education industries. If the WHO, an independent arbiter, says China has been successful in confining the outbreak to Hubei, it might be possible to reconsider.

It’s hard for me to determine what that means we should do that has not or is not already being done.

China’s lack of cooperation is not in the distant past. The first World Health Organization investigation team wasn’t allowed into the country until less than a month ago, at least two months and maybe more after the outbreak was first detected. China continues to complain that things like travel bans are overreactions.

China’s being a lot less protective and sensitive would go a long way to facilitating more international cooperation. Maybe the Chinese authorities are beginning to realize that.

I have heard New York Sen. Chuck Schumer speak in person. He’s a blowhard, like most politicians. Not exactly a stemwinder. Now he has provoked the latest outrage du jour through intemperate speech. CNBC reports:

Chief Justice John Roberts issued a rare statement on Wednesday defending his newest colleagues, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, after Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned at a rally earlier in the day that the two Trump appointees would “pay the price” if they voted against reproductive rights activists.

“Justices know that criticism comes with the territory, but threatening statements of this sort from the highest levels of government are not only inappropriate, they are dangerous,” Roberts wrote. “All Members of the Court will continue to do their job, without fear or favor, from whatever quarter.”

The statement directly named Schumer but did not name Gorsuch or Kavnaugh. The court heard arguments on Wednesday in the first major abortion case since Gorsuch and Kavanaugh joined the bench, one of the most high-profile disputes of the term.

“I want to tell you, Gorsuch. I want to tell you, Kavanaugh. You have released the whirlwind and you will pay the price!” Schumer said at a rally coordinated by the Center for Reproductive Rights around the arguments.

Sen. Schumer’s defenders have retorted that he didn’t actually mean it, he meant something quite different:

Justin Goodman, a Schumer spokesperson, said that the New York lawmaker’s comments referred to the “political price” Republicans will pay for confirming the two justices “and a warning that the justices will unleash major grassroots movement on the issue of reproductive rights against the decision.”

Justices of the Supreme Court are not elected; they are appointed for life. They cannot “pay a political price”. If Sen. Schumer’s intent was to say that Republicans will pay a political price if Roe v. Wade is struck down by the Supreme Court through decisions of Republican-appointed justices, he should say that was the case, apologize, and move on. If that was not his intent, he should be censured by the Senate and lose his minority leader role.

Threatening judges by name is a bridge too far. That President Trump says intemperate things is no excuse and, indeed, Trump has been chastised by Roberts for his intemperate speech directed toward judges. Our goal should be to lower the temperature not raise it. There are too many crazies with guns out there who will take such statements literally rather than figuratively.

Updated

Politico reports that Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is expected to make a statement including the following:

Contrary to what the Democratic leader has tried to claim, he very clearly was not addressing Republican lawmakers or anybody else. He literally directed the statement to the justices, by name. And he said, quote, ‘if you go forward with these awful decisions,’ which could only apply to the court itself. The minority leader of the United States Senate threatened two associate justices of the U.S. Supreme Court. Period.

Sen. Schumer can and should issue a non-apology apology to defuse this situation.

Update 2

The editors of the Wall Street Journal remark:

Mr. Trump recently tweeted that liberal Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor should recuse themselves on cases involving his Administration. He was wrong and the Justices will ignore him too. But Mr. Schumer’s tirade takes bullying the judiciary to a new level, and all those who claim to believe in democratic norms should call him out.

Alternatively, if you believe that “democratic norms” are for suckers, full speed ahead.

I think that Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Riley has this one exactly right:

Mr. Sanders suggests he’s another Franklin D. Roosevelt, but FDR didn’t self-identify as a socialist or spend his political career challenging the Democratic Party establishment. Mr. Sanders’s policy positions put him closer to Eugene V. Debs, a prominent labor leader in the early 1900s. Like Mr. Sanders, Debs was an antiwar activist who opposed capitalism, wanted more wealth redistribution, and played the “working class” off against the “elites.” Mr. Sanders has called Debs “a socialist, a revolutionary and probably the most effective and popular leader that the American working class has ever had.” The Socialist Party of America nominated Debs for president five times between 1900 and 1920. He never won a state but did garner 6% of the vote in 1912.

Whatever small interest voters had in socialism got even smaller in the run-up to World War II. The Socialist Party won only 2% of the vote in 1932 and less than 1% four years later. The New Deal and Great Society programs swelled the size of government, but they didn’t make the socialist label any more popular. When Mr. Sanders first ran for the U.S. Senate in 1972 as a candidate of the socialist Liberty Union Party, he managed 2% of the vote. He would lose several more statewide races before becoming mayor of Burlington in 1981. He won a seat in Congress as an independent in 1990 and became only the third socialist ever elected to the U.S. House. The second one left office in 1929.

The left’s current flirtation with socialism reflects in part the failure of Democrats to address the economic concerns of their voters, and it’s of a piece with the right-wing populism that put the GOP through the wringer four years ago and landed Donald Trump in the White House. Mr. Sanders is betting that millions of Democrats thought President Obama was too conservative. He’s hoping that promises to make more stuff “free”—health care, higher education, housing—will entice Americans to accept enormous constraints on private enterprise and unprecedented government intervention in their lives.

I had that exact thought yesterday on hearing Sen. Sanders compared with FDR and had intended to write a post on the subject but Mr. Riley beat me to it. Sanders is no FDR. That such a thing could even be entertained is proof positive that we need a return to teaching American history in public schools, a history that isn’t one of class struggle and interest groups.

Here’s the meat of William Galston’s Wall Street Journal column:

In the past week, Joe Biden finally found his voice, summarizing his case simply and straightforwardly. As president, Mr. Biden says, he would focus his efforts on practical, achievable steps to improve people’s lives. He would work to repair America’s tattered alliances and renew its moral authority in the world. He would restore dignity and decency to the Oval Office.

Most important, Mr. Biden would do everything in his power to heal our divided country. The Republicans, he said on Monday night, are Democrats’ opponents, not their enemies. He believes that Mr. Trump has intimidated but not converted them. He will treat them with respect, as potential partners in a common enterprise. Within his own party, he has been mocked for raising the possibility that a measure of bipartisanship in still possible. No matter. As president, he would act as though it is and by so doing increase the possibility of its restoration.

Bipartisanship is essential, because little of what our country needs can be accomplished through executive orders and unilateral acts. We cannot possibly rebuild roads and bridges, or extend health insurance to all Americans, or reduce the burden of prescription drug costs, or reform the immigration system, unless Congress rediscovers the nearly lost art of legislation.

Maybe I’m just experiencing déjà vu but that sounds very reminiscent of the platform on which Barack Obama ran in 2008, only to turn his agenda over to a Congress with very different ideas.

What we really need is a national unity government. I feel safe in predicting we won’t get it.

The editors of the Wall Street Journal provide their assessment of the Super Tuesday primary results:

Hold the revolution. The Bernie Sanders takeover of the Democratic Party took a detour on Super Tuesday as Joe Biden’s political resurrection that began in South Carolina on Saturday continued in the Southeast and expanded into the Middle West and even Bernie Sanders country in the Northeast. Maybe President Trump wished too soon for Mr. Sanders as his opponent.

Literally in four days the Democratic race has turned upside down. Mr. Biden replicated his South Carolina coalition of African-Americans, Baby Boomers and center-left voters for a crushing victory in Virginia with 53.3% of the vote. He won North Carolina more narrowly, but his margin with black Democrats again made the difference. He also won Alabama, Tennessee, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Massachusetts, and by our deadline was competitive in Texas and Maine.

The former Vice President ran away with the vote among late deciders, which means he benefited from the rush of endorsements that followed South Carolina. The party is almost literally lifting the old war horse on its back despite his many gaffes and stumbles. The prospect of an avowed socialist at the top of the ticket has scared millions of Democrats into Mr. Biden’s arms no matter his liabilities.

His strong performance will keep him close to Mr. Sanders in the delegate count, though we won’t know how close until the results in California are clear. But his victories may be most important for restoring credibility to Mr. Biden’s argument that he is the Democrat who is best able to defeat Mr. Trump. His coalition so far is the closest to Barack Obama’s, and the turnout in Virginia was especially impressive at nearly double what it was in 2016. Trump campaign, take note.

I hope the Democratic National Committee takes note. If nothing else is clear, it’s clear that the party needs substantial reform. Bernie Sanders has a point in campaigning against the “corporate wing of the Democratic Party”. His support for leftist Latin American dictators and verbally supporting “democratic socialism” but proposing solutions that are much harder left socialism than that is not a move in the right direction.

But the politics for profit to which Democratic officials have become accustomed is on life support. That needs to change. Fewer aspirations and more simple competence would be nice. That doesn’t make a good sound bite or rallying cry but it is persuasive.

What should happen is that Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Michael Bloomberg should all drop out and throw their support to Joe Biden. Unfortunately, there is nothing in any of their backgrounds that would suggest they will do any such thing.

We’ll see within the next several days. Bloomberg may start running anti-Trump spots rather than pro-Bloomberg spots. Warren actually might drop out. The questions then will be to whom she throws her support and what those who presently support her do.

I have said for some time that the strongest Democratic ticket would be Joe Biden/Cory Booker. I still think so.