The Boston Globe - 02.08.2019

A8 The Nation The Boston Globe FRIDAY, AUGUST 2, 2019

popular incumbent is unwit-
tingly helping him.
“This idea that you would
try to attack Biden by attacking
the Obama legacy is not only
politically stupid for their cam-
paigns, I think it’s not helpful
for the party,” said Rufus Gif-
ford, a former ambassador in
the Obama administration, and
himself a veteran of the crowd-
ed congressional primary in the
Massachusetts Third District.
“We didn’t hear nearly enough
about what Donald Trump is
doing to this country, the stakes
in this election, and what the
candidates are doing to beat
him.”
On Thursday, Democrats
quickly tried to undo the dam-
age, rushing to Obama’s de-
fense and looking with relief to-
ward the September debates.
They hope a higher barrier for
entry in both polling and do-
nors will transform the circus
into something more con-
trolled, although there is no in-
dication that the front-runners
will hold back when they are all
on the same stage in the next
round.
Republicans, on the other
hand, were delighted.
“I think it’s great,” said Alex
Conant, a Republican strategist
who advised Marco Rubio on
his 2016 presidential bid.
“Democrats at this point are a
circular firing squad and
Trump is safely removed.”
Some candidates on the de-
bate stage on Tuesday and
Wednesday nightwarned that
the party risked hurting itself
with the attacks. And key Dem-
ocrats watching on TV seemed

uDEMOCRATS
Continued from Page A

dumbfounded by a strategy

that involved criticizing

Obama.

“Be wary of attacking the

Obama record,” Eric Holder,

who served as attorney general

under him, tweeted Wednesday

night. “Build on it. Expand it.

But there is little to be gained —

for you or the party — by attack-

ing a very successful and still

popular Democratic President.”

Senate Democrats on Thurs-

day deflected questions about

the debate but rushed to defend

Obama. “You compare the

Obama administration to this

administration, it’s night and

day and Americans are realiz-

ing that,” Senator Chuck

Schumer of New York said.

The second set of Democrat-

ic debates likely marked the

end of the line for about half of

the candidates who appeared,

because they won’t meet the

higher standards to qualify for

the next round. That means

self-help guru Marianne Wil-

liamson may not be there to

warn about dark psychic forces.

Former Colorado governor

John Hickenlooper probably

won’t get to mock Sanders’

arm-flailing. It’s likely de Blasio

won’t be able to offer Biden re-

demption for his past positions.

“The further down the chain

they are, the harder they were

throwing,” said Mary Anne

Marsh, a Boston-based Demo-

cratic strategist, who said she

was eager to see the front-run-

ners face off against each other

on a single stage.

“I’m looking forward to a de-

bate with Biden, Sanders, War-

ren, and Harris on the stage at

the same time,” she said. “That’s

the debate the country deserves

at this point.”

Biden, who was the focus of

many of the attacks, appeared

to agree.

“It’s not anybody’s fault the

way it’s worked. There’s 20 can-

didates and that’s a good thing,”

Biden told reporters Thursday.

“But the idea that we don’t ac-

tually have a chance to explain

our policies in less than one

minute, and if you’re not asked

a direct question about your

policy you get 30 seconds, and

if you’re not asked the 30 sec-

ond one you get 15 seconds to

intervene, that’s not a debate.”

There were parallels with

the contentious 2016 Republi-

can primary that devolved into

a mess of insults, although the

Democrats were civil compared

to some of those moments.

Trump took shots at President

George W. Bush and used trade-

mark nicknames to knock “low

energy Jeb” Bush and “little

Marco” Rubio off their perches

as golden boys of the Republi-

can establishment, and Rubio

responded with crude taunts of

his own.

Mike Madrid, a Republican

campaign strategist in Califor-

nia who has worked with Re-

publicans and Democrats, said

he found it fascinating to see

the same developments that

once consumed Republicans

now take over the Democratic

Party.

“As a Republican, Ronald

Reagan held a mythical status

for 40 years. Obama held it for

two years,” he said. “That is

how fast the party has

changed.”

Still, the 2016 Republican

primary attacks did not prevent

Trump from winning — and not

all Democrats foresaw doom

from their intra-party skirmish.

“I thought it was a very ac-

tive debate, very interesting,”

said Senator Dianne Feinstein

of California. “The problem

with it is, it is so far to the elec-

tion. One doesn’t know what

the fallout... is going to be.”

Dwight Bullard, political di-

rector of the New Florida Ma-

jority, a progressive group

working to increase voter turn-

out, said it was important for

Democrats to dig into the key

differences over their policies

before the general election and

doubted the early debate would

have much impact.

“If you ask someone who ul-

timately became an Obama vot-

er in 2008 if they remember

what he said in his first debates

in 2007, I seriously don’t think

they will,” he said. “My hope is

that as the field dwindles down

that voters become more en-

gaged.”

The surge of candidates ea-

ger to defeat Trump is indica-

tive of an energized party, even

if it makes for a messy debate

stage. Adam Green, cofounder

of the Progressive Change Com-

mittee, which supports Warren,

drew a distinction between the

attacks in Tuesday’s debate,

which largely dealt with policy,

and the more personal ones on

Wednesday night.

He pointed to campaign ads

his organization has started to

air against Trump that feature

Republican Senator Lindsey

Graham calling him “a race-

baiting, xenophobic, religious

bigot” in the 2016 primary.

“When we give the other

side sound bites that have life

after the primary, especially

things that are character at-

tacks, that’s what could poten-

tially hurt us more in the gener-

al [election],” he said.

Jess Bidgood can be reached at

[email protected].

Follow her on Twitter

@jessbidgood. Jazmine Ulloa

can be reached at

[email protected] or on

Twitter @jazmineulloa

Democrats concerned that attacks went too far

By Aaron Gregg
and Josh Dawsey
WASHINGTON POST
The White House has in-
structed newly installed De-
fense Secretary Mark T. Esper
to reexamine the awarding of
the military’s massive cloud-
computing contract because of
concerns that the bid would go
to Amazon, officials close to the
decision-making process said.
The 11th-hour Oval Office
intervention comes just weeks
before the winning bid was ex-

pected to be announced and

has now left a major military

priority up in the air, the offi-

cials said, who spoke on the

condition of anonymity to dis-

cuss the closed-door process

freely. As recently as Sunday,

the Defense Department de-

fended its plans to move ahead

with a single company for what

is known as the Joint Enter-

prise Defense Infrastructure

(JEDI), a $10 billion contract.

No decision has yet been

made, the officials said. But

some officials said the move to

award the contract to more

than one company is a possibili-

ty.

The president’s directive

represents a departure from

what is usually a scripted bu-

reaucratic process. Trump has

often spoken out against Ama-

zon and its chief executive Jeff

Bezos. And at times he has con-

flated Bezos’s ownership of The

Washington Post with Ama-

zon’s interests.

Amazon and the Pentagon

did not immediately return a

request for comment.

Giving the contract to more

than one company would be

welcomed by Oracle and IBM,

whose business is threatened

by Amazon and have unsuc-

cessfully sued to block the

award. The Pentagon has said

that only Amazon and Micro-

soft meet the minimum re-

quirements for JEDI.

Oracle has lobbied Trump

aggressively on the matter, hop-

ing to appeal to his animosity

toward Amazon as well as for-

mer defense secretary Jim Mat-

tis, who angered the president

when he resigned last year over

theadministration’sforeign

policies. Oracle executive vice

president Ken Glueck, who

runs the company’s policy shop

in Washington, said he created

a colorful flow chart labeled ‘‘A

Conspiracy To Create A Ten

Year DoD Cloud Monopoly’’

that portrayed connections be-

tween Amazon executives, Mat-

tis, and officials from the

Obama administration.

Last month, the president

told reporters during a news

conference that he had asked

aides to investigate the JEDI

contract, citing complaints

from companies that compete

with Amazon.

‘‘I’m getting tremendous

complaints about the contract

with the Pentagon and with

Amazon... they’re saying it

wasn’t competitively bid,’’

Trump said in a July 18 press

gaggle. ‘‘Some of the greatest

companies in the world are

complaining about it, having to

do with Amazon and the De-

partment of Defense, and I will

be asking them to look at it very

closely to see what’s going on.’’

Trump’s directive could deal

a blow to Amazon Web Servic-

es, the market-leading cloud

computing provider. AWS is the

only company that has received

the highest-level Defense De-

partment IT certification,

known as Impact Level 6,

which allows it to handle top-

secret data. That advantage

stems in large part from a $

million contract with the CIA

that was awarded in 2013.

The JEDI contract aims at

building a department-wide

cloud computing infrastructure

that will ease the sharing of sen-

sitive intelligence across the Ar-

my, Navy, Marines, and Air

Force. The Defense Department

also sees it as an important

steppingstone for incorporating

artificial intelligence algo-

rithms into how it wages war.

Pentagon asked to reexamine $10 billion cloud contract

Trump may not

want bid to go

to Amazon

By Robert Moore

WASHINGTON POST

A group of doctors from Har-

vard and Johns Hopkins has

urged Congress to investigate

the deaths of six migrant chil-

dren who were held in govern-

ment custody after crossing the

southern border in the past year,

warning that ‘‘poor conditions’’

at US facilities are increasing the

risk of spreading deadly infec-

tious diseases, especially the flu.

The doctors, who wrote to

Congress on Thursday, said au-

topsy reports show that at least

three of the children — ages 2,

6, and 16 — died in part as a re-

sult of having the flu, a far high-

er incidence of such deaths

than across the general popula-

tion. Child flu deaths are rare,

the doctors said.

‘‘Poor conditions at the facili-

ties may be amplifying the

spread of influenza and other

infectious diseases, increasing

health risks to children,’’ accord-

ing to the letter, submitted by

Harvard pediatrics professor

Jonathan Winickoff; Johns Hop-

kins public health professors

Joshua Sharfstein and Paul Sie-

gel and two of their master’s stu-

dents; and San Francisco foren-

sic pathologist Judy Melinek.

‘‘With so many lives at risk,

these issues are worthy of con-

gressional investigation. Anoth-

er influenza season is around

the corner, and there are other

types of infectious diseases that

pose a threat to detained popu-

lations. Timely action is critical.’’

The letter alleges that the De-

partment of Homeland Security

and the Department of Health

and Human Services — which

supervises longer-term custody

of unaccompanied migrant mi-

nors — might not be following

best practices in regard to

screening, treatment, isolation,

and prevention of the flu.

Sharfstein said that with all

of the problems at the southern

border ‘‘people may be over-

looking the risks of outbreaks

that are entirely preventable.’’

The doctors’ concerns come

as the US government has been

struggling to deal with a record

influx of Central American fami-

lies and unaccompanied minors

at the border, a shift in migration

patterns that has at times put in-

credible stress on the nation’s

immigration infrastructure.

Children have spent days or even

weeks in Border Patrol stations

that are not meant for long-term

housing, and the crush has

meant people have been jammed

into cage-like holding pens and

even have had to stay in outdoor

fenced encampments without

access to showers or beds.

US officials have said they are

doing their best to care for every-

one they take into custody but

have acknowledged numerous

times that Border Patrol stations

are not designed to handle the

number of migrants that have

been crossing the border in re-

cent months.

Five Guatemalan children

who had been taken into Border

Patrol custody died between De-

cember and May. At least three

of the deaths involved the flu,

according to autopsy reports ob-

tained by The Washington Post.

Doctors

push for

probe of

deaths

Flu a risk for

migrant children

By Jonathan Lemire
and Dan Sewell
ASSOCIATED PRESS
CINCINNATI — President
Donald Trump opened a
revved-up rally Thursday in
Cincinnati by tearing into the
Democrats he has been elevat-
ing as his new political foils,
with attacks on four liberal con-
gresswomen and their party’s
leadership of cities.
The president, who faced
widespread criticism for not do-
ing more to stop the chants of
‘‘Send her back’’ about Somali-
born Representative Ilhan
Omar at a rally two weeks ago,
did not mention Omar or her
three colleagues by name in the
opening moments of his Ohio
gathering — but the target of
his attacks was unmistakable.
‘‘The Democrat party is now
being led by four left-wing ex-
tremists who reject everything
that we hold dear,’’ Trump said
of Omar and her fellow House
Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez of New York, Rashida
Tlaib of Michigan, and Ayanna
Pressley of Massachusetts.
But the fleeting mention did
not lead to further chants. Nor
did an extended attack on Dem-
ocraticleadersofurbanareas,

which Trump has laced into in

recent days as part of his incen-

diary broadsides against Repre-

sentative Elijah Cummings and

the city of Baltimore.

‘‘No one has paid a higher

price for the far-left destructive

agenda than Americans living

in our nation’s inner cities,’’

Trump said, drawing cheers

from the crowd in the packed

arena on the banks of the Ohio

River. ‘‘We send billions and bil-

lions and billions for years and

years, and it’s stolen money,

and it’s wasted money.’’

The rally was the first for

Trump since the ‘‘Send her

back’’ chant at a North Carolina

rally was denounced by Demo-

crats and unnerved Republi-

cans fearful of a campaign

fought on racial lines.

At Thursday’s rally, Trump

declared, ‘‘I don’t want to be

controversial.’’ He suggested to

his supporters hours earlier

that he did not want to hear the

chant about Omar, an Ameri-

can citizen who moved to the

United States as a child.

Speaking to reporters before

leaving the White House for

Cincinnati, Trump said he

didn’t know whether they

would chant anyway or what

his response would be if they

did — adding that, regardless,

he ‘‘loves’’ his political support-

ers.

‘‘I don’t know that you can

stop people,’’ Trump told re-

porters. ‘‘If they do the chant,

we’ll have to see what happens.’’

The chant followed racist

tweets Trump sent against

Omar and three other first-

term lawmakers, telling them

they were free to get out of the

United States ‘‘right now’’ and

saying if the lawmakers ‘‘hate

our country,’’ they can ‘‘go back’’

to their ‘‘broken and crime-in-

fested’’ countries.

Two weeks ago, Trump wa-

vered in his response to the di-

visive cries, letting the chant

roll at the rally, expressing dis-

approval about it the next day

and later retreating from those

concerns.

Since then, Trump has

pushed ahead with incendiary

tweets and a series of attacks on

a veteran African American

congressman and his predomi-

nantly black district in Balti-

more. Heightening the drama,

Trump’s Ohio rally came on the

heels of a pair of debates among

the Democrats who want to re-

place him.

Trump

laces into

his new

foils again

He calls out the

four‘extremists’

SAUL LOEB/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

President Trump gestured as he arrived at a “Make America Great Again” rally in Cincinnati on Thursday night.

BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The next round of debates, in September, will have stricter

standards to qualify, so it will be less unwieldy.