The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

THURSDAy, MARCH 19 , 2020. THE WASHINGTON POST eZ re A27

T

he Democratic race for president is over. On Tuesday night, former vice president Joe Biden continued his remark- able run of primary victories, sweeping away Sen. Bernie Sanders’s challenges in Florida, Illinois and Arizona. As he did in Michigan and Mississippi a week before, Biden dominated the most important contest of the evening — Sand- ers (I-Vt.) did not win a single county in Florida. After Biden’s commanding performance on Super Tuesday, I cau- tioned that Democratic leaders should not push Sanders out of the race too quickly. That was then; this is now. The United States finds itself in the midst of a crisis that is without parallel. Health-care experts warn that our emergency rooms may soon turn into war zones, unemployment could rise as high as 20 percent and workers’ retire- ment accounts can expect to fall even further on Wall Street. The crisis w e are entering could be the most challenging since World War II. That is why the Democratic Party must begin to present its alternative vision to Donald Trump’s presidency in one voice. Were the dynamics of this race different — had Biden performed in a less dominant manner on Tuesday, had Sanders shown a viable path forward over the past three weeks, had the former vice president not turned in his most impressive debate performance on Sunday night — I would argue that this race should go on. But it is now clear that Joe Biden will be his party’s nominee for president. We heard throughout this long Dem- ocratic primary all about the “damn bill” the Vermont senator wrote. He told us all he had done to make the Senate more responsive to the needs of working Americans. If Sanders has that ability to shape the national debate and bend history toward a more just future, then that opportunity is awaiting him

on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and not in an empty studio fighting a lost cause by streaming irrelevant campaign speeches. Sanders’s greatest battle against President Tr ump and moneyed inter- ests on Wall Street is awaiting him on Capitol Hill. To day, a bipartisan coali- tion of legislators is busy piecing together corporate bailouts for Fortune 500 companies that already received massive financial windfalls from Trump’s tax cuts. The largest corpora- tions in the United States used those billions to buy back stock instead of giving raises to workers, expanding business operations or setting aside cash reserves for crises such as the ones they are now experiencing. Now, they are back at the trough lobbying for another bailout. Is this not the type of ideological battle that first drew Sanders to public service? Does he not want to play an active role in crafting new legislation that will put the needs of workers ahead of those corporate profiteers? Will he choose to make a statement or make a difference? Sanders’s critics will assume the worst of him. They expect the self- d escribed democratic socialist to continue a public career defined more by rhetorical bombast than real results. But I choose to believe that Sanders will put his constituents and his country first, suspend his campaign and begin in earnest the battle before us all. That fight will be waged more on Capitol Hill than through a presiden- tial campaign that, in effect, ended weeks ago. It is time for Sanders and his supporters to focus their efforts where they can best impact the future. It i s time for Bernie Sanders to end his campaign for president and carry his fight to Capitol Hill. [email protected]

JOE SCARBOROUGH

Sanders’s moment

is calling him —

in the U.S. Senate

T

oday’s ill wind has blown in something good, a renewed in- terest in a neglected novel by a gifted writer. Albert Camus’ “The Plague” was allegorical: Europe’s political plague had been Nazism, which Camus had actively resisted in occupied Paris. But he had been born in French Algeria and surely knew of the 1849 cholera epidemic that ravaged the city of Oran, where 1947’s “ The Plague” is set. At the novel’s conclusion, as crowds celebrate the infestation’s end, Camus’ protagonist, Dr. Bernard Rieux, “re- membered that such joy is always im- periled. He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know... that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen chests; that it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.” For Camus, “enlightening” was a double-edged word. Nature, red in tooth and claw, can be brutally didac- tic, as it was with the 1755 Lisbon earthquake. This was a chastening re- minder, during the Enlightenment’s high tide of confident aspiration, that nature always has something to say about what human beings always pre- maturely call “the conquest of nature.” Humanity, which is given to opti- mism and amnesia (the latter contrib- uting to the former), was nudged toward theological skepticism by the felt contradiction between the fact of Lis- bon and the theory that a benevolent God has ordained Earth as a commodi- ous habitat in a congenial universe. But, then, four centuries before Lisbon, the Black Death plague had killed about one-third of Europe’s popula- tion. Besides, the idea that Earth is miraculously biophilic — designed to enable human life to thrive — disre- gards many inconveniences, from s aber-toothed tigers, meteor strikes and typhoons, to volcanoes, insect in- festations and multitudes of mutating viruses. In 1 900, about when medicine at l ast began to do more good than harm, 37 percent of all American deaths were from infectious diseases. To day, the figure is 2 percent. By 1940 and the arrival of penicillin, medicine seemed on the verge of conquering infectious diseases, especially smallpox. No human achievement has done as much to lessen human suffering. In the early 1950s, the Salk vaccine seemed to complete the conquest by banishing childhood polio, which fos- tered the misconception that pharma- cological silver bullets are the key to large improvements in public health. This distracted attention from the stag- gering costs of lung cancer, coronary artery disease, AIDS, violence, sub- stance abuses, Ty pe 2 diabetes brought on by obesity and other consequences of known-to-be-risky behaviors. In last year’s “The Body: A Guide for Occupants,” Bill Bryson notes a mile- stone in human history: 2011 was the first year in which more people died from noncommunicable diseases (e.g., heart failure, stroke, diabetes) than from all infectious diseases combined. “We live,” Bryson writes, “in an age in which we are killed, more often than not, by lifestyle.” The bacterium that caused the 14th century’s Black Death was in the air, food and water, so breathing, eating and drinking were risky behaviors. To day, deaths from the coronavirus are not apt to match what Bryson calls “suicide by lifestyle,” an epidemic that will continue long after the coronavirus has. Three decades after Jonas Salk’s good deed, AIDS shattered complacen- cy about infectious disease epidemics being mere memories. AIDS, however, was largely a behaviorally caused epidemic based in the United States pri- marily in 30 or so urban neighbor- hoods. Changes in sexual behavior, and less sharing of needles by intravenous drug users, tamed the epidemic. Modern medicine, and especially pharmacology, has brought Americans blessings beyond their grandparents’ dreams. Nevertheless, a sour aroma of disappointment surrounds health care, which is the most important poli- cy i ssue in a nation gripped by political, social and actual hypochondria. An old axiom (“Eat sensibly, exercise diligent- ly, die anyway”) has become a new grievance: Medicine’s limitations, made more conspicuous by medicine’s successes, are disturbing reminders of the skull beneath the skin of life. Because epidemics are silent and invisible during their incubation, and are swift and unpredictable in their trajectories, they could be devastating terror weapons — except that, as the coronavirus is vividly demonstrating, no intentional perpetrator could be confident of remaining immune. The connectedness of the modern world, thanks in part to the jet engine’s de- mocratization of intercontinental air travel, deters the weaponization of epidemics that the connectedness facili- tates. For now, this must suffice as good news. [email protected]

GEORGE F. WILL

Nature’s

enlightening

lesson

J

oe Biden did not speak trium- phantly on Tuesday n ight after win- ning the latest round o f Democratic primaries that virtually sealed his nomination. He spoke soberly, like a president. That tells you almost every- thing you need t o know a bout the state of politics at t he coronavirus moment. Almost, because there were two large issues left in the wake of Tuesday’s contests in Florida, Illinois and Arizona — and of the primary that didn’t happen in Ohio. The first: What will Bernie Sanders do? The second: How do we guarantee the integrity of our electoral system in the m idst o f a pandemic? By every conventional measure, the race for the Democratic nomination is over. Most striking about Tuesday’s primaries i s how similar t hey were to all the others held since Biden swept South Carolina on Feb. 2 9. Broadly speaking, Biden is the choice of more than half of Democrats, while Sanders has the backing of about a third of the party. This race i s nothing like four years ago, when Sanders fought Hillary Clinton right through the contests in June and after. In 2016, for example, Sanders came very close to beating Clinton in Illinois. On Tuesday, Illinois was a rout: Biden took 59 percent to Sanders’s 36 percent. Biden won county after county where Sanders had prevailed four years ago. Against C linton, Sanders did well a mong white, non-college-educated voters in what turned out to be a sign of Clinton’s coming difficulties against Donald Trump. Biden is largely carrying such voters t his year. Biden now has a substantial delegate lead, and with the possible exception of Wisconsin and — it would be a very long shot — New York, there are no obvious states down the road where Sanders would have a serious chance of shaking up the c ontest. The Sanders camp can see this as clearly as anyone, and on Wednesday morning, Faiz Shakir, the senator’s campaign manager, issued a statement saying that Sanders would be “having con- versations with supporters to assess his campaign” o ver the n ext weeks. The statement was good news for the Biden camp, which does not want to be seen by members of Sanders’s loyal base as pushing their champion out of the race. For his part, Biden was all about

outreach in his recorded statement on Tuesday night, which w as directed largely at offering a unifying message to a country facing a pandemic. Biden’s calm tone of resolve and conciliation sharply contrasted w ith President Trump’s e rrat- ic and often divisive messages throughout the crisis. And Biden went out of his way to praise Sanders and his supporters for changing the nation’s political conversa- tion. “Let me say especially to the young voters who have been inspired by Sena- tor Sanders: I hear you,” Biden said. He stressed that he shared with Sanders “a common vision for the need to provide affordable health care for all Americans, reducing income inequity that has risen so drastically, to tackling the existential threat of our time, climate c hange.” If Sanders and B iden want an immedi- ate joint project, they can unite in point- ing to the d angers t o the election p rocess itself, brought home by Gov. Mike D eWine’s decision to cancel in-person voting in the Ohio primary on Tuesday. DeWine argued that opening the polls would undermine efforts to contain the coronavirus. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) said on MSNBC that he believed DeWine, a Re- publican, acted “in totally good faith,” but expressed worry about “any prece- dent” the cancellation might set. Larry Sabato, a political scientist at t he Univer- sity of Virginia, made the second point more sharply, telling me that “this is the Trump era, when old rules don’t always apply and outrageous things occur with regularity.” Guaranteeing that the v irus w ill not b e used in t he f all as a pretext t o disrupt the election should be a key component of any broad stimulus bill. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), along with election specialist Rick Hasen of the University of Califor- nia at Irvine, have proposed that all states offer unrestricted absentee voting and mail-in ballots, with the effort fund- ed by the federal government. It is not paranoia but realism to imag- ine that Trump is now very nervous about the election as Biden thrives among the suburban constituencies that helped Democrats take the House in 2018 a nd b lue-collar voters who gravitat- ed to Trump in 2016. Protecting the election is a cause that should bring Biden and S anders together. Twitter: @EJDionne

E.J. DIONNE JR.

A joint project

for Biden and Sanders

MIcHael reynolds/ePa-eFe/reX/sHutterstocK Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) at the Capitol on Wednesday.

DAVID IGNATIUS

excerpted from washingtonpost.com/people/david-ignatius

Trump’s latest disruptive shake-up

The Trump administration is continuing its shake-up of the intelligence community with a potentially disruptive change of leadership at the National Counterterror- ism Center, the agency that coordinates government efforts to guard the homeland. The White House announced its plan to nominate as NCTC director Christopher Miller, a former Army Special Forces officer who had overseen counterterrorism efforts in the Trump White House before moving to a similar position at the Pentagon. Miller gets solid marks from former colleagues, but the move has increased fears within the intelligence community that the administration has embarked on a politically motivated campaign against career professionals. The move came hours after I reported that Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, had begun a “review” of the NCTC and was weighing staff cuts there and in other parts of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. Congress created both in 2003 as part of its effort to coordinate intelligence activities after the failure to “connect the dots” that allowed the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Miller, if confirmed, would take over from Russell Travers, who has been acting director since the departure of Joseph Maguire last August to become acting DNI. Travers, a widely respected career intelligence officer, was told that he could remain as Miller’s deputy, according to a Senate source who had been briefed by the ODNI leadership.

The timing of the proposed change was surprising, since it came as President Trump and most of the country were focused on the coronavirus threat that has preoccupied the world. But Grenell and the new team overseeing intelligence apparently couldn’t wait. An intelligence source told me that Miller received a call about 10 p.m. Tuesday from the White House, asking if he would take the job. Travers didn’t learn about the move until Wednesday morning, when he was briefed by an aide, the intelligence source said. Despite Travers’s long record of service, Grenell apparently didn’t notify him personally in advance that the White House had selected someone else for the top job. This treatment of a career officer will grate among his colleagues. The move will add to concerns within the U.S. intelligence community, and among its partners abroad, that Trump is continuing a purge of what he views as disloyal subordinates at t he ODNI, FBI and other spy agencies. This housecleaning began last July with the departure of DNI Daniel Coats; that was followed by the resignation in August of his deputy, Sue Gordon, after she was passed over for the top job. Then came the ouster last month of Maguire and his senior deputy, Andrew Hallman. “People in the intelligence community are very nervous because of the uncertain- ty,” said the intelligence source. The political churn is especially upsetting because it comes at a time when there are so many serious global economic and public health issues that require attention. It’s no time, in other words, for political vendettas. Twitter: @IgnatiusPost

BY TED LIEU

I

g enuinely want President Trump to succeed in s topping the spread of the novel coronavirus, a nd will do every- thing I can to help him in this effort. At stake are the lives of my elderly par- ents, my family, my constituents and many Americans. But Trump’s repeated insistence on calling coronavirus the “Chinese virus” is more than just xenophobic; it causes harm both to Asian Americans and to the White House’s response to this life-threatening pandemic. I served on active duty in the U.S. military to defend the right of any American to make politically incorrect statements, but as a public figure, I can- not s tand idly by while the president u ses his pulpit to exacerbate xenophobia in a time of crisis. Trump claims t hat in using the p hrase “Chinese virus,” he’s just trying to be “accurate” in describing where it’s from. But there is a difference between saying the virus is from China a nd saying i t is a Chinese virus. In a time of unease and un- certainty, such language stokes xenophobic panic and doesn’t get us closer to eradicating this virus. Asian Americans have been assaulted or other- wise discriminated against because of such rhetoric. In New York, a man assaulted an Asian woman wearing a face mask and called her a “diseased b ---h.” A lso in New York, a man on the subway sprayed an Asian passen- ger with Febreze and verbally abused him. On the subway in Los Angeles, a man ranted at an Asian American woman, claiming Chinese people are putrid and responsible for all diseases. (The woman happened t o be Thai A merican.) Trump’s r hetoric a dds fuel to the g row- ing fire of hatred being misdirected at Asian Americans. The fact that he is the president of the United States, who is responsible for the well-being of all Americans, only makes his rhetoric e ven more disturbing. The leaders of both the Centers for Disease Control and Preven- tion and the World Health Organization have warned that we should not use terms such as “Chinese virus.” The novel coronavirus already h as an official n ame, SARS-CoV-2, and an unofficial name, covid-19. Injecting an ethnic qualifier to the virus is unnecessary and can stigma- tize Asian A mericans. Against the backdrop of Trump’s unnecessary language lies the history of discrimination against Asian Ameri- cans in our country. From the Chinese Exclusion Act to the internment camps

of World War II t o the murder o f Vincent Chin, Asian Americans are particularly susceptible to being discriminated against by the mistaken belief that we somehow are foreigners or have foreign ties. It w as myopic thinking to pretend this was a foreign virus that wouldn’t b ecome our problem, and it has contributed to our present frantic efforts to play catch- up. On Jan. 22, Trump was asked on CNBC, “A re there worries about a pandemic at t his point?” He responded: “No. Not at all. And we have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going t o be j ust fine.” Trump’s weak initial response of only barring foreign nationals — either from China or who had visited China — from entering the United States allowed Americans traveling from China and anyone from Europe to enter the United States w ith t he virus. T he president’s view that the virus was a Chinese problem contributed to his failure to understand the importance of test- ing people domestically for the virus and of having enough medical equipment to deal with the o utbreak. We are still woefully short of test kits across the United States as well as the chemical reagents necessary to process tests. The coronavirus has spread exponentially as a result, and if that is not mitigated, we will not have enough ventilators for the patients who need them to stay alive. Hospitals and first responders are starting to run out of personal protective equipment — essen- tial for k eeping t hem h ealthy and s afe. One country that can help happens to be China. Though the Chinese government certainly made mistakes at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, we can learn a lot from Chinese doctors and s cientists w ho were on the front lines of this crisis and also cooperate and get vital medical equipment and supplies. China recently sent doctors, ventilators, face masks a nd protective suits to Italy. For the president to continue using rhetoric that t he C hinese find insulting is not helpful. It is not one country’s problem to solve. We are in a worldwide, life-threatening pandemic, and we all need to work together. I wish the president could set aside his xenophobia for the moment while we try to keep Ameri- cans from d ying.

the writer, a democrat, represents california’s 33rd congressional district in the u.s. House of representatives.

Trump is stoking xenophobic

panic in a time of crisis

There is a difference

between saying the

virus is from China

and saying it is a

Chinese virus.

The Washington Post - 19.03.2020

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