A closed business in Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., is a sign of the enormous impact of the coronavirus pandemic on public health and the economy. An unprecedented crisis, met with an unprecedented government response, has the ability to transform the country’s politics.
Paul Sancya/AP
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Paul Sancya/AP
Just like the coronavirus pandemic could permanently change daily life in America, from hand washing habits to telework, it also has the potential to transform the country’s politics in profound ways.
“This crisis is a time machine to the future,” says Anne-Marie Slaughter, CEO of New America and a former director of policy planning at the State Department during the Obama administration. “I think we’ll look back and see that this was like the Great Depression or a war, and that created political space to make big policy change that seemed just too hard even two months ago.”
After every big national crisis in America, the federal government has emerged with a new, greater role.
Former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who as President Obama’s chief of staff during the Great Recession famously said “never allow a good crisis go to waste,” points out that after the Civil War came land grant colleges and the national railway system; after the Great Depression came rural electrification and Social Security; and at the height of the Cold War President Eisenhower proposed a national highway system — all big federal investments that changed the fabric of life across the country.
The current pandemic and expected recession could result in a new, expanded role for the federal government again.
Big policy changes could also rearrange traditional political divisions, now that Republicans in the Senate have voted unanimously for policies they’ve opposed in the past, like paid sick leave, a guaranteed minimum income, student debt relief protections for renters and support for gig economy workers. Of course, this massive package of federal help for ordinary people is only temporary, but Democrats are hoping that not all of it is.
“Suddenly, in a crisis like this, people realize across the political spectrum that unless we can provide a floor, the whole economy can crash,” said Slaughter, noting the potential for permanent changes to the political debate. “That paid sick leave is not about coddling workers. It’s about making sure that sick workers don’t come to work and infect others. People are equally realizing, if workers have no money to spend, the economy can’t function.”
Democrats have advocated many of these policies for decades. But now that Congress has approved the largest federal intervention in the economy since the creation of Medicare, they see a new opportunity to push for big investments in modern digital infrastructure like 5G, a better public health system, universal health insurance that doesn’t disappear when you lose your job, and a stronger social safety net.
Former Clinton White House aide Bill Galston summed up the Democrats’ argument this way: “The COVID-19 pandemic has been a brutal x-ray of the weaknesses of our social safety net in dealing with national emergencies. We shouldn’t be caught flat-footed by the next emergency any more than we should be caught flat-footed with a nearly empty national health emergency reserve, which was never restocked when it should have been.”
But Democrats aren’t the only ones who see a political opportunity in the pandemic. The nationalist, populist wing of the Republican Party that’s been warning about the dangers of globalization also appears to have gotten a boost.
“One of the core arguments of the Trump 2016 campaign is that in our supply chains and our manufacturing economy, we’d become too dependent on a globalized world, especially China,” said conservative J.D. Vance, the author of Hillbilly Elegy. “It turns out that if you want to have an economy that can weather a crisis, you actually have to be able to make some core things yourself, whether it’s wireless technology, whether it’s pharmaceutical products, whether it’s ventilators and hospital masks.”
And that’s exactly the argument that you’re hearing fromWhite House trade adviser Peter Navarro, President Trump’s pandemic equipment czar.
“If there’s any vindication of the president’s ‘Buy American, secure borders and a strong manufacturing base’ philosophy, strategy and belief, it is this crisis,” Navarro said a White House press briefing earlier this month.
On trade, the pandemic gives a clear advantage to the anti-globalists in the GOP led by President Trump, but on domestic policies and the role of the federal government, while Democrats know what they want, Republicans aren’t so sure, according to Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics & Public Policy Center in Washington.
“I think the debate within the Republican Party over what it stands for has been heating up, and the pandemic is going to kick it into overdrive,” Olsen said. “You’ve got the people who are holding onto the neo-libertarian version of the past. But you’ve seen more and more calls for reform, which is moving more in the direction of engaging the Democrats on their core issue, which is how do we help people rather than saying the government can’t help people.”
He added, “I think you’ll see that debate ramp up once we return to more normal politics after the lockdowns are over. Then, I think the battle in the Republican Party is going to be fierce.”
There are already lots of splits.
Freshman Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., for instance, wants to beef up the social safety net, advocating a European-style unemployment backstop, where the federal government would pay companies 80% of wages to prevent layoffs during the crisis.
Other Republicans, however, support nothing more than the current temporary emergency measures. And in addition to Tea Party-style protests against the stay-at-home orders, there’s also conservative pushback to the exponential increases in federal spending — even the temporary ones.
Republicans shouldn’t expect to get any guidance from the president on resolving these internal disputes, according to Olsen. “If Donald Trump does what he usually does, he will gyrate between positions that each side can support,” he said. “And if the party does what it usually does, in the short term it will be locked in stasis, trying to figure out which iceberg Trump is going to land on and try to be there.”
But in the meantime, until Republicans agree on what they stand for, it may be hard for the president and his party to continue to argue that popular programs, like Obamacare, should be eliminated lock, stock and barrel.
“I think the appetite for small-government, everyone-is-on-their-own approach to the welfare state, frankly, was always pretty small and it’s gonna be even smaller, I think, over the next couple of years,” said J.D. Vance, particularly given the massive numbers of people applying for unemployment benefits, which hit 22 million last week, canceling out nearly all of the job gains since the Great Recession.
How this debate resolves itself depends on how long the pandemic recession lasts and how popular the government rescue programs turn out to be. As Henry Olsen points out, “If the giant government rescue plan works, it will legitimize government intervention in the economy in a way we haven’t seen in decades.”
Until then, the pandemic has given both parties an opportunity to appeal to the vast number of Americans who will need help from the federal government for some time to come.
Opinion: Brad West been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization
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Published Apr 22, 2024 • Last updated 2 hours ago • 4 minute read
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VICTORIA — Port Coquitlam Mayor Brad West fired off a letter to Premier David Eby last week about Allan Schoenborn, the child killer who changed his name in a bid for anonymity.
“It is completely beyond the pale that individuals like Schoenborn have the ability to legally change their name in an attempt to disassociate themselves from their horrific crimes and to evade the public,” wrote West.
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The Alberta government has legislated against dangerous, long-term and high risk offenders who seek to change their names to escape public scrutiny.
“I urge your government to pass similar legislation as a high priority to ensure the safety of British Columbians,” West wrote the premier.
The B.C. Review Board has granted Schoenborn overnight, unescorted leave for up to 28 days, and he spent some of that time in Port Coquitlam, according to West.
This despite the board being notified that “in the last two years there have been 15 reported incidents where Schoenborn demonstrated aggressive behaviour.”
“It is absolutely unacceptable that an individual who has committed such heinous crimes, and continues to demonstrate this type of behaviour, is able to roam the community unescorted.”
Understandably, those details alarmed PoCo residents.
But the letter is also an example of the outspoken mayor’s penchant for to-the-point pronouncements on provincewide concerns.
He’s been one of the sharpest critics of decriminalization.
His most recent blast followed the news that the New Democrats were appointing a task force to advise on ways to curb the use of illicit drugs and the spread of weapons in provincial hospitals.
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“Where the hell is the common sense here?” West told Mike Smyth on CKNW recently. “This has just gone way too far. And to have a task force to figure out what to do — it’s obvious what we need to do.
“In a hospital, there’s no weapons and you can’t smoke crack or fentanyl or any other drugs. There you go. Just saved God knows how much money and probably at least six months of dithering.”
He had a pithy comment on the government’s excessive reliance on outside consultants like MNP to process grants for clean energy and other programs.
“If ever there was a place to find savings that could be redirected to actually delivering core public services, it is government contracts to consultants like MNP,” wrote West.
He’s also broken with the Eby government on the carbon tax.
“The NDP once opposed the carbon tax because, by its very design, it is punishing to working people,” wrote West in a social media posting.
“The whole point of the tax is to make gas MORE expensive so people don’t use it. But instead of being honest about that, advocates rely on flimsy rebate BS. It is hard to find someone who thinks they are getting more dollars back in rebates than they are paying in carbon tax on gas, home heat, etc.”
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West has a history with the NDP. He was a political staffer and campaign worker with Mike Farnworth, the longtime NDP MLA for Port Coquitlam and now minister of public safety.
When West showed up at the legislature recently, Farnworth introduced him to the house as “the best mayor in Canada” and endorsed him as his successor: “I hope at some time he follows in my footsteps and takes over when I decide to retire — which is not just yet,” added Farnworth who is running this year for what would be his eighth term.
Other political players have their eye on West as a future prospect as well.
Several parties have invited him to run in the next federal election. He turned them all down.
Lately there has also been an effort to recruit him to lead a unified Opposition party against Premier David Eby in this year’s provincial election.
I gather the advocates have some opinion polling to back them up and a scenario that would see B.C. United and the Conservatives make way (!) for a party to be named later.
Such flights of fancy are commonplace in B.C. when the NDP is poised to win against a divided Opposition.
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By going after West, the advocates pay a compliment to his record as mayor (low property taxes and a fix-every-pothole work ethic) and his populist stands on public safety, carbon taxation and other provincial issues.
The outreach to a small city mayor who has never run provincially also says something about the perceived weaknesses of the alternatives to Eby.
“It is humbling,” West said Monday when I asked his reaction to the overtures.
But he is a young father with two boys, aged three and seven. The mayor was 10 when he lost his own dad and he believes that if he sought provincial political leadership now, “I would not be the type of dad I want to be.”
When West ran for re-election — unopposed — in 2022, he promised to serve out the full four years as mayor.
He is poised to keep his word, confident that if the overtures to run provincially are serious, they will still be there when his term is up.
LIVE Q&A WITH B.C. PREMIER DAVID EBY: Join us April 23 at 3:30 p.m. when we will sit down with B.C. Premier David Eby for a special edition of Conversations Live. The premier will answer our questions — and yours — about a range of topics, including housing, drug decriminalization, transportation, the economy, crime and carbon taxes. Click HERE to get a link to the livestream emailed to your inbox.
New York Times reporter and CNN senior political analyst Maggie Haberman explains the significance of David Pecker, the ex-publisher of the National Enquirer, taking the stand in the hush money case against former President Donald Trump.
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