Northam: Business Reopenings Must Use Science, Data and Testing

Here in Virginia, Governor Ralph Northam - the only governor who is a doctor and who, knowing him as I do, actually cares about Virginians unlike the occupant of the White House and Virginia Republicans - is resisting Der Trumpenführer's calls to rashly "reopen" the economy and gamble with individuals' lives. Recent polling shows that 76% of Virginians believe Northam is doing a good job, with the other 24% likely representing the Christofascists and white supremacists who make up the majority of the Virginia GOP's core base. Infections and deaths in Virginia are still rising with the peak projected to come during the next three to four weeks.  Clearly, this is NOT the time to end social distancing and allow crowded gatherings of people to resume.  A piece in the Virginian Pilot looks at Northam's handling of the crisis despite the irresponsible voices calling to reopen all businesses (note the reference to The Family Foundation, a Christofascist hate group in league with Virginia Republican lawmakers) .  Here are article excepts:

The calls for Virginia’s governor to come up with a plan for reopening the state sooner rather than later are growing louder — from [Republican] elected officials, advocates and residents — and President Donald Trump’s new guidelines to state leaders are likely to cause more voices to join the chorus.

But the pressure to release such a plan comes as Virginia appears to be deep in the throes of the coronavirus pandemic, with the Department of Health reporting the largest increase in cases on Friday, up 602 from the previous day. The state appears not to have yet reached a peak in cases that health officials have projected will come between late April and late May.

At least 22 million Americans have filed for unemployment since the start of the pandemic, with over 410,000 filing in Virginia. Northam on Wednesday extended closures for nonessential businesses such as movie theaters and gyms to May 8, even as his stay-at-home order remains in effect until June 10. In statements, on phone calls and on social media, Republican state lawmakers say it’s time to get back to work and are asking Northam to begin the process of reopening Virginia. But Northam and health officials have warned that reopening anything too soon could overwhelm hospital capacity and do more harm than good.

“I assure you, I want to get back to a place where all businesses can be open, and we will get there, but we have to do it with deliberation, using science, data and testing to make sure we do it safely,” Northam said Friday at a press conference in Richmond. “Otherwise, cases will spike, we’ll be right back where we started, and all the sacrifices people have already made will have been for nothing.”

[T]he number of confirmed cases in Virginia has surpassed 7,000, but less than 1% of Virginians have been tested for COVID-19 as testing kits and personal protective equipment continue to be difficult to come by.

Most Virginians seem to think Northam — a pediatric neurologist who treated wounded soldiers during Desert Storm — is doing a good job managing the coronavirus pandemic. A Virginia Commonwealth University poll released Tuesday showed 76% of respondents approved of his handling the crisis.

On Monday, state officials unveiled a new University of Virginia coronavirus model that projected if social distancing restrictions are lifted on June 10 and the state returns to a “halfway” version of normal, the forecasted peak would come around mid-August, with median projections showing more than 10,000 confirmed cases a day.

The UVA researchers stressed that social distancing has significantly slowed the spread of the coronavirus, avoiding the worst-case scenarios that earlier projections showed. Lifting such restrictions too soon, they warned, could quickly lead to a second wave. Northam said Friday that staffing, testing kits and personal protective equipment remain hard to come by, and that’s partly as a result of a lack of guidance from the federal government.

“Do we have enough (personal protective equipment) to say that if there’s a flare up, or if that curve sharpens, we have the supplies necessary not only for the hospitals, but for the first responders, our nursing homes? We’re not there yet,” he said.

Sen. Steve Newman, R-Bedford, called Northam’s strategy “simple-minded thinking” on a video call with the Family Foundation, a conservative pro-life organization [sadly the media never calls TFF what it is in fact], on Thursday. On a call organized by the Democratic Party of Virginia on Tuesday, Dr. Wendy Klein, an associate professor at VCU’s Department of Internal Medicine, said any attempts to reopen the economy should be done in small steps and only if robust testing and contract tracing is available. Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican whose administration has coordinated closely with Northam’s and Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser’s staff during the coronavirus pandemic, said plans to move into a “recovery” phase would be laid out in greater detail next week, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Hogan said the recovery phase would include four necessary steps: a goal of 10,000 tests a day; increasing hospitals’ capacity to treat COVID-19 patients; boosting the state’s supply of personal protective equipment; and building a 1,000-person operation to trace the contacts of sick people, The Sun reported.

California: A Cautionary Tale for the Virginia GOP

The Virginia GOP 2018 lineup of extremists primary candidates.

In last year's gubernatorial race, Ed Gillespie in the end ran a campaign based of racism and religious extremism with an added dash of tax cuts for the wealthy.  He lost by 9 points.  In this year's U.S. Senate race, all three Republican candidates for the Virginia GOP nomination are extremists and at least one, if not two, of them, in my opinion, needs a mental health intervention.  Cory Stewart is running on a neo-Confederate platform, E.W. Jackson is unhinged, thus leaving Nick Freitas looking at least slightly sane in comparison.  However, given the rabid dog nature of the GOP base nowadays, it is all to possible that the most extreme candidate could walk away with the nomination, much to the delight of Democrat incumbent, Tim Kaine. A cautionary tale for the Virginia GOP can be found in California where there is a possibility that the California GOP may not even be able to field statewide candidates this year.  Part of the reason is due to California's unique nomination process, but a larger part is the GOP's extremism.  A piece in the New York Times should be required reading for leaders of the Virginia GOP.  Here are excerpts:

For anyone wondering about the state of the Republican Party in California these days, consider this: There may be no Republican candidate for governor or United States senator on the state’s ballot this November.

It’s no secret the state’s Republican Party has been in a decline for 20 years. Its challenges have been aggravated by the election of President Trump, as he has pushed tougher policies on such issues as immigration and the environment, running up against strong and often bipartisan sentiment in California.

A field of Republican candidates for the United States Senate and governor is struggling against these headwinds as they seek to end a more than 10-year drought and elect a party member to statewide office. Under the California election system, candidates compete in an open, nonpartisan primary on June 5. The two candidates who get the most votes — regardless of party — advance to the November general election.

If Republicans fall short in capturing one of those two November slots next month, which members of both parties say is a strong possibility, it would apparently be the first election since 1914 where a major party had no candidate in either the race for senator or for governor.

“You would think that if Republicans are shut out, it will be time for some serious soul-searching.”

Two of the most powerful Republican members of the congressional leadership represent central California: Kevin McCarthy, a close ally of Mr. Trump, who is in line to become the next speaker should Republicans hold the House this November, and Devin Nunes, the chairman of the House intelligence committee. Both are popular in their districts and wield plenty of influence in Washington.

But the Republican Party holds no statewide offices. Democrats control both houses of the State Legislature. Party registration is on the decline. And one of the potential Republican candidates for Senate who some polls suggest has at least a theoretical shot of making it to the November ballot is Patrick Little, an extremist who has called for the country to be “free from Jews.”

There have been hard-line strains in the California Republican Party for years, centered around law and order, taxes and immigration issues. But this is also a state with a moderate wing.

A group of Republicans led by Arnold Schwarzenegger, the former Republican governor, and Chad Mayes, the former Republican Assembly leader, have begun a campaign to move the party to the center . . . But that effort has run up against Republican candidates and elected officials who have tied their success to Mr. Trump and his administration’s policies.

“Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republicans like Mayes are completely wrong,” Travis Allen, a Republican candidate for governor and member of the Assembly, said in an interview.

The division over the future of the party was on full display the other night at a forum sponsored by the North Orange County Republican Women’s Federated Dinner for Mr. Allen and another Republican candidate for governor, John Cox, a businessman — the only two Republicans in a very crowded field who appear to have a chance to capture one of the top two spots in the primary.

A few moments later, both candidates told the moderator that they firmly supported Mr. Trump’s call to build a wall along the Mexican border. . . . Mr. Mayes, who was ousted as the Republican leader of the State Assembly after he negotiated a Republican vote-delivering compromise with Gov. Jerry Brown, a Democrat, on legislation to curb greenhouse emissions, said that sentiment threatened to further distance the party from voters.

Mr. Mayes added. “We need to come to grips with reality and understand the electorate in California has changed. We have to go to them. We are not going to win elections until we figure that out.”

The prospect that there may be no Republican candidate for Senate or governor this November casts both short-term and long-term threats for the party.

For this election, it could complicate efforts to draw Republicans to the polls in a year when Democrats are looking to oust as many as seven endangered Republican members of Congress. . . . For the long term, it is a reminder of just how little influence the party has statewide. Republicans failed to win a spot on the 2016 ballot for Senate as well.

One of the key points of contention with the Republican Party in the state is immigration. It has been a complication for Republicans since California voters passed an initiative pushed by the Republican governor, Pete Wilson, in 1994 to prohibit illegal immigrants from getting state social services. That initiative, which was thrown out in court, was seen as one of the critical reasons for the party’s decline, as the Latino population in this state has continued to grow, and as California became more Democratic.

Democrats make up nearly 45 percent of the total number of registered voters in the state. Republicans account for about 25 percent, just slightly ahead of the percentage of voters who declined to pick a party registration.

Trump himself has emerged as a critical issue as Republicans try to chart a path forward. Mr. Trump lost California by nearly four million votes, and he remains consistently unpopular overall. But he is popular with Republican primary voters, and candidates have lined up behind him.

Frankly, until the GOP ejects many of the Christian extremists and white supremacists from its base, I see little changing.  Hopefully, in both California and Virginia, 2018 will be a bad year for Republicans. 

Alabama: A Warning to the Virginia GOP

Neo-confederate, would be Trump mini-me, Corey Stewart

One question for the Republican Party of Virginia is whether or not it learned anything from the defeat of extremist nut case Roy Moore in Alabama this past Tuesday.  At present, the two announce GOP primary candidates seeking to challenge Senator Tim Kaine are extremists and whack jobs much akin to Moore.  One is a neo-Confederate would be Trump mini me named Corey Stewart who is popular with the rabid dog Virginia GOP base.  The other is self-styled "bishop" E.W. Jackson who went down to a crushing defeat in 2013 to Ralph Northam in the Lt. Governor race. Jackson is a virulent homophobe and ,in my view, is utterly un-tethered from objective reality - something that makes him the perfect for Virginia Christofascists.  A column in the Virginian Pilot questions whether the Virginia GOP will nonetheless select one of these extremists or someone else far from normalcy to challenge Kaine.  Given the lunacy of the Virginia GOP base, it is very possible Kaine will be given the gift of a lunatic as his opponent in November, 2018.  Here are column highlights:

Roy Moore's defeat in ruby-red Alabama may spell trouble for Virginia Republican Senate hopefuls Corey Stewart and E.W. Jackson, both of whom, like Moore, have pursued platforms far from the party's establishment wing.

Both Virginia hopefuls entered the Republican primary campaigning to the right of fellow GOP candidates: Stewart as a self- professed mini Donald Trump who has voiced support for Confederate statues and Jackson a firebrand preacher who has called gay people ill.

After the results were tallied in Alabama - first-time candidate Doug Jones bested Moore by more than 20,000 votes - Stewart, who had stumped for Moore, sounded off against GOP leaders who he said "colluded" with Republicans to undermine the former chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court.

Jackson, an African-American minister, tweeted: "The black vote did not turn out against Roy Moore because of the sex scandal, but because of alleged racially insensitive remarks & perceived disdain for black voters."

But experts say such attention-grabbing statements don't represent a version of the Republican Party that can topple Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., next year.

"Extremist messaging is problematic in Virginia, but it's even problematic in Alabama," said Stephen Farnsworth, a professor of political science at the University of Mary Washington. Of Virginia, he said: "An evangelical message or a nativist-focused message might get you a nomination, but it'll be toxic in a general election."

The Virginia GOP's craving for a not-so-extreme candidate could be why Del. Nick Freitas, Culpeper, an Army veteran and tea party-style conservative, is picking up early buzz as an alternative to Stewart.

An hour after the results in Alabama came in, Freitas chose to post on Facebook about a youth counseling program and not the election. He did not return messages seeking comment Wednesday.  

In a 2012 interview with the group Americans for Truth about Homosexuality, which has been called a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Jackson called gay people "perverted" and "very sick people psychologically and mentally and emotionally." Later in the same interview he called homosexuality a "horrible sin" that "poisons culture" and "destroys families."  

[E]arlier this week Jackson suggested Stewart had "some dealings" with the Muslim Brotherhood - a jab Stewart labeled vintage Jackson.

"He's a crackpot," Stewart said in a phone interview Wednesday from Alabama. "He's getting even crazier." Stewart said Democrats would not let Jackson off the hook despite his attempts to moderate his comments on gay and transgender people - and neither would he.

Stewart shows no signs of backing off his self-described anti- politically correct soapbox.  In a minute-long video on Facebook shortly after the results came in, Stewart promised to never surrender to the "Republican establishment," which "colluded together with the Democrats to undermine Judge Moore" and will follow suit in his race next year.