Believe it or not, John Roberts handed conservatives two big wins at the Supreme Court last week, just not the win they wanted. Roberts gutted the Consumer Financial Protection Board and beefed up the argument for the unitary executive. Roberts, in effect, expanded the power of presidents to exercise control over appointees of independent executive branch agencies. The long-term ramifications are significant and structural. He also led the Court in striking down a Montana Supreme Court decision that barred religious schools in Montana from taking advantage of public tax dollars for tuition payments. Nonreligious private schools could participate, but religious ones could not. This is a big religious liberty win.
But Roberts also sided with the Court&#8217;s liberals to strike down an abortion case in Louisiana. He would concur not in their reasoning but in their judgment. Roberts took a position based on stare decisis and essentially argued that legislatures putting unnecessary obstacles in the way of exercising rights must be restrained by courts. We will see him pull that language back out in a Biden presidency when the Democrats want to curtail the Second Amendment.
To understand Roberts, understand his handling of the &#8220;Obamacare&#8221; case. In that case, leading up to the 2012 election, Roberts upheld the Affordable Care Act on grounds no other justice on the Court agreed with but used reasoning that would make it easy for a President Mitt Romney to sabotage the Affordable Care Act. He chose to be the ultimate unaccountable politician by doing so in a way that took the Supreme Court out of the fighting.
Roberts, as chief justice, is more about protecting his turf than preserving an ideology. If you understand that Roberts views his role as restraining the prevailing powers, his jurisprudence makes more sense.
Consider the census case.
Roberts wrote that opinion two years ago and argued that the Trump administration could ask about citizenship on the census but needed a clear reason for doing so. Roberts essentially said he did not believe the Trump administration but provided them a helpful roadmap for future administrative decisions.
Fast forward to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, and again Roberts wrote the decision. He again said what Trump wanted was fine, but Trump failed to adhere to the roadmap Roberts had set out, so Trump&#8217;s rule had to go.
Now, with the abortion decision, Roberts gives the left their win against Trump on abortion, the biggest issue of the day. It sucks some of the energy away from those who would want to pack the courts and demonstrates the independence of the federal judiciary. In other words, Roberts has played politics to insulate the judiciary from conservatives who claim they own it and progressives who want to pack the Supreme Court.
The troubling thing here is not that Roberts is not a conservative or that he is a liberal. It is that he views his role as restraining Trump. He will do that with Joe Biden as well. He did that in the Obama administration. Even when giving Barack Obama wins, like with &#8220;Obamacare,&#8221; Roberts was signaling paths forward for conservatives electorally.
Roberts is playing politics to protect his institution. He can keep this up for years. In doing so, while trying to restrain the other branches and preserve his own, he is muddying jurisprudence. Because of John Roberts, abortion jurisprudence in America is extremely convoluted.
Because the right has been so aggressive in stockpiling conservatives on the courts, Roberts felt he needed to side with the left to take the Supreme Court off the table in the election. If Biden wins, the conservative legal advancement will start up again with Roberts delivering wins for the right. As long as Trump is there, however, Roberts sees his job as restraint.
Going back to the Affordable Care Act case, Roberts&#8217; message to the right seems clear: Don&#8217;t expect big wins in courts if you don&#8217;t want to try big wins in Congress. I&#8217;m not sure why John Roberts should be the pro-life warrior Republicans expect him to be while a Republican Congress long ago gave up trying to defund Planned Parenthood.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

John Roberts

ERICKSON: Restrainer In Chief

Supreme Court

Google has reached a level of monopolization that needs to be taken seriously as a threat to freedom, the free exchange of ideas and political diversity.
Follow along with the logic of your average &#8220;woke&#8221; Google employee. These employees have been openly arguing for a few years now that Google needs a diverse array of employees shaping Google&#8217;s algorithms, or Google will only present to consumers certain information that might exclude diverse views or information.
Concurrently, these same employees have argued that Google need not entertain conservative thoughts or ideas. It was not that long ago that Google employees revolted at the idea of Kay Cole James, a black female and president of the Heritage Foundation, sitting on a Google advisory board designed to ensure diversity in Google&#8217;s artificial intelligence practices.
Google&#8217;s employees want diversity, but not ideological diversity. They believe diversity is needed to shape access to information through Google, but they want to deny any ideological diversity in the process of shaping.
Google controls over 90% of search engine activity. With a &#8220;diverse&#8221; group of people who lack intellectual diversity, Google can restrict access to information that offends its hired gatekeepers. Google controls over 70% of the market share of advertising online. Over the years, Google has bought up major competitors and then leveraged its dominance to both grow its ad business and hurt its competitors.
According to The Wall Street Journal, in an experiment last year, Nexstar Media Group Inc. tried to get out of Google&#8217;s ad network and saw not only a revenue dive but also a dive across access to the company&#8217;s data because Google has so integrated its ad business, ad generation business and search business.
This past week, a reporter at NBC News attempted to have The Federalist removed from Google&#8217;s ad network. The Federalist is a conservative website that had the audacity to run a story critical of the media. The NBC News reporter actually flagged The Federalist due to a comment left by a random commenter. Google made The Federalist delete its comments section to keep revenue flowing.
In the past year, with my own website, The Resurgent, I have received notices from Google that posts at The Resurgent related to guns and other issues have all run afoul of Google&#8217;s policies. In fact, Google routinely uses its position to demonetize conservatives who might write about guns or other matters. They starve sites of cash, and there are no comparable competitors to go to.
On top of that, left-wing agitators have a sympathetic ear at Google, and Google is more likely to target sites on the right than the left. An NBC News reporter, who had previously been a left-wing activist for the U.K. Labour Party, found a sympathetic person at Google to demonetize a conservative news and opinion site because of a random commenter in a comments section. One wonders if Google will demonetize The New York Times because of Sen. Tom Cotton&#8217;s op-ed. Don&#8217;t hold your breath.
That Google can use its monopoly to force websites to delete content or else be penalized is a dangerous thing, particularly when Google is so willing to target conservatives.
Google&#8217;s search dominance is akin to Microsoft&#8217;s dominance with Internet Explorer that forced antitrust action against Microsoft. Likewise, Google&#8217;s control of over 70% of online advertising is depriving the marketplace of competition. Google is now using its Chrome browser to compel changes to the open internet, becoming a new Internet Explorer, where people must use Google&#8217;s browser to render sites properly and, with that, let Google track them.
The time has come for serious bipartisan investigations into breaking apart Google. If Google can use its position to censor others and harm them financially while ensuring a departure from Google causes even further harm, Google is too big.
It is easy to say sites can go elsewhere and do not have to use Google. But there is nowhere on the internet one can go to truly escape Google without significant sacrifice in accessibility or revenue. It is time to break it up and prohibit it from controlling the content of other sites.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Google

ERICKSON: Break Up Google

A man emailed me last week, and his email cut me to the core. He said he was really angry about the Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd deaths, but not for the reason the rest of us are. He, a black, middle-class man, lives with his wife and children on the edge of a crumbling neighborhood. They are saving to move.
He is angry because white people are suddenly realizing what he has always known, but white people are still refusing to look at the rest of the problem. White liberals who are suddenly railing about the police unions protecting police are unconcerned about teachers unions protecting teachers. His children are academically successful in a public school. He acknowledges teachers can only do so much when kids are coming in from broken families and were up all night listening to gunshots. But he also knows from his community how many of the kids could do better with better teachers.
He is angry about the failure of public schools and the unwillingness of rich white people across the political spectrum to let him use his tax dollars to send his kids to better schools. He is angry about white people talking about the violence in Chicago but taking no action and deciding that is a conversation best left &#8220;to the black community.&#8221; He is angry at the health care system for failing black communities, and he is angry at the black communities for failing themselves.
I have not lived his frustrations, but I understand them. Last week, in Chicago, violence took more deaths in the black community. Progressives want to talk about gun control. Conservatives want to talk about the collapse of families. White people generally have decided they should not talk about it, and I am unaware of prominent black voices talking about it.
Some white people look at the black community crime rates and conclude the police are doing what they are doing because of the crime rate. My black friends tell me to understand the issue — that many young black men have simply given up in a society that has not given them a chance. Families have crumbled; opportunities never came; the public schools have failed.
Teachers tell me they are frustrated because kids come into schools from broken homes. The oldest siblings are taking care of the youngest siblings because the mom has to go to work to provide for a family without a father. The teachers are angry because they are held accountable based on the results of tests taken by hungry kids whose souls are hurting.
Saying &#8220;systemic racism&#8221; is at play actually gives government too much of a pass. The failure has a lot to do with deciding a government in Washington can fix the problems of Atlanta or Chicago or Lake Charles. Then there is the failure of thinking a bunch of politicians are going to truly fix a problem when they could instead let it fester and use that to maintain power.
The organization Black Lives Matter has taken the statement of fact that black lives do matter and turned it into a progressive cause that, among other things, seeks to &#8220;disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure.&#8221; It is not a Western-prescribed structure. It is a structure that works globally. It is a structure government itself decided was not necessary. It is a structure that, with its systematic collapse, has seen society crumbling around it.
My correspondent is a black father working in the middle class. His children are more academically successful than their peers from broken homes. That is not a coincidence. If we want to rebuild a more just world, we need to strengthen the two-parent nuclear household, not disrupt it. It is already disrupted and needs repair.
We need to remember the poor kids who cannot escape the teachers unions, which they&#8217;ll encounter more regularly than representatives of police unions. We need to remember the victims of violence not seen on camera. We have a lot to do, but that work is best done in our communities, not abstractly in Washington.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Mother and sons

ERICKSON: The Forgotten Ones

African American community

Crime

Education

George Floyd

School Choice

All lives actually do matter. A sports announcer last week lost his job for using the phrase &#8220;all lives matter&#8221; instead of &#8220;black lives matter.&#8221; Our cultural superiors insist on certain phraseology these days, or else. It is just another effort in the culture war to make you care and think in particular ways.
The phrase &#8220;all lives matter&#8221; came about in pushback to aggressive efforts a few years ago by Black Lives Matter activists. This statement of fact is now presumed to be a calling card of white supremacists.
On Tuesday, people rushed to social media to add black squares. Major corporations shut down their websites. People protested in the streets. I saw more than one person shamed for innocently using the phrase &#8220;all lives matter&#8221; or, as a worse offense, putting up a picture other than a black square on Instagram.
We have replaced virtue with virtue signaling. Activists would have us believe the government that brought us slavery, Jim Crow, anti-interracial marriage laws, affirmative action and police brutality is the government that will solve the problem. The government that started a war on poverty to bring us a great society actually managed to keep people in poverty and destroy families. But this time, just you wait, the government is going to fix it.
Our social betters who demand we use certain phrases as a secular religious rite and display certain empty squares as a sacrament also demand we vote for Joe Biden. The man who served as a vice president for eight years and served in government for over 40 years and who authored the very crime legislation many argue made things worse is now the solution. The man who helped destroy a generation of young black men through aggressive crime legislation now wants to preside over the government, which controls an increasingly brutal police force, and thinks he will solve the problem.
Or not.
Progressives who insisted Americans continue to stay home even after the COVID-19 curve flattened now believe mass protests are fine. Livelihoods and businesses are destroyed. Gather to riot and get a pass, but gather for church and go to jail. Ironically, these same people who think health care insurance is awful think property and casualty insurance will be just fine to make small businesses whole after the riots.
This is not to excuse the other side. Some can watch the George Floyd video and not see a problem. There are people who thought the optics of the park service clearing out a crowd of protestors with pepper pellets and smoke canisters so the President could hold up a Bible in front of a church he does not attend was a brilliant political move. It was not. There are people who think the President&#8217;s tweets do not stir the pot. They are wrong.
Increasingly, as a society, we do not allow thinking outside tribal comfort zones. Much of the press leans left and is more sympathetic to that tribal thinking. Concurrently, politicians from both sides feed off the grievances in order to gain more power. Neither side has any incentive to find a solution when both profit by keeping the discord going.
Americans would be better off abandoning the quaint and repeatedly proven-false notion that Washington has the solution to what ails us. Washington, inevitably, makes most things worse, outside the core functions of government. Americans are too obsessed with Washington. They are too obsessed with Donald Trump. They are too obsessed with Joe Biden.
People think Washington will provide the solutions if you just put up enough black squares on Instagram. But Washington will not provide the solution, and, most likely, your state capitol will not either. You will provide the solution. Seek the welfare of your city, and there, not Washington, will you make progress. If you can give sweat equity, work. If you can&#8217;t, give money. Give prayer and support. Give it to the local food bank, the local soup kitchen, the local homeless shelter, the local battered women&#8217;s clinic, the local public school. Give; work; pray; invest in your city. You, not politicians and political parties, will fix this.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Social media

ERICKSON: The Status Quo Of Virtue Signaling

Black Lives Matter

Donald Trump

Joe Biden

Protest

Riots

Virtue signaling

In May of 2001, a young congressional staffer went missing in Washington, D.C. Her name was Chandra Levy. She had been murdered in a park in Washington, and her remains were not found until a year later.
During the course of the investigation, the Washington police discovered Levy might have been having an affair with then California Rep. Gary Condit. Media speculation went rampant, especially after Levy&#8217;s body was found in 2002 — a midterm election year. Condit went on to lose his race.
A few months after Levy died, a young woman working in the Fort Walton Beach, Florida, office of then Rep. Joe Scarborough fell over dead in his office. On July 20, 2001, Lori Klausutis&#8217; body was found. She had fallen over, struck her head and died. The coroner determined she had an undiagnosed heart condition, which had caused her to collapse.
As Americans headed into the 2002 election , political tempers began to flare, and with speculation on Gary Condit, some left-wing activists wanted a &#8220;whataboutism&#8221; to combat the attention. They settled on Joe Scarborough and Lori Klausutis.
As Scarborough&#8217;s career in the media rose, the fever swamps of the left got louder. The left-wing activists such as Daily Kos, a pretty establishment website for left-wing activists, let the rumors about Scarborough fly. Propagandist and noted communist sympathizer Michael Moore even registered a website domain to promote the conspiracy that Scarborough was a murderer.
Over the years, the allegations went away. They resurfaced in 2009 as an immigrant from Central America was figured for killing Chandra Levy. Then they went away again. They have resurfaced with President Donald Trump.
I don&#8217;t really care what you think about Joe Scarborough, but no American deserves to have the President of the United States targeting him with accusations of murder. No American deserves the President of the United States tweeting out salacious and unproven accusations suggesting murder and conspiracy. The deceased&#8217;s family does not deserve it. Her widower does not deserve it. The fact that President Trump does not seem to understand that should bother every one of us.
There&#8217;s no whataboutism here. There&#8217;s no &#8220;two can play that game.&#8221; There&#8217;s no decency in this. If you really think these sorts of things are justified, you are no better than the people you hate. You have become what you hate. The President, in doing this, has become no better than the Michael Moores of the world.
It is shameful and gross.
Concurrent to all of this is a growing panic in several swing states that the President is falling behind Joe Biden. The Trump campaign was attempting a Bush versus Kerry approach to 2020, seeking to define Biden in the time leading up to the Democratic National Convention. But the Trump team has now taken a very undisciplined approach of throwing everything out to see what sticks. There is no comprehensive or overarching narrative and theme about Biden.
Some Republican leaders are privately concerned the President&#8217;s team is painting a rosier picture for the President than reality presently suggests. Outside groups have been reiterating that key constituencies the President needs for his reelection are starting to drift away. They are not, thankfully, beyond reach, but the President&#8217;s team does not seem to have a good strategy to get them back.
Combine the polling and the President&#8217;s sudden infatuation with old left-wing conspiracies, and it seems the President is more focused on score-settling than winning reelection. That should bother the President&#8217;s supporters. Joe Scarborough is not on the ballot. Joe Biden is.
Last week, the President spent his time focused on resurrecting old conspiracies that accused an innocent man of murder while dredging up the pain of loss for a dead woman&#8217;s family. He should have focused on a man who could fill seats on the Supreme Court and who is ahead in most polls in the swing states the President needs to win.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Trump

ERICKSON: The President Needs To Focus On Reelection

2020 Election

Joe Scarborough

When COVID-19 began impacting the United States, a vocal minority of conservatives began making statements that wound up being betrayed by the truth. For example, a recurring sentiment had been that the virus was nothing more than &#8220;a bad flu.&#8221; Many compared it to H1N1, the swine flu.
In the 2009-2010 swine flu outbreak, approximately 12,000 Americans died in a year. In the current outbreak, over 80,000 Americans have died in 10 weeks. Some would argue the numbers are overstated, but none will venture to guess how many are overstated. Even assuming a 50% overstatement, in 10 weeks, COVID-19 has killed many more people than the swine flu did in a year.
Some conservatives pushed back on these conspiracists, and they were joined by the American press corps. If the left did the same, these same reporters would surely push back, too.
On MSNBC last week, Brian Williams interviewed the Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms. Bottoms publicly disagreed with Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp&#8217;s decision to reopen the state. Williams, while getting Bottoms to acknowledge the reopening had not gone as badly as she expected, said, &#8220;There&#8217;s a robust conversation going on about the quality of the numbers we&#8217;re all getting out of the state of Georgia.&#8221;
That robust conversation is a conversation of progressive activists who, as Republican states in the south reopen, are ignoring the data just as much as some on the right did at the beginning of the pandemic. Reporters who robustly pushed back against conservative &#8220;data truthers&#8221; have largely kept silent or amplified progressive data truthers.
There have been some issues in Georgia with its data. But each has had credible explanations backed not just by politicians but also by the hospitals and epidemiologists doing the data entry. The great conspiracy of late had been a 231-count spike in cases that disappeared. It turned out those were not positive COVID-19 cases but the results of antibody tests that had to be removed from the data. Much of the national press played up the spike, downplayed the reduction or suggested sinister motives.
The same has happened in Florida. Rebekah Jones had been the manager of Florida&#8217;s geographic information system used to geographically display the spread of the virus in Florida. On May 18, the state fired Jones for insubordination. Her bosses, including several epidemiologists, took issue with the data Jones was entering. She purportedly ignored them. Much of the national press claimed Jones was a scientist. Actually, she has degrees in journalism and geography and was the manager of the Florida Department of Public Health&#8217;s geographic information system program. Contrary to media reports that Jones singlehandedly programmed all the information, she managed a team.
The facts of Jones&#8217; dismissal did not matter. The press decided to portray her as a martyr to accuse Florida&#8217;s Republican governor of covering up or fabricating data on the virus. Actually, Florida has a larger population than New York and far less cases and deaths. After a press conference where Gov. Ron DeSantis defended himself and blasted reports on Jones&#8217; departure, a Washington Post reporter tweeted that DeSantis was bragging about his state&#8217;s death rate. DeSantis could not win.
Of course, we should have known much of the press is interested not in truth but in helping Democrats. Eager to play up Christine Blasey Ford&#8217;s accusations against Justice Brett Kavanaugh, many of the same members of the press have dismissed Tara Reade&#8217;s more recent and more corroborated allegations against Joe Biden. The New York Times began gaslighting its readers, claiming the #BelieveAllWomen hashtag on social media had actually been a right-wing stunt.
On CNN, Chris Cuomo has nightly blasted the President, Republicans and anyone who defends them, while giving softball interviews to his brother, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who incompetently handled the viral spread in New York. If he were a Republican, you would know of his incompetence. Instead, he is sainted by a press that demands we believe them; just pay no attention to their ever-shifting standards for belief and credibility. Journalists only care about that if Fox News deviates from media orthodoxy.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Fake News

ERICKSON: #BelieveAllJournalists

Coronavirus

COVID-19

lockdown

Media

Media Bias

When Jesus of Nazareth appears before Pilate in Jerusalem, Jesus tells Pilate that &#8220;Everyone who is of the truth listens to my voice.&#8221; (John 18:37) Pilate responds with one of the most famous questions in history, &#8220;What is truth?&#8221;
In postmodern America, where people now talk about your truth and their truth instead of the truth, it is a question that needs some real attention. The conservative movement needs to do a better job of focusing on the question. Too many hucksters are twisting the truth to keep people riled up and enraged instead of providing answers.
In Georgia, Ahmaud Arbery is dead. Two men, Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael, attempted to stop Arbery for supposedly breaking into a home. The men pulled guns, a struggle ensued, and Travis McMichael shot Arbery, who died at the scene.
Sadly, the event happened in February, and it took months before a video of the shooting surfaced online and media-generated outrage provoked action at the state level. The local district attorney had a business relationship with the elder McMichael, and some local politicians claim the police were instructed not to arrest the McMichaels. The state of Georgia is now launching an investigation not just into the killing but also into the local officials who tried to stop arrests.
As the outrage gained national traction that transcended races, ideologies and parties, some started to suggest there was more there. Video surfaced of Arbery visiting a construction site. People suggested that was proof he had been a burglar, as the McMichaels claimed. The owner of the construction site said nothing had been taken and it was not unusual for people to show up to look at the work. Another video surfaced purporting to show Arbery scoping out a house repeatedly, as if planning to burglarize it. But multiple people subsequently stepped forward to say that was not him in the second video.
Why would any of that matter, anyway? Some people are more interested in proving Arbery was no saint than they are in acknowledging that his lack of sainthood did not give two men authority to kill him in the street. Some people are more interested in finding excuses for the McMichaels than in acknowledging the truth. Ahmaud Arbery died because two men thought they could attempt, at gunpoint, to detain him without law enforcement for crimes they presumed but did not witness.
Disturbingly, many of the people seeking now to cast aspersions on Arbery are the same people who have spent months lying about COVID-19. Some of them claimed the virus originated in the United States. Others claimed the virus was nothing more than a flu. Still others claimed the science was all wrong or Bill Gates is engaged in a global conspiracy or a number of other absurd theories.
The malignant obfuscation to undermine health care experts and public policy in the United States for grift, attention or internet celebrity has been revolting. While it is perfectly reasonable to question the need for policies like sheltering in place or the accuracy of models, the willful distortion of truth has picked up a dangerous amount of steam. The idea that this virus — which has killed over 80,000 Americans in 10 weeks while Americans are sheltering in place — is just a bad flu is an obscene statement.
Unfortunately, too many of the same people seeking to pervert the truth of the Arbery situation and the virus situation are voices who pretend to be Republicans. They have no real ideological ties to conservatism. They are just seeking to build audiences or revenue from conservative skepticism of government. They have been nursing grievances for their own gain. They have turned their back on truth, like Pilate.
Conservatism has long had a healthy foundation in truth and the nature of man. Conservatives have never hoped to build a heaven on earth like progressives because we know we are all sinners and should want as few other sinners in charge of us as possible. But conservatives must want and seek truth to have trust in the public square. We have an obligation to it.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

Truth

ERICKSON: What Is Truth?

Ahmaud Arbery

Shelley Luther is a small-business owner of a hair salon in Dallas. Struggling to make ends meet, Luther defied her local government and reopened her hair salon. She was fined, and she persisted. A court then found her in contempt for defying local orders and sent her to jail. On Thursday, the Texas Supreme Court ordered her released. It should have never gotten that far. Luther should not have gone to jail for opening her hair salon. It is a remarkable overreach against a woman struggling to get by and take care of her family.
Also, Luther should not have reopened her business.
For the past two months, I have been paying for haircuts that I did not get. I have sent extra money to my barbershop to help some of the younger barbers who do not have a lot of clients. Not everyone is in a position to do that. Many people cannot. But some could and chose not to until after Luther made her stand.
I am afraid we have lost the ability to see the nuance in so much of this. Overbearing local officials need to show a level of restraint so people do not willfully ignore the law. But people need to respect the rule of law.
The argument used by Luther is the same argument used by many illegal aliens who cross into this country. They just want to work to feed their families. Many of Luther&#8217;s defenders are undoubtedly opposed to illegal immigrants doing so. They can see the benefits of citizenship, but that only goes so far. Both are disrespecting the rule of law.
One can argue about the justice of the laws, but everyone can question any law they do not like. Also, the very same people who are happy the government rounded up Luther will defend illegal aliens. The sides are still divided, but the roles are reversed.
Scripture tells us to honor the law and that breaking any law is a sin, unless the law itself violates God&#8217;s law. It was not sinful for Martin Luther King Jr. and civil rights activists to defy laws that treated people differently based on the color of their skin. God is colorblind. Justice must be.
But during a pandemic, it is within the rights of the government to order some businesses closed. Christians should honor those laws, including Luther, whose business, like all other hair salons in the area, had to close. The government had the legitimate, lawful and just ability to do that to stop a virus from spreading, and people of faith must honor the law.
Be outraged at the government for wanting to jail a woman during a pandemic whose only crime is trying to survive. There is a level of hypocrisy in the enforcement. Fine her, and close her shop, but putting her in jail is nuts. Couple justice with mercy. Let&#8217;s also be outraged at the government for not helping her while she was closed. The Payroll Protection Program has been botched all around. Congress and the state and local governments have spent much time focused on the Fortune 500&#8217;s lobbyists that they ignored the men and women who had no lobbyist.
There have been failures all around. The situation on all sides is complicated and requires far more sympathy than many people want to give. What we should give is grace — grace to a government trying to navigate a pandemic and grace to the small-business owner trying to survive.
What we have in Dallas is a failure, but it is a failure on all sides and one that is increasingly politicized. The rule of law needs to be respected, even the ones you don&#8217;t like. But that does not mean the enforcers of the law need to be aggressive about enforcement. It also does not mean we need to cheer one side or the other when both have merit to their argument and both should have acted differently.
Luther should never have opened. Her customers should have supported her through tough times. The local government should never have carted her off to jail.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Salon

ERICKSON: The Jailed Businesswoman

Shelley Luther

Texas

A lot of people seem to believe that the death toll of COVID-19, now over 60,000 in the United States, is exaggerated and that the virus is far more common and widespread than previously believed. To be sure, it appears the virus is more widespread than initially believed. However, it is not nearly as widespread as some claim. The initial antibody studies were flawed, and there is evidence some of the antibody tests were just bad, triggering a positive result based on the common cold.
We should acknowledge that Congress has provided a financial incentive for hospitals to over inflate deaths from COVID-19. Under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act recently passed by Congress, hospitals will get 20% more Medicare/Medicaid money based on treatment for COVID-19 as a primary or a secondary infection.
That 20% add-on payment has allowed a number of people to claim all the deaths are exaggerated and things are not so bad. While some are pushing the idea that the virus really is no worse than a bad flu, there is also plenty of data suggesting governments are undercounting deaths. Reporting separately, both The New York Times and the Financial Times note urban areas around the world have seen similar spikes in deaths at home. Subtract out the averages for people dying of heart attacks, strokes and other events in those areas, and there is still a larger and largely unexplained spike in people dying. This reasonably does suggest COVID-19 is killing people at home. Many of these unexplained deaths involved respiratory distress.
In the United States, flu and pneumonia deaths are counted based on confirmed tests and presumed cases. COVID-19 numbers are based on confirmed positive cases. Contrary to some speculation, the death total does not include presumed cases of COVID-19 deaths, except for some in New York City. In the 2018-2019 flu season, based on confirmed and presumed flu cases, approximately 34,000 Americans died. In the past nine weeks, over 50,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 based on just confirmed cases.
Some claim COVID-19 deaths are overinflated because people are dying of other things but tested positive for COVID-19, so they are being categorized as COVID-19 deaths. There may be isolated cases, but it is no evidence this is widespread.
There could be an illuminati controlling the data, inflating the deaths and making sure every country is in that 20% hospitalization metric and 3-5% death rate. Someone somewhere could be secretly calling hospital administrators around the world telling everyone to boost their numbers to keep everything globally in line. &#8220;Only the American hospitals are going to get that 20% bonus, but we need to keep everyone&#8217;s data in line to help out those American hospitals,&#8221; they&#8217;d whisper, and remarkably, everyone who overshares on social media would keep it all secret.
Instead of a conspiracy, maybe the virus is actually bad. Maybe there are some deaths being mischaracterized. Maybe some of the deaths are exaggerated. But like Democrats claiming Republicans suppressed the vote and that&#8217;s how they won, maybe the effort to exaggerate and suppress is not vast enough to change overall outcomes. Right now, COVID-19 is killing people at a rate orders of magnitude higher than even a bad flu. Even if the numbers dropped based on error or fabrication, they&#8217;d have to drop massively to get down to flu rates just based on positive tests.
Thus far, in nine weeks, over 60,000 Americans have died based on a positive COVID-19 test. Are we really to believe 40,000 of those deaths were from something other than COVID-19 and the paperwork was rigged? Was it 20,000? Or is it actually a pretty bad virus that is worse than the flu?
On the flip side, while I think sheltering in place was the right idea, I think moving the goal posts from &#8220;flatten the curve&#8221; to &#8220;eliminate the virus before reopening&#8221; is wrong. Americans did as they were told. We have flattened the curve. The virus is bad, but so, too, is economic devastation.
All I can do is give you the data. I can&#8217;t make you believe it.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

ERICKSON: COVID-19 Trutherism

A lot of small businesses in Georgia are in desperate straits. The business owners, many of them sole proprietors, make too much to get stimulus checks. They do not qualify for unemployment. Either they got denied payroll protection program money or the fund ran out.
These businesses — barbershops, tattoo parlors, massage therapists — are services. They cannot mail haircuts or tattoos. They depend on customers. Many of them have longtime clientele. Those businesses are on the verge of going bankrupt while waiting for their customers to come back.
Concurrently, hospitals in Georgia are asking for permission to reopen for elective surgeries. The massive wave of COVID-19 patients came in parts of the state, but never at the scale expected or modeled. Field hospitals have been set up, but they remain empty across the state. Intensive care unit capacity, hospital capacity and ventilator capacity never maxed out. The number of daily cases has dropped for a week except for one expected spike. That spike was expected and came because of a nursing home outbreak. The spread of the virus in the community has stopped.
For more than a month, people demanded Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp listen to the experts. He did. When they said to close the state, he closed. Now the very same experts have told him he can begin a slow reopening of the state. Kemp got the President&#8217;s blessing and proceeded.
Those struggling sole proprietors and small businesses could open if they met certain criteria regarding safety and sanitation. The requirements of the regulations — masks, temperature checks, regular wipe downs — make it almost impossible for any but the most desperate to comply. Bowling alleys, for example, can technically open, but practically, they cannot comply with the sanitation requirements.
The barber in the small town, with the loyal patrons who all know one another, will be able to open without getting arrested, ticketed, fined or otherwise punished. The tattoo artist who knows his customers will be able to work if he and his customer are comfortable and masked. Desperate small businessmen who cannot get federal money and do not qualify for other benefits will have a lifeline with their destinies in their own hands.
Unfortunately, a national media that has long resented Kemp for having the audacity to beat Stacey Abrams in 2018 decided to attack the governor without any appreciable understanding of what all his requirements for opening entailed. The media blowback made its way to the White House, where the President, who privately supported Kemp, then publicly threw Kemp under the bus. The President, who has been tweeting out in support of liberating states, seems to only want Democratic states liberated, and the states controlled by his own party are to stay in lockdown.
The governor of Georgia is trying to help small businesses in hard times. The virus is not going away. We will have to chart a path forward with the virus in society. The governor decided to try — with the President&#8217;s blessing — only to then be attacked. We are in a crisis none of us has dealt with in our lifetime. It would be helpful for governors to know they can have a trusting relationship with the President and the President&#8217;s team.
President Donald Trump throwing Kemp under the bus is not helpful and will undermine other governors attempting to reopen their states. Gov. Jared Polis in Colorado is also trying to reopen his state. The media has largely avoided Polis. One must wonder what the media reaction would be if Polis were a Republican.
Polis&#8217; actions should have given Trump an opportunity to deflect from criticizing Kemp. Instead, Trump&#8217;s attack on Kemp will only embolden Democrats who want to take back Georgia.
I think Kemp should have waited another week or two and worked to get everyone educated and clear on the data. The data is, however, on his side, and the experts most familiar with Georgia agree. We need a path forward around a virus that is not going away, and Kemp should be encouraged, not condemned, for trying to find that path.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Brian Kemp

ERICKSON: Loyalty And Viruses

Georgia

I am in the shelter in place camp. I am also in the camp of thinking we cannot stay sheltered in place for long. I am also in the camp of thinking we must treat this as a regional problem, not a national problem. I am also in the camp of thinking we need the White House to form an articulable plan to help the 50 states reopen.
When I was in campaign management, we had a date certain — the same date every campaign uses, i.e., the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November. From there, we worked our way back.
When would the ads start? How much would they cost? What would be the mail plan? Where would the ads go? How much? When would we start door to door? How many houses did we need to hit? What about phone banking? How many volunteers versus how many paid staff?
If there were a primary, there&#8217;d be a minicampaign inside the big campaign. The goal was to win in November, but you had to win the primary, too. How many donors did we need? What kind of money did we need? How many phone calls needed to be made each day?
Some staffer was assigned to go county by county to figure out how many precincts were in each county, how many votes were needed per county, who we had in each county, who we needed in each county and how many volunteers we could get in each county. Working backward from Election Day, we would hammer out a written plan to keep everyone focused and on track. We had daily and weekly metrics of things that needed to be done. If the metrics of one day could not be met, they rolled over. If they kept rolling over, we would have to assess logjams, impracticalities, reassignment of resources, etc.
It is now April 17, 2020. Assume the President wants to get the country reopened by May 15, 2020. We need to treat this like a campaign.
In just under 30 days, we need to know, among other things, county-by-county data on the virus, its spread, hospitalization rates and deaths; the number of masks needed beyond those already in production; the number of tests that could be ramped up with government help; the number of rapid tests that can be produced and an assessment of their accuracy; what laws and regulations we will need; and what we know that we do not know.
What counties are stable enough now that, if they had the antibody tests and rapid testing capabilities and masks, their citizens could leave the house to go out within their counties? What parts of the country might we be able to reopen on May 1 as test cases?
The President should lead with a basic policy point: The country must open where possible on May 15. Create a plan to help the governors and states reopen. Then, let the economic and health care policy experts design parameters and needs.
We cannot open the whole country by May 15. It&#8217;s possible we can only open very little on May 1. But set the date, Mr. President. Then get the economics and health care experts to find an appropriate balance.
All the public needs right now is a plan, which they will know is contingent on variables. Then turn the White House press briefings into daily briefings addressing whether we are hitting the metrics to meet the campaign goals — and if not, why. Let the American people know, and provide reasonable expectations of a timeline. Get the country gearing up to open again.
We are one nation of 50 pretty unique states, with 3,143 counties, parishes and equivalent regions. There are 41,702 zip codes in the United States. They are not all the same, and one-size-fits-all planning will not work for them. Setting out objective criteria each one must meet, the resources and testing they must have, and the rules necessary for reopening are critical now.
Give Americans a timeline, goals and criteria, and let us all get invested in reopening.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

ERICKSON: The Clock Is Ticking

Economy

We have arrived again at the anniversary celebration of the greatest event in history. Around 2,000 years ago, in a rather routine and inconsequential act for that time, Roman authorities nailed a man to a cross. What happened next is subject to dispute. But since then, most of the world has believed that three days after his execution, the man named Jesus came back to physical life.
Whether one believes it happened or not, indisputably, the first Holy Week fundamentally transformed civilization. Today, several billion people globally will celebrate Holy Week. They believe Jesus died for them, rose again from the dead, stayed on the earth for 40 days and then ascended to Heaven. &#8220;From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead,&#8221; as the Apostles&#8217; Creed proclaims.
Christians are prone to look at the number of people executed in the last 2,000 years for accepting Christ and think no one would die for a lie. That is simply not true. Nineteen men flew planes into tall buildings, the Pentagon and a field for a lie. People will die for a lie.
The people who will not die for a lie, however, are the liar&#8217;s family and friends. They will call the whole thing a farce. In fact, the historic record shows that the brothers and mother of the man called Jesus tried to stage an intervention. They thought he was nuts. Christians believe Jesus&#8217; mother saw the angel Gabriel, who told Mary she would be with child, though she was a virgin.
Despite that, the Gospel of Mark reports that when Jesus&#8217; family heard him preaching, &#8220;They went out to seize him, for they were saying, &#8216;He is out of his mind.&#8217; &#8230; And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him.&#8221; His own mother, who Christians believe had an angel show up to tell her she was carrying a child who would &#8220;be called holy — the Son of God,&#8221; tried to stage an intervention on that very child.
The historic record also notes that at Jesus&#8217; execution, his own family would not show up, except for his mother. Mothers are always the last to give up on a child. His brothers, who some Christians believe were really his closest first cousins, were not there. In fact, John, an eyewitness and Jesus&#8217; best friend, wrote that from the cross, Jesus told John to take care of Mary. Her family was not there.
A family would not die for the lie of a liar, particularly a liar the family thought was &#8220;out of his mind.&#8221; A family would not die for a liar when they would not even show up at his own execution. So, something must have happened.
The historic record, both biblical and extra-biblical, shows that Jesus&#8217; brothers did accept him as the Christ after Jesus&#8217; death. Paul, writing in 1 Corinthians 15, reports that after his resurrection, Christ &#8220;appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time &#8230; Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.&#8221; That would be Jesus&#8217; brother James — the brother who tried to stage an intervention and would not even show up at Jesus&#8217; execution.
James became a pillar of the early church. Early church historians record that years after the resurrection, when local public officials asked James to tell others Jesus was not the Christ, James proclaimed that his brother was the Lord. The local leaders then threw James off the Temple wall in Jerusalem and stoned him to death. James and Jesus&#8217; brother Simeon then took up James&#8217; place. Their brother Jude also proclaimed Christ as the Messiah. He, too, was executed.
Many people reject these things as myth. Regardless, the historic record shows that the events of this week 2,000 years ago fundamentally reshaped the world. More likely than not, the words, &#8220;We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights&#8221; would not have happened but for Jesus first proclaiming himself &#8220;the way, and the truth, and the life.&#8221;
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Cross candle

ERICKSON: History’s Greatest Event

Christianity

Easter

Jesus Christ

I am deeply opposed to the government shutting down churches and arresting preachers. But I am also deeply opposed to churches meeting right now. Let me tell you about Albany, Georgia.
There are 490 cases of COVID-19 in Dougherty County, Georgia. The county seat is Albany. There are 29 deaths in the county. For perspective, I started writing this piece on Wednesday, and there were 466 cases and 26 deaths. By the time you read this, the number will be over 500. Dougherty County has 89,000 people, making it, per capita, the hardest-hit part of Georgia and, again per capita, on par with New York City.
All the COVID-19 cases in Albany can be traced back to an unknowingly infected preacher who preached a funeral there on February 29. The virus spread among the attendees, who then spread it to the community before anyone realized they were infected.
Ninety percent of the deaths are African American. The youngest victim was a 34-year-old male. The oldest was a 92-year-old female. The local hospital is out of resources, out of doctors and out of bed space. The Georgia National Guard is shuttling resources to the area, but the situation is dire with only one significant hospital. Outpatient facilities are being converted rapidly.
The models so many are relentlessly trying to undermine got it wrong in Albany. The models undercounted the expected spread of the virus and rates of hospitalization. According to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, though the state has relied on several projection models to help figure out hospital capacity and spacing concerns, the models got it wrong in New York City; they underappreciated the toll the virus would take.
Let me tell you about Evans, Georgia. There are over 20 cases there. Though epidemiologists are still tracing the viral spread, at least some cases come from a man who drove 190 miles away to Bartow County, Georgia to bury his father. He attended church in Bartow County, and several members were unknowingly infected. He got infected and carried the virus back home, where it began to spread.
In Bartow County, there are now 147 cases and 4 deaths. Almost every single one can be traced back to that one church and one church service. In neighboring Floyd County, there are 71 cases and 2 deaths. Most of those can also be traced back to that one church service at that one church.
Most of the churches have stopped worshipping in their buildings now. But for some, the church building has become their prideful idol. A pastor in Florida got himself arrested by not only openly defying a general ban on assembly but also bussing people in to give the government the middle finger.
Churches are not being singled out for closure. The whole nation is going on lockdown. But at a time when Christians need to show Christian humility, some pastors have decided to engage in false bravado in defiance of the common community good.
The character and nature of many of these churches is not to serve but to bring in crowds and cash. They are not demonstrating Christian humility and seeking the welfare of their cities. They are not even demonstrating faith. They are demonstrating disrespect to their communities and showing a very weak faith more grounded in a building than a body of Christ.
Where the law does not clash with Christian conscience, the law should be obeyed. The church is a people, not a building, and the gates of hell will not prevail against the body of Christ, but a virus can cull a herd of congregating idiots.
The government should not be targeting churches. But churches should be responsible. Go volunteer in the community, and seek the welfare of your cities. On Easter, join a livestream to worship together with the global body of Christ. Christians need to reject false bravado for Christian humility right now, and they need to seek the welfare of their communities through service and by staying away from in-person gatherings.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Bible

ERICKSON: A Test Of Faith

church

Religion

If there is one thing we know for certain about the American press corps&#8217; interaction with President Donald Trump, it is that they presuppose him an unserious and very vain dolt. If anyone grabs too much of the spotlight or utters anything disloyal, the President throws them out the door.
That is what so much of the press believes. In fact, I suspect some of you readers believe it, too. Certainly, some in the White House believe it. They have tried to exploit it by circulating rumors about various people riding too high in the saddle. The press has tried to drum up divisions between the President and Vice President in this way.
How many stories have we read about the Vice President overshadowing the President, operating as a shadow President, etc.? These were not true, but they were circulated like a soap opera to try to spark division in Washington.
The press fundamentally believes the President will fire people who are more likable than him, overshadow him or make him look bad by outperforming him. So, I have to wonder if a portion of the press corps is trying to get a lot of Americans killed right now.
Dr. Anthony Fauci has loyally served Presidents of the United States going back to Ronald Reagan. In 2008, due to his loyal service to the nation, President George W. Bush awarded Fauci the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Fauci is the most prominent voice in the administration now and its foremost presence on national television. But in the past several days, various media outlets have started pushing stories about Fauci undermining the President. Various reporters on Twitter have grabbed screenshots of Fauci at White House press briefings where he appears to be rolling his eyes or shaking his head when the President speaks. The full film shows he was not doing either.
There have been stories where the media plays up what appears to be Fauci disagreeing with the President or being critical of the President, but these have been taken out of context, too.
Given the media&#8217;s presuppositions about the President, it is reasonable to conclude some journalists are trying to get Fauci fired. Why would they do that? Is this not a crisis where they want the best men and women in charge?
The reason is that the media is addicted to drama. They feed off the storm of clashing personalities for ratings. In the past two weeks there has been no drama, and the President&#8217;s approval ratings for handling the crisis have gone up. Both Gallup and ABC News have polling showing as much. The drama of the virus should be enough, but the media now is addicted to the soap opera narrative.
When not trying to break up the marriage of George and Kellyanne Conway, the Washington press corps seems to be picking other targets and trying to get the president firing in that direction. Right now, it is Fauci the press is after, and they are after him selfishly. As long as Trump is relying on Fauci, the President looks presidential. That is too much for the media. Fauci must go, but so, too, must the presidential press briefings on the virus.
These briefings have been going on for two weeks. The President has not changed. He uses copious adjectives and adverbs to sell his plan and what others are doing. He battles the media. He answers questions. Others answer questions as well, including the relevant medical experts advising the President.
In two weeks, the only thing that has changed is the President&#8217;s approval rating. ABC, CBS and Gallup all have his approval rating for handling the virus at over 50%. The American public has tuned in to the press conferences. Naturally and predictably, the press corps has decided this is too much. Fauci is too good, and the press conferences are too helpful. They have given calm and reduced drama. That must end.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Newspapers

ERICKSON: The Press Corps’ Sturm Und Drang

Anthony Fauci

On Monday, March 16, 2020, President Donald Trump took to the podium in the White House pressroom and began to make the case to the American people that the underlying operations of the country must change to stop the growth of the Wuhan coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, in the United States.
The President wants Americans to end discretionary travel; shelter in place for 15 days; limit gatherings to no more than 10 people; avoid eating at restaurants and bars; and avoid gyms and other recreational spots if the virus is spreading in that community.
For several weeks, Democrats and the media blasted the President. At the end of January, the President imposed a travel ban on China. The very media now blasting the President for not taking the matter seriously began to attack the President. According to experts at the time, the President&#8217;s ban on travel with China would make fighting the virus more difficult. In hindsight, the experts now agree it was the right decision.
The media continues to attack the President and his administration for daring to use the phrases &#8220;Chinese virus&#8221; and &#8220;Wuhan virus&#8221; to describe COVID-19, because they are supposedly racist. The Zika and West Nile viruses come from regions in Africa. No one claimed those were racist. But the communist Chinese are screaming and in full denial that the virus originated in Wuhan. The American media and progressive activists are helpfully defending the communist Chinese, just as they did when the National Basketball Association refused to take a stand for human rights in Hong Kong.
To really get the proper context for what is going on, however, we need to step back. On Jan. 19, 2020, a 35-year-old man with a four-day-old cough went to an urgent care clinic in Snohomish County, Washington. He had traveled back from Wuhan, China and was the first diagnosed COVID-19 patient in the United States.
Chinese health authorities who now insist the Wuhan virus did not come from China were actually quite helpful on Dec. 31, 2019, when they reported a pneumonia outbreak at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan. On Jan. 7, 2020, the Chinese confirmed there was person-to-person spread of a novel coronavirus in Wuhan.
Meanwhile, in the United States, the Democrats were impeaching the President. Though the President had just allowed the American military to take out Qassem Soleimani, the major general overseeing Iran&#8217;s terrorist operations, and then witnessed media screams that he had triggered World War III, Democrats and their press allies plowed ahead foolishly with impeachment.
It became an existential threat to and distraction for the President. All the President&#8217;s attention turned to impeachment. The press turned to silliness with aggressively hostile and partisan coverage of the President. The republic had arrived at partisan warfare with the press taking the Democrats&#8217; side. In fairness, however, the press had been on the Democrats&#8217; side since the election.
Into this, the press and Democrats began screaming about a man in Washington state who had come back from China. But, when the President took direct action in the middle of his impeachment trial to stop travel with China, the press and Democrats attacked him for that, too.
There are reasons to be critical of some of the President&#8217;s statements and tweets regarding the virus. In seeking to avoid a panic and in seeking to calm people, he did, arguably, go too far to dismiss concerns. But a fair-minded person does need to read the President&#8217;s actions through the process of a distracting impeachment with a partisan press and Democrats coming up with every imaginable excuse to savage him.
The American press, humorously, spent that entire period referring to COVID-19 as the &#8220;Wuhan virus&#8221; or &#8220;Wuhan coronavirus.&#8221; While calling it that, they attacked the President for doing too much to stop the virus. Now they call the President a racist for using their own words and attack him for doing too little.
One can hardly blame the President for treating the worry over the spread of the Wuhan virus as a partisan tool of the Democrats. The press and Democrats treated it that way, too.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Coronavirus suits

ERICKSON: The Proper Context For Blame

China

People are beginning to hoard toilet paper. I went on a normal shopping trip to buy toilet paper last week and could not find any because of all the panic-buying. Social media is full of people storming grocery stores and fighting over two-ply. Hand sanitizer is extremely difficult to find. The Clorox plant up the road from me is running 24 hours to keep up with demands.
But the toilet paper?
The run on toilet paper should be the biggest signal that an economic stimulus plan is not going to work right now. People are being driven by fear, and they are being told to stay out of crowds. People are stocking up on toilet paper because they are convinced they are going to get quarantined or otherwise stuck in their homes.
Giving businesses money, making loans cheap and encouraging people to get out and shop is not going to help. What might actually help is giving people exactly what they expect — ordering everyone to stay home.
But this presents a way more complicated solution than some want to acknowledge. Shut down schools? And what about the nurses and doctors who have small children. What do we do with those kids?
What about the workers in the restaurant industry who work hourly and won&#8217;t get paid if there are no customers? If the restaurant can&#8217;t get revenue, it can&#8217;t meet payroll. Should the restaurant apply for a loan from the government to pay the workers and possibly risk the financial future of the restaurant? Perhaps. If the restaurant is going to go out of business otherwise, why not try to keep it afloat for some time? But for how long?
Do we make people apply for unemployment in person when we want them not to congregate? Do we start paying people, and, if so, what do we do about the debt and inflation and the value of the currency?
If the government isn&#8217;t ordering people to essentially shelter in place nationwide, how is this going to contain the virus? If the government does order people to shelter in place, what about the workers who cannot get paid? What about vacation deposits?
These are not easy answers. But they are demanding answers at this point.
What we know about the coronavirus is that it is orders of magnitude more deadly than the flu and highly contagious. What we know is that people are already convinced they are going to be quarantined in their houses and are stockpiling. What we know is that restricting travel will restrict the spread of the virus.
The public is panicked and needs to see serious, grown-up leadership in Washington right now, as well as some bipartisan unity. The public is expecting Draconian efforts and has already baked their expectations into their toilet paper buying habits. The Washington solution seems to be that both sides of the aisle have different, competing economic stimulus plans. They will undoubtedly do both, further driving up spending, the deficit and the debt. I just do not think it will matter right now.
The President can fly Air Force One over major cities and dump freshly printed hundred dollar bills out of the belly of the plane, but if people think they&#8217;re going to get the coronavirus, they still are not going to take that cash and go shop, eat out or mingle in large crowds. They won&#8217;t even go to the bank to deposit it. They will, like with the toilet paper, simply stockpile it till the crisis is over.
Before any stimulus can work, the public must trust the health care response. To trust the health care response, President Donald Trump cannot be competing with his own administration&#8217;s message. The economic fallout is going to grow far worse than the virus unless the Trump administration gets publicly aggressive and gets buy-in from Congress.
Unfortunately for all of us, there is a bipartisan problem in Washington. Both sides have &#8220;electionitis,&#8221; and the only cure is denying the other side any sort of public successes in order to beat them in November. It is not yet known how many Americans will die in the process.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Toilet paper

ERICKSON: Toilet Paper Trumps Stimulus

Sen. Bernie Sanders really would be an easier candidate for President Donald Trump to campaign against in November. Sanders is so far left, with a history of burning bridges, that Trump and the Republican Party could easily and deservedly vilify him.
The American public got a taste of Sanders, the true believer in communist revolution, when he sat for an interview with Anderson Cooper on &#8220;60 Minutes.&#8221; Sanders praised Cuban dictator Fidel Castro for a literacy program after the Cuban revolution. Never mind that Castro also rounded up dissidents, engaged in mass murder and pulled his people into unending poverty. At least they could read how poor they were.
On Tuesday night, across the country, it appeared Democrats mostly rejected Sanders. In states Sanders won, former Vice President Joe Biden came close. In states like Virginia, where Sanders had been ahead in recent polling, Biden decisively crushed him. Sanders got a few good wins, including California. However, even California was closer than it should have been, and in Sanders&#8217; home state of Vermont, Biden drew closer than anyone expected he could.
Believe no pundit who said they saw the Super Tuesday results coming. On the morning of Super Tuesday, some polls showed Sanders winning 10 of the 14 states. While some votes are even now outstanding, it looks like Biden won 10 of the 14. In fact, Biden won Oklahoma, Minnesota and Massachusetts with very little campaigning in those states.
Massachusetts was really the most remarkable race. Polling and Democratic strategists predicted Sanders would beat Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Polling had consistently shown this; contrary to media advocacy for Warren, she is not very popular in her home state. Biden, however, was not a factor. Well, he was not a factor until he won the state.
Given Biden&#8217;s amazing rebound in South Carolina, a lot of knowledgeable pundits calculated he could get ahead of Sanders in delegates in the next two weeks. After Florida, Biden could dominate the race. No one saw Biden jumping ahead this past Tuesday. He now looks set to be the Democrats&#8217; nominee, barring an unforeseen event.
That is a good thing for the country. Super Tuesday was formalized by Southern Democrats in 1980 to stop the advance of Sen. Ted Kennedy against incumbent President Jimmy Carter, and Democrats have used it ever since to blunt the momentum of the far left in their party. They did it again this year.
While the Democratic Party continues to drift toward an eventual split between secular, rich, white voters and voters who are black or Hispanic, enough of their voters overall rejected a radical candidate. That is a good thing for the country. It is a recognition that the far-left socialist policies of Sanders and Warren are being rejected by minority voters within the Democratic Party. It is a recognition of the fact that a full government takeover of health care and other parts of the private sector are nonstarters. It is a recognition that &#8220;Medicare for All&#8221; will go nowhere. It is a recognition that the &#8220;Bernie Bros&#8221; are marginalized. It is the death of the Green New Deal.
The nation needs two mostly-sane political parties. While the Democrats will never acknowledge the GOP is sane under Trump, those of us who know better know it is and should be thankful the Democrats appear to be rejecting their insane fringe. That makes November a more difficult fight for the President. But at least it ensures, even if by accident, the country is spared a radical communist as a major party leader.
As a bonus, this will undoubtedly exacerbate the divisions within the Democratic Party between the radical left and the establishment. Lastly, if you cannot bring yourselves to applaud Democrats for rejecting a radical communist as their presidential nominee, at least applaud them for exposing their own lie. Democrats have told us Russians spent a few million dollars and stole the 2016 election for Donald Trump. If Mike Bloomberg could not buy the election with $500 million, it is even less plausible today to presume the Russians could steal it with far less.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

Sen. Bernie Sanders

ERICKSON: Applaud The Democrats

Bernie Sanders

Democratic Party

Socialism

Can we acknowledge no real conservative would vote for Sen. Bernie Sanders over President Donald Trump? If you want, you can sit out because the process grosses you out and you hate them all. But actively voting for a socialist to stop the populist disqualifies you from ever talking about conservatism.
You can rationalize it and say that four years of Sanders would be ineffective because of Congressional gridlock, but that can be said of Trump, too. Trump, at least at the regulatory level, has rolled back government, not expanded it. Sanders would undermine the private sector, the free market, churches and individual liberty, without ever involving Congress.
Stop posing as a conservative if you are going with Sanders. It&#8217;d be far better to sit it out. To go for Sanders is really an admission that your pride is suffering, not the country.
As for the rest of us, ironically, millions are going to turn out to vote for a guy they hate to stop a guy they loathe. I know a lot of people who refused to vote for Trump in 2016 who will crawl over broken glass to support him in 2020 against Sanders. I know Democrats who despise Sanders but consider Trump a bigger threat because of judges, deregulation, etc.
The upside is, perhaps, that our politics are getting so broken that people will realize they have to do something different at the local level. Our politics are only going to get better if people actually turn away from Washington and start focusing on their local communities. People burning out on national politics and convinced the country is held hostage by the fringes of either side is actually good. It will get them to stop worrying about Washington and start worrying about their local communities instead.
Mike Bloomberg is going to try to present an alternative. He intends to spend millions on advertisements to emphasize the negative outcomes of a Sanders presidency. It might actually help Trump more than Bloomberg. But Bloomberg is going to do his best to stop Sanders.
I am writing this before the South Carolina primary, which Joe Biden is expected to win. Sanders will pick up more delegates, because he will come in with above 15% of the vote. Three days later is Super Tuesday. That will see races in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia.
Sanders is going to win most of California&#8217;s 495 delegates. Texas has 262 delegates. Recent polling has Sanders surging in Texas with Bloomberg actually holding Biden back from winning. With Bloomberg on the ballot, Sanders may win outright or keep it very close. Sanders will, therefore, continue to pick up delegates while also winning most Super Tuesday states, if the polls are right.
The next major haul will be Florida with 248 delegates, and Sanders may be shut out there. But he is going up in the polls there, too. It is presumed his pro-Castro comments will stall him out in Florida. Even if they do, Sanders will still keep leading in delegates for the time being.
Biden will keep picking up delegates, too. That keeps Biden in the race fighting Bloomberg. Sen. Elizabeth Warren also has no reason to get out, because she is doing well in several polls and will gain delegates on Super Tuesday. She is also a useful instrument to attack the establishment in a way that protects Sanders.
Bloomberg has pushed a media storyline that only he can stop Sanders. The reality is Bloomberg has, as of now, exactly zero delegates. Sanders leads in delegates, with Pete Buttigieg, Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar all having delegates, too. Bloomberg would like to throw the race into disarray and force a brokered Democratic convention. But the reality is the communists will either win it or riot — and they might riot even if they win it.
If Sanders wins the most states, the most delegates and the most votes, Democrats will be hard-pressed to deny him the nomination. This will be fun to watch.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

ERICKSON: Voting For Who You Hate To Stop Who You Loathe

The polls are not wrong. I know many people think polls are wrong, because the polls say things people do not believe. Sure, there are bad pollsters, but polling averages do a pretty good job. Take 2016, the example that comes to mind for a lot of people who say polls are wrong.
Hillary Clinton did, in fact, win the popular vote. The final polling average had her winning by 3%. She won by 2%. The polls were right. The problem is that we elect the President with an Electoral College, not a popular vote. The individual polls of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania were far more instructive. But individual state polling is hard to do, and it&#8217;s more expensive.
As a general rule, if a poll has the candidates with a gap of 5% or more, those numbers tend to trickle down proportionally at the state level. When polls show candidates with margins of less than 5%, go to individual state polling to get a more accurate reading of a presidential race.
The methodology matters, too. Let me give you the methodology of the Emerson College poll. According to their latest national poll, which has Sen. Bernie Sanders with a 7-point lead, &#8220;Data was collected using both an Interactive Voice Response (IVR) system of landlines only &#8230; and online panels provided by (Amazon) Turk.&#8221; In other words, the poll only called landlines, not cellphones. It used a robocall, not a live operator. It also used an online voting system that involved Amazon Mechanical Turk. Amazon describes its Turk system as &#8220;a crowdsourcing marketplace that makes it easier for individuals and businesses to outsource their processes and jobs to a distributed workforce who can perform these tasks virtually.&#8221;
That is not a good method of polling. There were no live operators and no cellphones. Compare Emerson to the ABC News-Washington Post poll, which describes its methodology as, &#8220;conducted by landline and cellular telephone Feb. 14-17, 2020, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,066 adults.&#8221; That poll has Sanders with a 15-point national lead.
The ABC News-Washington Post poll uses a good methodology. They used landlines and cellphones. They polled randomly. They also did it in Spanish. That&#8217;s pretty comprehensive.
Pew Research has out a report on bogus respondents in online polling. They found &#8220;that online polls conducted with widely-used opt-in sources contain small but measurable shares of bogus respondents (about 4% to 7%, depending on the source). Critically, these bogus respondents are not just answering at random, but rather they tend to select positive answer choices — introducing a small, systematic bias into estimates like presidential approval.&#8221;
In other words, beware of pollsters using online groups to participate in polls.
Polling really is a combination of art and science. There are great pollsters out there. The media overly relies on polling to help shape news coverage, but it can be helpful. We can, for example, see the rise of Michael Bloomberg in the polling. He has not yet been on the ballot, but we can tell his spending on ads is helping him. This, in turn, tells us that major ad-buying actually does help by boosting name identification.
But Sanders is now leading in the polls. Joe Biden has what can best be described as electile dysfunction. Biden led the polling nationally for more than 52 weeks. Before Biden even formally declared, he held about 28% in the polling averages. But his numbers are starting to plummet as Sanders surges and Bloomberg takes off.
It is an open question if Bloomberg can compensate for the fact that he has not been on the ballot yet and now has had a terrible debate performance. Super Tuesday is on March 3, and Bloomberg will finally be on a ballot. In the meantime, don&#8217;t dismiss the polls. Just check the methodology. Also, for all the horror stories about President Donald Trump losing to everyone in the national polls, go check out the swing states. In Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Iowa, Florida, North Carolina and beyond, Trump actually does far better than national polls suggest. That could make for an interesting election.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Dem Donkey &#038; Rep Elephant

ERICKSON: Polling The Polls

Hillary Clinton

Michael Bloomberg

Poll

Nobody really wants to be honest these days. If they were honest, they would have to admit a few inconvenient truths. First and foremost, they would have to acknowledge that had a Democrat done what President Donald Trump did on that Ukraine phone call, Republicans would be outraged, and Democrats would be excusing it.
Second, Democrats would have to acknowledge that their side is capable of wrongdoing. That may be the most difficult thing for the left to acknowledge, as they are invested in the idea that Trump is uniquely bad. Don&#8217;t look now, but Barack Obama&#8217;s IRS targeted conservative groups, and his Department of Justice sold guns to Mexico that got an American border patrol agent killed. But ask your average reporter or progressive activist, and they&#8217;ll claim with a straight face that the Obama Administration was scandal-free.
The left will tell you that Trump and his supporters are uniquely violent in their tone and rhetoric. They will ignore that Obama told Hispanic voters that the GOP was their enemy, Joe Biden said Mitt Romney would put black people back in chains, and Obama urged his supporters to rat out their neighbors for spreading misinformation during the 2012 election. At a campaign event in 2008, he urged them to take guns to knife fights.
The reality is that neither side is pure, but much of the journalism and punditry of the present age is designed to cover one side in a way that absolves the other of their sins.
Recently, McKay Coppins in The Atlantic wrote a piece titled &#8220;The Billion-Dollar Disinformation Campaign to Reelect the President.&#8221; It&#8217;s a great read and covers the extent to which Trump&#8217;s reelection will feature &#8220;coordinated bot attacks, Potemkin local-news sites, micro-targeted fearmongering, and anonymous mass texting.&#8221;
The story was circulated widely by progressives who smugly denounced the president and his campaign. But the truth is that the Democrats do this, too. In fact, every politician in every presidential campaign has done this. No politician is fully honest. They lie, distort and obfuscate.
Obama upended the American health care system by lying that if you like your doctor, you could keep your doctor. He used the presidency and all the tools available at the time to sell that lie. While lying about it, he created a White House office that encouraged people to rat out &#8220;lies&#8221; about the Affordable Care Act. Many of those lies were actually true.
Obama&#8217;s 2012 data-targeting campaign made careers for people covering the rise of digital politics. But in 2016, Trump won using the very techniques online pioneered by the Obama team. The fact that a Republican could outdo Team Obama on Facebook made Facebook bad, after being heralded as a force for good when Obama won. Remember Obama&#8217;s war on Fox News? Go further back; remember Bill Clinton and the mainstream media blaming Rush Limbaugh for the Oklahoma City Bombing or The New York Times writers blaming Sarah Palin for the Arizona shooting?
A week ago, a man in a van ran through a Republican voter registration tent in Florida. Had it been an &#8220;alt-right&#8221; person doing it to a Democratic voter registration tent, it&#8217;d be national news for days. Consider how quickly the James Hodgkinson shooting spree disappeared from the news coverage.
Democrats are convinced Trump is different. The reality is most of his policy positions are pretty mainstream. Even Trump&#8217;s behavior is not unique. It is the logical extension of the liberal media turning a blind eye to a supposedly scandal-free administration that used the power of the state to harass nuns, conservative groups and other opponents. But the left will never acknowledge it because to do so, they would have to admit Trump is not the unique boogeyman they have claimed him to be, and they have to take some ownership of the situation.
The reality is that both sides are behaving badly in politics, but they only care to cast aspersions on the other. Our tribalism has become morally relative, and the sins of one side have become virtues to the other.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

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Erick Erickson

ERICKSON: Restrainer In Chief

ERICKSON: Break Up Google

ERICKSON: The Forgotten Ones

ERICKSON: The Status Quo Of Virtue Signaling

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ERICKSON: The Press Corps’ Sturm Und Drang

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ERICKSON: Toilet Paper Trumps Stimulus

ERICKSON: Applaud The Democrats

ERICKSON: Voting For Who You Hate To Stop Who You Loathe

ERICKSON: Polling The Polls

ERICKSON: The Moral Relativism Of My Tribe

Menu

ERICKSON: Restrainer In Chief

ERICKSON: Break Up Google

ERICKSON: The Forgotten Ones

ERICKSON: The Status Quo Of Virtue Signaling

ERICKSON: The President Needs To Focus On Reelection

ERICKSON: #BelieveAllJournalists

ERICKSON: What Is Truth?

ERICKSON: The Jailed Businesswoman

ERICKSON: COVID-19 Trutherism

ERICKSON: Loyalty And Viruses

ERICKSON: The Clock Is Ticking

ERICKSON: History’s Greatest Event

ERICKSON: A Test Of Faith

ERICKSON: The Press Corps’ Sturm Und Drang

ERICKSON: The Proper Context For Blame

ERICKSON: Toilet Paper Trumps Stimulus

ERICKSON: Applaud The Democrats

ERICKSON: Voting For Who You Hate To Stop Who You Loathe

ERICKSON: Polling The Polls

ERICKSON: The Moral Relativism Of My Tribe

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