Chris Hedges's Blog, page 11

Cruise Ship Is Held Off California Coast for Virus Testing

SAN FRANCISCO — Scrambling to keep the coronavirus at bay, officials ordered a cruise ship to hold off the California coast Thursday to await testing of those aboard, after a passenger on an earlier voyage died and at least one other became infected.

A Coast Guard helicopter was expected to deliver test kits to the Grand Princess once it reached the waters off San Francisco later in the day. Princess Cruises did not immediately disclose how many people were aboard the vessel — which has a capacity of 3,650 passengers and crew — but said fewer than 100 had been identified for testing.

“The ship will not come onshore until we appropriately assess the passengers,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom said.

On Wednesday, Newsom declared a state of emergency over the virus, opening the way for federal aid, after the death of a man in Placer County, near Sacramento, who had been on an earlier sailing of the ship in February.

It was the nation’s first coronavirus death outside of Washington state and brought the U.S. death toll to 11, with most of the victims from a suburban Seattle nursing home.

Another previous passenger has also been hospitalized. The cruise line said that no cases of the virus had been confirmed among those still on the ship but that some passengers had experienced flu-like symptoms.

The decision to hold the ship offshore came as federal health authorities announced an investigation of the Life Care nursing home in Kirkland to determine whether it followed guidelines for preventing infections.

Last April, the state fined Life Care $67,000 over infection-control deficiencies following two flu outbreaks that affected 17 patients and staff.

At least 39 coronavirus cases have been reported in the Seattle area, where researchers say the virus may have been circulating undetected for weeks.

On Thursday, U.S. health officials said they expect a far lower death rate than the World Health Organization’s international estimate of 3.4% — a rate admittedly too high because it doesn’t account for mild cases that go uncounted.

Assistant U.S. Health Secretary Brett Giroir instead cited a model that included mild cases to say the U.S. could expect a death rate somewhere between 0.1% — like seasonal flu — and 1%.

The risk is highest for older people and anyone with high-risk conditions such as heart or lung disease, diabetes or suppressed immune systems, such as from cancer treatments.

Meanwhile, public officials in Washington came under pressure to take more aggressive steps against the outbreak, including closing schools and canceling large events.

Many major Seattle-area businesses and some schools have begun acting on their own, including the 22,000-student Northshore district north of Seattle, which announced it will close for up to two weeks as a precaution.

___

Associated Press Writers Gene Johnson, Rachel La Corte, Martha Bellisle and Carla K. Johnson contributed to this report.

The Democratic Establishment Strikes Back

What follows is an original report by Jaisal Noor of The Real News Network. Read a transcript of their conversation below or watch the video at the bottom of the post.

JAISAL NOOR: Super Tuesday results are coming in. Voters in 14 states along with American Samoa went to the polls on March 3 to allocate over 1300 delegates, one third of all pledged delegates in the Democratic primary. Voters faced long lines and waited for hours to vote in both Texas and California, tantamount to voter suppression.

Not all the results are in, but as of 8:00 AM on Wednesday, March 4, former Vice President Joe Biden picked up 399 delegates; winning nine states including Virginia, North Carolina, former candidate Amy Klobuchar’s state of Minnesota, and Texas where he was boosted by an endorsement by former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke. Biden’s campaign was boosted after a decisive win in South Carolina and endorsements from former rivals Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.

JOE BIDEN: We won Minnesota because of Amy Klobuchar and we’re doing well in Texas because of Beto O’Rourke.

JAISAL NOOR: As projected, Senator Bernie Sanders won the state of California–the largest delegate count of the night–along with Utah, Colorado, and his home state of Vermont; adding 322 delegates to his total.

BERNIE SANDERS: And when we began this race for the presidency, everybody said it couldn’t be done. But tonight, I tell you with absolute confidence, we are going to win the Democratic nomination and we are going to defeat the most dangerous president in the history of this country.

JAISAL NOOR: 536 delegates are still to be awarded. Senator Elizabeth Warren placed third in Massachusetts, failing to win her home state and winning only 42 delegates for a total of 50.

ELIZABETH WARREN: My name is Elizabeth Warren. And I’m the woman who is going to beat Donald Trump.

JAISAL NOOR: The Warren Campaign was reportedly assessing the path forward on Wednesday. The former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced he’s dropping out of the race after spending over half a billion dollars on his campaign but failing to win a single state. After top finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire and Nevada vaulted Sanders into front runner status, the Democratic establishment coalesced around Biden, giving him momentum to exceed expectations on Super Tuesday.

But with half of the primary still ahead and seven states voting in primaries on March 10th, it’s unclear if that momentum will hold. The establishment argument against Sanders is that he’s not electable, he’s too extreme, and could cost Democrats control of the House. We got a response to those claims from some of the 10,000 Bernie Sanders rally attendees in Springfield, Virginia on February 29.

So his critics say he’s too radical, he’s a socialist; and they say he’s going to lose to Trump and the Democrats are going to lose the House. How do you respond to that?

SAMI ALAMIRI: Those people who are talking about socialism, they don’t know what socialism means. What does capitalism mean? This is United States of America for everybody. But we have the majority. The middle class people and lower class people have to have the right to have decent life too.

LIZ MUNSEY: I think we have a pretty wide variety of voters here for Sanders–some people who even used to be former Republicans. In 2016, we went with what the establishment Democrats wanted, and we ended up losing that election. So I think we need to put the power back in the people.

JOHN BENTRUP: I think his Democratic Socialism is far different than socialism. He’s definitely not a Communist. People will try to do that, but I think that they’ll be wrong and I think the American public for the most part will see beyond that.

MARQUIS LEWIS: I think that my biggest counterpoint to that is the only Democrats who have to worry about losing if Bernie is at the top of the ticket is if they themselves are not trying to align themselves with Bernie’s vision. If you’re for the Green New Deal, if you’re for Medicare for All, if you’re for the people, the people are going to come and support you.

But if you’re the kind of politician who is like, “Well, the people voted me in, but I’m not really going to do all the issues. I’m not going to take care of the issues that actually matter to them,” then yeah, the people aren’t going to show up for you. But if you have a commitment to people, if you have a commitment to the issues of justice, of love, of trying to create an actual equitable world, the people are going to come for you hands down.

ERIK ESCOBAR: Richard Ojeda in West Virginia was this close, very, very close to winning the congressional seat that he was running for, and he ran on progressive ideas. He didn’t run as a Democrat. He ran as a populist, right. And I think if you focus on ideas like that, if you just focus on the policy proposals, if you focus on anti-establishments, then you can run a campaign down-ballot, down-ticket or otherwise in which you can actually motivate people to go out to vote.

JAISAL NOOR: Bernie’s critics say he’s too far left, he’s a socialist, he has expressed sympathies with Castro in Cuba; and because of those reasons, he’s going to lose to Trump in the general election and they’re going to lose states like purple states like Virginia–he can’t win these states. That is the top argument against him right now. How do you respond to that?

OLIVIA BREWSTER: I respond that we’ve had people in the past that have similar beliefs and people are just labeling him without really knowing what his issues are about.

KATHRYN BREWSTER: My favorite president is FDR and Bernie says he’s the new FDR. And it’s worked before and it can work again, so don’t count it out this time.

JAISAL NOOR: In the past, he’s praised people like Fidel Castro, and because of that, he’s going to lose to Trump.

PUJAN BARAL: So, another news report asked me that today. She said, “Why does Bernie support all these dictators, like from Cuba?” You should have looked at the reaction from the crowd, because everyone started laughing. And she was like, “Why is everyone laughing?”

Because it’s so outrageous that you are saying that this righteous man and this man who is rational on all points of his record, the way he’s been consistent on all of his policies, that he would support such things like an authoritative dictator. As you said, in the South Carolina debate he had the same position as Obama in terms of saying that the education program in Cuba brought an increased literacy rate there.

JIM AMSTER: If somebody at this point in time knows that they’re going to vote for Trump, they’ve already made up their mind and facts won’t change their mind. That’s the America we’re sadly living in today.

Honestly, Bernie Sanders has done a lot to explain how he definitely is praising the literacy programs that were enacted in Cuba that helped literacy. That’s something that we should definitely strive for, better education. And if somebody can’t get on board with that idea and the idea that he wasn’t praising a dictatorship, but rather the positive aspects of an influx of money and effort into an education system, well then… I don’t like that. It’s sad.

JAISAL NOOR: Senator Warren also supports Medicare For All and she and her supporters say she’s got, she’s better in position to actually make it happen, to actually implement that plan. Why not support Senator Warren?

LIZ MUNSEY: So I actually do really like Senator Warren. I think if Bernie weren’t in the race, I’d be supporting her. But there is a level of just raw passion and a longer history of wanting to do the right thing.

LAYLA ALNOZAILY: I also like his stance on issues in the Middle East, like in Yemen and Palestine.

JAISAL NOOR: He is probably the first candidate ever on stage to take such a strong stance in defense of Palestinian rights; called Netanyahu are racist at the debate. How did that make you feel? What was your response?

LAYLA ALNOZAILY: It was so amazing. It was so amazing, especially because he is Jewish, and a lot of people would not expect that from somebody who is Jewish. I feel like he got a lot of Muslim support after doing that. It was very nice.

JAISAL NOOR: You mentioned Yemen. Why is that important to you? And you can talk about what’s happening there?

LAYLA ALNOZAILY: There has actually been a Civil War going on there. I have a lot of family that lives here. My whole dad’s side lives there. The people there, they live off a dollar a day and they’re starving. Half the population is supposed to die by the end of this year of starvation, something that’s so preventable. He was like, took a stand against and he was like, “We need to talk about what’s going on in Yemen.” He had my heart from there.

JAISAL NOOR: Yeah. And it’s funny because a lot of people say, “Bernie hasn’t gotten anything done,” but that was a bipartisan resolution they passed with the Republican Senator. People have called what’s happening in Yemen a genocide and it’s backed by Saudi Arabia.

LAYLA ALNOZAILY: It is. It’s definitely a genocide, and the people are suffering daily because of it. And I appreciate his stance on it and saying that it needs to be dealt with because it’s really important.

JAISAL NOOR: For The Real News, this is Jaisal Noor.

Warren Ends 2020 Presidential Bid After Super Tuesday Rout

WASHINGTON — Elizabeth Warren, who electrified progressives with her “plan for everything” and strong message of economic populism, dropped out of the Democratic presidential race on Thursday. Her exit came days after the onetime front-runner couldn’t win a single Super Tuesday state, not even her own.

For much of the past year, her campaign had all the markers of success, robust poll numbers, impressive fundraising and a sprawling political infrastructure that featured staffers on the ground across the country. But once voting began in February, she never found a reliable base of supporters as Democrats coalesced around her progressive rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, and former Vice President Joe Biden, who established himself as the leading centrist in the race.

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“I refuse to let disappointment blind me — or you — to what we’ve accomplished,” Warren told her campaign staff on a call Thursday. “We didn’t reach our goal, but what we have done together — what you have done — has made a lasting difference. It’s not the scale of the difference we wanted to make, but it matters.”

Warren’s exit leaves the Democratic field with just one female candidate: Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who has collected only one delegate toward the nomination. That is a frustrating twist for a party that once boasted the most diverse presidential field in history and harnessed the votes and energy of women to retake control of the House, primarily with female candidates, in 2018.

Despite Warren’s disappointing finish, she offers the potential of a coveted endorsement to Sanders and Biden, who are effectively the last candidates in the Democratic contest. She spoke with both men on Wednesday, according to their campaigns. She hasn’t made a decision and is assessing who would best uphold her agenda, according to someone who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

In an interview after Warren’s departure was announced, Toni Van Pelt, the president of the National Organization for Women, urged her not to back Sanders.

“She has a lot of leverage right now. We do trust her to make the right decisions on how to proceed. But we’d like her not to rush into this,” Van Pelt said. “We think that our constituents, our members, will not necessarily think of Sanders as the best choice. We wouldn’t have the Violence Against Women Act if it wasn’t for Biden’s leadership. So, we know that he’s performed. Sanders doesn’t have a record. He’s really, as far as we know, done next to nothing for women and for our issues and for the things that are our priorities.”

Warren’s campaign began with enormous promise that she could carry that momentum into the presidential race. Last summer, she drew tens of thousands of supporters to Manhattan’s Washington Square Park, a scene that was repeated in places like Washington state and Minnesota.

She had a compelling message, calling for “structural change” to the American political system to reorder the nation’s economy in the name of fairness. She had a signature populist proposal for a 2% wealth tax she wanted to impose on households worth more than $50 million that prompted chants of “Two cents! Two cents!” at rallies across the country.

Warren hit her stride as she hammered the idea that more moderate Democratic candidates, including Biden, weren’t ambitious enough to roll back Trump’s policies and were too reliant on political consultants and fickle polling. And she drew strength in the #MeToo era, especially after a wave of female candidates helped Democrats take control of the U.S. House in 2018.

But there was also tumult.

Her candidacy appeared seriously damaged almost before it started after she released a DNA test in response to goading by Trump to prove she had Native American ancestry. Instead of quieting critics who had questioned her claims, however, the test offended many tribal leaders who rejected undergoing the genetic test as culturally insensitive, and it didn’t stop Trump and other Republicans from gleefully deriding her as “Pocahontas.”

Warren couldn’t consolidate the support of the Democratic Party’s most liberal wing against the race’s other top progressive, Sanders.

Both supported universal, government-sponsored health care under a “Medicare for All” program, tuition-free public college and aggressive climate change fighting measures as part of the “Green New Deal” while forgoing big fundraisers in favor of small donations fueled by the internet.

Warren’s poll numbers began to slip after a series of debates when she repeatedly refused to answer direct questions about if she’d have to raise taxes on the middle class to pay for Medicare for All. Her top advisers were slow to catch on that not providing more details looked to voters like a major oversight for a candidate who proudly had so many other policy plans.

When Warren finally moved to correct the problem, her support eroded further. She moved away from a full endorsement of Medicare for All, announcing that she’d work with Congress to transition the country to the program over three years. In the meantime, she said, many Americans could “choose” to remain with their current, private health insurance plans, which most people have through their employers. Biden and other rivals pounced, calling Warren a flip-flopper, and her standing with progressives sagged.

Sanders, meanwhile, wasted little time capitalizing on the contrast by boasting that he would ship a full Medicare for All program for congressional approval during his first week in the White House. After long avoiding direct conflict, Warren and Sanders clashed in January after she said Sanders had suggested during a private meeting in 2018 that a woman couldn’t win the White House. Sanders denied that, and Warren refused to shake his outstretched hand after a debate in Iowa.

But even as her momentum was slipping away, Warren still boasted impressive campaign infrastructure in that state and well beyond. Her army of volunteers and staffers looked so formidable that even other presidential candidates were envious.

Just before Iowa, her campaign released a memo detailing its 1,000-plus staffers nationwide and pledging a long-haul strategy that would lead to victories in the primary and the general election. Bracing for a poor finish in New Hampshire, her campaign issued another memo again urging supporters to stay focus on the long game — but also expressly spelling out the weaknesses of Sanders, Biden and Pete Buttigieg, the former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, in ways the senator herself rarely did.

Warren got a foil for all of her opposition to powerful billionaires when former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg entered the race. During a debate in Las Vegas just before Nevada’s caucus, Warren hammered Bloomberg, and the ex-mayor’s lackluster response touched off events that ended with him leaving the race on Wednesday.

For Warren, that led to a sharp rise in fundraising but didn’t translate to electoral success. She tried to stress her ability to unite the fractured Democratic party, but that message fell flat.

By South Carolina, an outside political group began pouring more than $11 million into TV advertising on Warren’s behalf, forcing her to say that, although she rejected super PACs, she’d accept their help as long as other candidates did. Her campaign shifted strategy again, saying it was betting on a contested convention.

Still the longer Warren stayed in the race, the more questions she faced about why she was doing so with little hope of winning — and she started to sound like a candidate who was slowly coming to terms with that.

“I’m not somebody who has been looking at myself in the mirror since I was 12 years old saying, ‘You should run for president,’” Warren said aboard her campaign bus on the eve of the New Hampshire primary. “I started running for office later than anyone who is in this, so it was never about the office — it was about what we could do to repair our economy, what we could do to mend a democracy that’s being pulled apart. That’s what I want to see happen, and I just want to see it happen.”

Tropical Forest Shift Raises the Alarm of Climate Scientists

A new study published Wednesday adds to mounting evidence that the world’s tropical forests could soon stop serving their climate crisis-mitigating role of carbon sinks.

“After years of work deep in the Congo and Amazon rainforests, we’ve found that one of the most worrying impacts of climate change has already begun. This is decades ahead of even the most pessimistic climate models,” said Simon Lewis, a senior author of the study and a professor from the School of Geography at the U.K.’s University of Leeds.

“There is no time to lose in terms of tackling climate change,” said Lewis.

The findings, published in the journal Nature, represent the collaborative effort of roughly 100 institutions in which researchers tracked some 300,000 trees spanning 565 patches of undisturbed tropical forests across Africa and the Amazon over a 30-year period.

Researchers used measurements of tree growth and death, along with CO2 emissions, rainfall, and temperatures, to estimate carbon storage or “sequestration.”

“We show that peak carbon uptake into intact tropical forests occurred in the 1990s,” said lead author Wannes Hubau of the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium.

At that time, the forests were able to store 46 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere, representing about 17% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Fast forward to the 2010s, and the researchers found the amount dropped to an estimated 25 billion tonnes, on par with roughly 6% of human-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Over the 30 years, the area of intact forest shrunk by 19% but global carbon dioxide emissions soared by 46%, the researchers noted.

The downward trend of carbon absorption didn’t happen in the zones at the same time, the study also found. The downward trend of sequestration hit the Amazon in the mid-1990s and the African forests about 15 years later.

The potential for the Amazon forests to switch from carbon sink to carbon source isn’t far off, with the study predicting it could happen as soon as the mid-2030s.

Hubau, in his statement, stressed need for ongoing monitoring “as our planet’s last great tropical forests are threatened as never before.”

For the moment, at least, humanity should still consider tropical forests carbon sponges. But, if urgent and bold measures aren’t taken soon, that could well change.

“Intact tropical forests remain a vital carbon sink but this research reveals that unless policies are put in place to stabilize Earth’s climate it is only a matter of time until they are no longer able to sequester carbon,” said Lewis, pointing to the possibility of a feedback loop being triggered.

“One big concern for the future of humanity is when carbon-cycle feedbacks really kick in, with nature switching from slowing climate change to accelerating,” Lewis said.

The bottom line for global governments is clear.

“By driving carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero even faster than currently envisaged, it would be possible to avoid intact tropical forests becoming a large source of carbon to the atmosphere. But that window of possibility is closing fast,” said Lewis.

Professor Douglas Sheil at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences, a contributing researcher to the study, put the findings in stark terms.

“Our results are alarming,” he said.

“The word ‘alarming’ should not be used lightly,” continued Sheil, “but in this case it fits.”

Elizabeth Warren Must Decide Which Side She’s On

The night before Super Tuesday, Elizabeth Warren spoke to several thousand people in a quadrangle at East Los Angeles College. Much of her talk recounted the heroic actions of oppressed Latina workers who led the Justice for Janitors organization. Standing in the crowd, I was impressed with Warren’s eloquence as she praised solidarity and labor unions as essential for improving the lives of working people.

Now, days later, with corporate Democrat Joe Biden enjoying sudden momentum and mega-billionaire Mike Bloomberg joining forces with him, an urgent question hovers over Warren. It’s a time-honored union inquiry: “Which side are you on?”

How Warren answers that question might determine the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination. In the process, she will profoundly etch into history the reality of her political character.

Facing the fact that her campaign reached a dead end, Warren basically has two choices: While Bernie Sanders and Biden go toe to toe, she can maintain neutrality and avoid the ire of the Democratic Party’s corporate establishment. Or she can form a united front with Sanders, taking a principled stand on behalf of progressive ideals.

For much of the past year, in many hundreds of speeches and interviews, Warren has denounced the huge leverage of big money in politics. And she has challenged some key aspects of corporate power. But now we’re going to find out more about how deep such commitments go for her.

“After Warren’s bleak performance in the Super Tuesday primaries, her associates, as well as those of Sanders and former vice president Joe Biden, say she is now looking for the best way to step aside,” the Washington Post reported on Wednesday — and “there is no certainty she will endorse Sanders or anyone else.”

A laudable path now awaits Warren. After winning just a few dozen delegates, she should join forces with Sanders — who has won more than 500 delegates and is the only candidate in a position to defeat Biden for the nomination.

The urgency of Warren’s decision can hardly be overstated. Sanders and Biden are fiercely competing for votes in a half-dozen states with March 10 primaries including Michigan (with 125 delegates), Washington (89 delegates) and Missouri (68 delegates). A week later, primaries in four states — Arizona, Florida, Illinois and Ohio — will determine the allocation of 577 delegates.

In the midst of these pivotal election battles, Warren should provide a vehement endorsement of Sanders and swiftly begin to campaign for him. Choosing, instead, to stand on the sidelines would be a tragic betrayal of progressive principles.

“Here’s the thing,” Warren said in a speech to a convention of the California Democratic Party nine months ago. “When a candidate tells you about all the things that aren’t possible, about how political calculations come first . . . they’re telling you something very important — they are telling you that they will not fight for you.”

We’ll soon find out whether Elizabeth Warren will fight for us.

The Man Who Made Socialism Cool Again

Love him or hate him, Bernie Sanders has emerged as the indisputable front-runner for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Sanders has inspired a massive, energetic, hardworking and fiercely loyal following, determined to carry him to victory at the Democratic National Convention in July.

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To the great agitation of his rivals and critics, Sanders has demonstrated a stunning popularity among a diverse cross-section of voters, including women, Latinos, Blacks, Muslims, union members and especially young people.

The oft-repeated trope of the white “Bernie bro” has proved to be more myth than reality. Sanders’ rapid and dramatic rise to front-runner status has sent his critics in the Democratic Party into a full-blown panic, revealing their inability to understand the current historical moment and the rhetorical power of the Sanders campaign.

Women, including young women of color, are among those who have been energized by Sanders. Supporters are seen here in South Carolina. (Matt Rourke / AP)

How, they wonder, has Sanders risen to the top of the field? What exactly is his appeal?

Why are young people, including young women of color, going for the old white guy?

Perhaps most important, why are so many Democratic voters warming to socialism, long regarded as antithetical to the American way of life?

As he did in 2016, Sanders has exposed a deep rift in the Democratic Party between its centrist and progressive wings.

The Third Way

This rift is not so much an intra-family dispute as a longstanding rivalry between two distinct political traditions. The first of these traditions is the so-called Third Way, first described by British sociologist Anthony Giddens in the early 1990s.

The Third Way was conceived after the end of the Cold War as an alternative to the left and the right. Also known as the “radical centre,” the Third Way rejects both the robust government interventionism championed by the left and the intolerance and bigotry congenital to the right.

It pursues incremental change while vigorously upholding a capitalist order. Bill Clinton was the first American president to put Third Way politics into practice. The Third Way has since become the reigning orthodoxy of the Democratic Party. Even Barack Obama, who campaigned on the lofty rhetoric of “hope and change,” governed as a resolute and unapologetic centrist, much to the disappointment of his progressive base.

Warren is also at odds with the Third Way. (Patrick Semansky / AP)

With the exception of Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, the rest of the Democratic field falls squarely within the tradition of the Third Way.

While the Third Way proved to be a politically salient politics during the 1990s, it has since calcified into rigid and obstinate dogma. The longstanding habit of ignoring the poor, siding with the rich and powerful and pursuing only incremental change has run up against a brick wall of brute reality: Gilded Age-levels of income inequality, skyrocketing medical debt, US$1.5 trillion in student loan debt, a racist criminal justice system and impending ecological collapse.

‘Massive failure’

Set against this stark empirical reality, incrementalism appears to far too many voters to be a massive failure. And the apologetic habit of dressing it up in the robes of pragmatic necessity has become a kind of secular theology: it demands faith in a better future that it can never deliver, a future lacking precise detail because it lacks a definable goal.

In the logic of the Third Way, incremental change becomes an end in itself: change for its own sake.

The problem with this delicate high-wire act — preaching incremental change in the face of exponentially worsening social and environmental crises — is that it has become impossible to pull off convincingly. Talk of incremental change doesn’t sound very promising or encouraging when the planet is on fire and climate scientists have given us a very short window to act.

By contrast, Sanders has been a lifelong advocate of democratic socialism, a tradition whose core principle is that democracy should be expanded from politics into the workplace — the sphere of life in which we spend the bulk of our waking lives.

Democratic socialism goes beyond mere social democracy — beyond programs like universal health care and public pensions — by calling for a fundamental change in the relationship between executives and workers.

It holds that workers should also have decision-making power, including over how revenue is distributed and how they get paid.

Deep, structural change

Democratic socialists want the workplace to be structured democratically, not like little North Koreas, in which CEOs rule like tyrants. Socialists see capitalist exploitation of people and the planet as the root of injustice. Hence, they advocate not incremental, but deep, structural change.

The reason Sanders has been so politically appealing to a diverse coalition of voters is because he offers a powerful explanatory key for making sense of America’s crisis moment.

He indicts not just specific people, like Donald Trump, Michael Bloomberg and Jeff Bezos, but the system: The political economic structure in which the super-rich have amassed extraordinary sums of wealth at the expense of everyone else, and our shared planet.

Sanders is seen speaking to an overflow crowd at a Super Bowl watch party campaign event on Feb. 2 in Des Moines, Iowa. (John Locher / AP)

Sanders’s rhetorical genius is to have linked different types of injustice, like income inequality, racial inequality, gender inequality, and environmental breakdown, through a single frame: corporate greed.

This enables voters to see injustice in big-picture terms. Sanders has equipped his base with a revolutionary political vocabulary for expressing their sense of injustice, as well as a language of shared struggle against a structure that thrives on exploitation. Solidarity, it turns out, is incredibly empowering.

Rise of a new politics

Third Way Democrats have scrambled to understand the Sanders revolution.

They’ve dismissed him as an old man yelling at the clouds and a snake-oil salesman offering the false promise of “free stuff.” Worse, they have been forced to perform the awkward dance of claiming the mantle of progressivism while disavowing popular progressive proposals and “revolution politics.”

This has inspired rhetorical gimmicks like cowboy talk and meaningless platitudes, that have been mercilessly satirized online. The desperate turn to disavowal and gimmickry strongly suggests the collapse of the Third Way and the rise of a new politics for the Democratic Party.

Democratic socialism might just be about to have its moment in America.

Jason Hannan, associate professor of rhetoric and communications at the University of Winnipeg, is the author of “Ethics Under Capital: MacIntyre, Communication, and the Culture Wars” (Bloomsbury, 2020). Read the prologue here.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Another New Voting System Causes Problems at the Polls

On the biggest day of the 2020 presidential season so far, Super Tuesday, America’s biggest new voting system—in Los Angeles County—widely frustrated voters and poll workers in its debut in a jurisdiction that’s more populous than 39 states.

Though the county had offered 11 days of early voting for the first time and spent millions to promote its new multilingual, user-friendly, part-paper and part-digital system, voters overwhelmed pinch points on Super Tuesday. Thus, as seen in other presidential contests in 2020, hours-long waits to vote repeatedly surfaced.

Voting Booth witnessed many possible reasons behind the delays. Inside the regional voting centers (replacing precincts) where any county resident could vote, technical problems shadowed the steps in the process. At the check-in desks, electronics linking iPads to voter rolls had connectivity problems. That difficulty slowed down the intake process, where poll workers were also juggling paperwork surrounding new same-day voter registration and changing one’s political party.

By noon, county officials were telling national media that 20 percent of the machinery in the next step in the process—the sleek, user-friendly consoles that ran in many languages (using different alphabets) and thousands of local ballot styles—were not operating or were sidelined. At numerous precincts, poll workers were seen making adjustments to accommodate a steady trickle of voters over much of the day.

After 5 p.m., that trickle became a torrent. Voters, many of whom said that they hadn’t thought of voting early and expected to quickly vote, found themselves in long lines that lasted an hour, 90 minutes, or more. Many centers—in low-income, middle-class and well-off neighborhoods—had to stay open until 10 p.m. to accommodate voters. Many people stayed in line, even after media organizations declared winners. But others could be seen leaving in frustration without casting a ballot.

It would not be fair to say that Los Angeles’ debut was a complete failure. For many voters who did not experience delays or technical snafus, the most visible parts of the county’s new system received high marks. Its check-in process, using iPads to look up a voter’s registration information and then printing a single sheet of paper with a QR code (a dot-matrix-filled square), was not complex. Voters took that paper sheet and easily slid it into a ballot-marking console, where their choices came up on a touch screen. It ended up printing out their ballots after repeatedly asking voters to verify its accuracy. Voters said that they were pleased, even if poll workers helped them. Voters with disabilities said it was easy to use. Others liked that their ballots went into a semi-transparent bin.

However, there is an emerging national trend and red flag as the country looks to the fall’s presidential, congressional and statewide elections. As new voting systems have debuted during the past month (in Iowa, Nevada, South Carolina, Los Angeles, and other Super Tuesday states such as North Carolina), the newest systems have tended to have some mix of delaying the process, frustrating voters and slowing reported results.

That emerging pattern suggests that voters seeking a change in officeholders next fall are facing a new layer of impediments atop older structural barriers—whether gerrymanders, strict voter ID laws, and other GOP-led restrictive voting options, rules and deadlines. If those older barriers collectively amounted to a 10 percent starting line advantage for the GOP among the most reliable voters to turn out in swing districts and swing states, the catalog of snafus shadowing the newest voting systems may raise that hurdle.

Whether effective investigations and remedial measures will be undertaken in the weeks ahead—starting with examining the operating logs on every machine that failed—is the key question. Beyond apologies and future assurances from election officials, the next test of whether those snafus could be fixed, or would likely recur in the fall, are local elections to be held this spring and summer—the next time this infrastructure is used.

In other forthcoming 2020 presidential primaries, where new voting systems will be used in some counties in swing states such as Florida and Pennsylvania, it remains to be seen if problems that cropped up elsewhere will recur. While some of these issues have to be solved by technology experts, it’s important to note that election officials need to pay greater attention to the public’s inclinations and behavior.

In Los Angeles County, many voters, for whatever reasons, didn’t choose to vote early. The same voting centers that sat empty for days were overwhelmed on Super Tuesday. Just because a system is designed a certain way, doesn’t mean its users will do so. The voting systems debuting now will be with counties and states for years to come. But given the stakes of 2020’s elections, there’s little time left to fine-tune them.

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.

Biden Would Be Just the Challenger for Trump

Donald Trump had the perfect opponent in the 2016 election. Running as a populist billionaire taking on the Washington elite, he couldn’t have asked for a better rival in Hillary Clinton, who carried heavy political baggage and who, for many, personified the so-called establishment. While Trump’s populist shtick was easy to pick apart, Clinton was the wrong person to promote the message she was trying to get across to voters.

By nominating a candidate whose place in the Democratic Party establishment was undeniable and who lacked credibility on issues like money in politics, the Democrats simply let Trump run as the anti-establishment candidate. Not only that, but the Clinton camp even tried courting establishment Republicans who couldn’t bring themselves to vote for their own party’s candidate.

Here was a man who had openly bragged about bribing politicians, yet Democrats couldn’t go after Trump on the issue because their own candidate was one of the politicians to whom he’d donated in the past. The Clinton camp raised (and spent) far more money than Trump, but whether this actually helped or hurt her is unclear, as it also gave credence to the perception that she was the candidate favored by big donors Meanwhile, Trump positioned himself as the self-financing candidate who couldn’t be bought.

As the Trump campaign’s onetime CEO, Steve Bannon, put it shortly after the election, “Hillary Clinton was the perfect foil for Trump’s message. From her email server, to her lavishly paid speeches to Wall Street bankers, to her FBI problems, she represented everything that middle-class Americans had had enough of.”

This time around, Trump should have zero credibility running as a “populist.” The president has presided over the most corrupt administration in modern history, plagued by investigations and numerous indictments that have led to convictions of some of his closest associates. Trump has nominated Supreme Court justices who defend money in politics, and his major legislative achievement has been to give billionaires and corporate elites major tax cuts.

Under Trump, corporate America has thrived while real-income growth has declined for most working- and middle-class people. Inequality has continued to reach historic levels, and billionaires like Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg have seen their wealth surge. In 2020, Trump is no longer even pretending to self-finance his campaign. With his recent predatory budget proposal he has made it clear that he is getting ready to gut programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, during his second term.

It should be easy for Democrats to expose Trump as the corrupt charlatan that he is. In an age when a majority of voters rate political corruption as America’s biggest crisis and nearly 8 in 10 Americans agree that there should be “limits on the amount of money individuals and organizations” can spend on political campaigns, how hard can it be to defeat a hugely unpopular president who makes Richard Nixon look half decent? The surest way for Democrats to lose to Trump again would be to follow the same strategy as 2016 and nominate a candidate who embodies the establishment, carries a ton of political baggage and lacks credibility on issues like corruption.

By the looks of it, Democrats might just pull it off. After Super Tuesday, it appears that Trump will have another perfect foil for his message in 2020. Former Vice President Joe Biden has regained his place as the Democratic frontrunner after a successful showing on Tuesday, thanks in large part to party elites, and some of his former rivals, quickly consolidating around his campaign the day before. Though the race is far from over, Biden is now well-positioned to win the nomination. By selecting Biden, Democrats will effectively let Trump and his deeply corrupt administration off the hook yet again.

Biden is a lot like Clinton, but worse in almost every measurable way. On issue after issue, Biden has consistently been to the right of Clinton throughout his fifty-year political career. He has a record of advocating cuts to Social Security and Medicare; he helped write the 1994 Crime Bill that led to an explosion in mass incarceration; he played a critical role in passing the 2005 bankruptcy bill that stripped bankruptcy protection from some of the most vulnerable people. Biden also supported and championed the Iraq War.

This list goes on and on. Beyond his extremely problematic record, which will make it hard for Democrats to go after Trump about, say, cutting Social Security (which Biden himself supported not too long ago), Biden has his own personal scandals that will make it very difficult for him to cast Trump as corrupt.

While his son Hunter’s business dealings in Ukraine may not qualify as corruption, it was doubtless unethical and sleazy for Biden’s son to take a high-paying consultant gig with a foreign firm while his father was vice president (and Biden’s refusal to acknowledge this conflict only makes it worse). The behavior of Biden’s family will haunt him in the general election. As Ryan Grim wrote in The Intercept last October, Biden’s son and brother have been “trading on their family name for decades, cashing in on the implication — and sometimes the explicit argument — that giving money to a member of Joe Biden’s family wins the favor of Joe Biden.” Predictably, a majority of voters believe it was inappropriate for Biden’s son to take a job with the Ukrainian firm, and Trump will exploit this and use it to defend his own family’s nepotism and corruption.

In the lead-up to the general election, Biden, who has recently struggled to string coherent sentences together, would provide the slick demagogue Donald Trump with all the ammunition he needs. We were given a little preview of what to expect in President Trump’s Super Tuesday commentary: “The Democrat establishment came together and crushed Bernie Sanders, AGAIN!” he gloated on Twitter, once again positioning himself as the anti-establishment populist.

On Monday, the Democratic establishment proved that it still has far more control over the party than the Republican establishment did over their own party in 2016. No one stands to benefit more from an establishment triumph than Donald Trump. Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has the credibility to call out Trump on his corruption and neoliberal economic policies, is still in the race, but his chances are looking much slimmer than they were just a week ago.

Democrats have a choice: They can follow the same strategy that ended up costing them all three branches of government in recent years, or they can go another way. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Armed With Protest and Poetry, a Muslim Ghetto in India Fights Back

Truthdig is proud to present this article as part of Global Voices: Truthdig Women Reporting, a series from a network of female correspondents around the world who are dedicated to pursuing truth within their countries and elsewhere.

A wide main road cuts across the length of Mumbra. Materials from half-constructed buildings spill into the street throughout this town in western India. Vendors dot the sidewalks, and rickshaws pick up customers in the middle of the road, blocking the way for cars and pedestrians. The smell of fried snacks and a cacophony of noises engulf the busy area.

Like much of India, Mumbra is crowded: 900,000 people live on a piece of land that measures 10 square miles. What sets Mumbra apart is that 80% of its population is Muslim, and it is considered India’s largest Muslim ghetto.

Life spills into the streets in the crowded Muslim ghetto of Mumbra.

For decades, Muslims have moved to Mumbra — a town about 18 miles from the large city of Mumbai — usually to escape religious violence in Mumbai and other parts of India. But since December, the people of Mumbra have lived in an especially charged environment. That month, India passed the Citizenship Amendment Act, which provided citizenship rights to several religious minorities from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan — but which excluded Muslims.

The law attacked India’s constitutional principle of secularism, and critics say it realized an age-old dream of the country’s Hindu nationalists: subjugating Muslims and making them second-class citizens.

Spontaneous anti-government protests immediately broke out across India. Police beat protesters and attacked them with water cannons and tear gas, and almost three months later, the demonstrations are continuing as the government implements the law. In late February, violence connected to the protests claimed at least 42 lives in the capital city of New Delhi. Witnesses say police often did nothing as mobs of Hindus killed Muslims, but when the crowd was Muslim, police reaction could be brutal.

An underlying climate of Islamophobia prevails throughout the country, shaping social interactions, professional settings, even basic livelihoods. Given this politicized, polarized climate, residents of Mumbra share what it’s like to be Muslim in India today.

Identity, Politics and Religion

The new legislation spurred people to action in Mumbra in unprecedented ways. Almost every day since the law passed, residents have taken two-hour train rides to reach protest sites in south Mumbai and demonstrate with thousands of others. They also have organized marches within their town and created safe spaces to discuss issues of identity, religion and politics. (Although the protesters in Mumbai are from various religious and ethnic communities, most of those who make the journey from Mumbra are Muslims.)

“Our sleepy little town was perhaps never so politically charged,” said attorney Shamim Hussain, who has lived in Mumbra since 1961.

The protests have brought people together in new ways. “Now, my best friend is … 62-year-old Nasreen kala (aunt),” said 16-year-old Yusra Mirza. The pair go to demonstrations together and talk at length about how they should resist injustice.

Mirza and many of her peers have become actively involved since the passage of the Citizenship Amendment. “These protests have certainly made the youth of Mumbra more politically aware,” Hussain said.

For decades, Mumbra has been a place of refuge for Muslims in the aftermath of religious violence. In December 1992, Hindu supremacists — mostly from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) — led a mob that demolished the 16th-century mosque in Ayodhya, a city in northern India. That incited religious riots between Hindus and Muslims in Mumbai (then Bombay) and prompted retaliatory bomb blasts by Muslim members of the underworld in January 1993.

Violence over those two months killed nearly 700 people, mostly Muslims, and as a result, thousands of Muslims moved to Mumbra. Since then, any small or big act of violence against Muslim communities led more people to relocate to Mumbra, which has been relatively free of religious violence. “We find strength in numbers,” Hussain said.

Hussain said the “Muslimization” of Mumbra drove out most of the Hindus who used to live in the area. “They didn’t move out because they were afraid to live amidst Muslims,” he said. “They just moved because it was uncomfortable for them in largely nonvegetarian neighborhoods or where they hear the Azaan (Islamic call to prayer) five times a day.”

Ghetto Life

Although Muslims feel a certain sense of safety in Mumbra, they live in a true ghetto — with the implicit living conditions. The definition of “ghetto” has become loose today, according to Christophe Jaffrelot, a French political scientist who specializes in South Asia. “We must reserve it for designating the gathering together of members of a community (in this case, Muslims) irrespective of their other social markers (class/caste or ethnic origin, for instance) in a locality insulated from the rest of the city … where state services are not maintained properly — if at all present,” he wrote in his book “Muslims in Indian Cities: Trajectories of Marginalisation.”

Much of the housing in Mumbra was constructed quickly about 30 years ago, and it has become dilapidated.

For example, Mumbra is crisscrossed with open drains almost all over the town, posing a massive health hazard.

The town is also filled with substandard buildings that were constructed in a hurry — and not according to code.

“There was a sudden influx of people after the [1992] riots, and they needed housing urgently,” said Shireen Dalvi, a journalist and resident of Mumbra since 1974. “Moreover, they were poor and had come with very little on them.” So builders used cheaper materials and built quickly, and the result was unsafe housing. In 2013, a building collapse killed 74 residents, and several other buildings have also collapsed, causing fewer casualties. Still, families continue to live in dilapidated conditions.

Until 2001, Mumbra had no access to clean drinking water, and electricity outages were common. There were very few primary schools or high schools, and health care was scarce. “I remember a pregnant lady would have to hail down an auto rickshaw and head to neighboring Thane city to access decent maternity facilities,” Dalvi said.

Mumbra held an inaugural book fair in January, a reflection of its growing educational opportunities.

Today, Mumbra has half a dozen colleges and about 36 primary and high schools. One government health facility and several private hospitals have been built. The economy of the town has improved somewhat because many families in Mumbra have members working in Persian Gulf countries. But in the town itself, unemployment is a major problem that stems in large part from anti-Muslim factors. Between 2014 and 2017, beef trade — a major source of livelihood for the Muslim community — was banned in a few states, including Maharashtra, where Mumbra is located.

Mumbra, which already suffered from chronic unemployment, was hit hard by the ban. A large number of meat transporters, resellers and butchers were left without work. Although the Supreme Court reversed the ban in July 2017, many fear returning to the trade because Muslims have been attacked and/or killed on the suspicion of storing beef or trading cows.

“We see people merely sit around all day on the footsteps of function halls [and] mosques and do nothing,” said 22-year-old Yusra Bano, who works as a sales clerk in a mall in Thane.

Young men in Mumbra who can’t find work often take low-paying jobs, such as driving rickshaws.

It is common to see young men and women do drugs at street corners, which many in Mumbra attribute to the lack of opportunity. Young Muslims complain that they are discriminated against and denied work because of their religion. As a result, hundreds of young men in Mumbra are low-paid cab or rickshaw drivers.

“[Mumbra] feels like the state of the Muslim community in India today,” said Rehman Abbas, a scholar and activist who has studied Indian Muslims. “We are better-educated than previous generations and have reaped health care benefits, but unemployment and a general lack of opportunities affect our youth adversely,” he said.

Being Muslim in Modi’s India

Critics say the 2019 citizenship legislation was the most recent step in a multiyear crusade by BJP leaders Narendra Modi and Amit Shah to wipe out the lives and livelihoods of Muslims across the country. The series of assaults has angered and demoralized residents of Mumbra.

Since Modi was elected to power in 2014, thugs supported by the BJP have killed dozens of Muslim men. Pehlu Khan, a Muslim dairy farmer, was lynched in the northern state of Rajasthan in 2017 because he was suspected of smuggling cows.

Ajmal was enraged. “I knew he was targeted only because he was Muslim and [for] no other reason,” he said. “That was his crime: being Muslim.” (Ajmal, who works in an electrical shop in Mumbra, requested that his last name not be used in this report.)

Immediately after Khan was killed, Ajmal and his friends gathered to plan an attack on the offices of Bajrang Dal, a Hindu militant organization. But their families stopped them. “Why do you want to start a war?” Ajmal’s mother asked him, and that made him abandon the effort.

In May 2019, Kashmir — India’s only Muslim-majority state — was stripped of its special autonomous status overnight and put on a 140-day lockdown, crippling its economy and frustrating its population. This represented a wider issue to the residents of Mumbra. “Muslims cannot be independent in this country anymore,” said Abid Dalvi, a student and rapper. “The message is loud and clear.”

Shortly after Kashmir’s autonomy was withdrawn, the Supreme Court of India issued a ruling in the decades-old dispute involving the Ayodhya mosque that had been destroyed in 1992. While acknowledging that the destruction had been illegal, in November the court ruled in favor of the Hindu petitioners and ordered a temple be built on the site.

A young woman and a girl in Mumbra don headbands to oppose government actions. “CAA” refers to the Citizenship Amendment Act; “NRC” stands for the National Register of Citizens, which may be used to help implement that law.

Past offensives against minorities — especially Muslims — created small splashes and smaller ripples. But the recent citizenship law has unleashed the strongest backlash and united many sections of society in Mumbra and elsewhere. “We were living in relative poverty and deprivation anyway,” Dalvi said. “Citizenship and identity are perhaps the only things we have. We will fight for them.”

Hindus, Muslims and people of other faiths are walking together, singing resistance songs and reciting poetry that celebrates the secular values of India. As a particular symbol of hope, young people are playing a big part.

“With the latest protests … it almost seems like the youth of Mumbra have come together,” said Abdul Hamid, a 22-year-old Mumbra-based poet. “Every young boy and girl has become a poet, writing songs about the death of secularism in independent India.”

Netanyahu Still Short of Majority After Israel’s Election

JERUSALEM — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has fallen short of capturing the majority needed to form a government, near-final election results showed Wednesday, deepening a year of political deadlock and appearing to dash the long-serving leader’s hopes for a decisive victory as his trial on corruption charges nears.

In an angry tirade, Netanyahu conceded that he did not have the parliamentary support to form a new government right away. But he still tried to claim victory as he lashed out at his main opponent and disparaged the leading Arab party — the third largest in parliament — as irrelevant.

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“This is what the nation decided,” he said. “The public gave me more votes than any other candidate for prime minister in the nation’s history.”

After failing to form a government following two general elections last year and with his legal woes closing in, Netanyahu had been hoping for a clear win in Monday’s vote. With initial exit polls predicting a near majority for Netanyahu and his nationalist-religious allies, he declared a “great victory” to thousands of jubilant supporters under a torrent of confetti on election night.

But Wednesday’s near-final tally painted a different picture. With over 99% of the votes counted, Netanyahu’s Likud led the way with 36 seats, ahead of challenger Benny Gantz’s Blue and White party, with 33 seats. Yet with his allies, Netanyahu’s right-wing camp held a total of only 58 seats, three shy of the 61 needed to form a government and no clear path to reaching the threshold. Final results are expected later Wednesday.

In a stunning rebuke to Netanyahu, the Joint List, an umbrella group of Arab-led parties, finished third with 15 seats. It was an all-time high for the Joint List, boosted by voters furious at what was perceived as racist incitement by Netanyahu throughout the campaign against the country’s Arab minority.

“Our public feels its power and it wants to exert that power,” Joint List leader Ayman Odeh told Israeli Channel 13 TV. “We said no to Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach.”

In a meeting with his political allies Wednesday, Netanyahu continued to portray himself as a winner, despite the likely impasse he faces.

“The Likud under my leadership became the largest party in a knockout,” he said. “The public’s decision must be respected.”

He did not respond to a reporter’s question about lacking a parliamentary majority. But he again lashed out at the Joint List, saying it should not even be considered in the calculations for forming a new government.

The Joint List ”isn’t even part of the equation,” he said, claiming its members are hostile to the state.

While the Arab parties have never sat in an Israeli coalition, they have worked to support policies from the outside, a step they could take again if they can resolve their differences with Gantz.

Gantz also has ruled out a partnership with the Joint List, making it unlikely he can cobble together a coalition either. That means Israel appears headed for deadlock, extending nearly a year of political paralysis.

Netanyahu had been desperate for a strong showing ahead of his trial, which is scheduled to start March 17. Installing a new government would give him an important political boost and potentially allow him to legislate his way out of the legal quagmire.

“There isn’t another politician in the world who could have won the largest number of votes after having failed twice to form a government and after having been indicted on three charges,” political commentator Ari Shavit wrote on the Makor Rishon news site. “Nevertheless, Netanyahu and his partners ought to bear in mind that their goal of 61 seats has not been achieved yet. Their hope for a decisive victory was dashed.”

Netanyahu was indicted last year on fraud, bribery and breach of trust charges in three separate corruption cases. He denies wrongdoing, saying the charges have been trumped up by a liberal media and a justice system looking to oust him. As prime minister, Netanyahu can not only use his position as a bully pulpit to rally public support but he and his allies also can try to craft legislation to delay or derail prosecution.

Under Israeli law, a sitting prime minister is not required to resign if indicted. But the law is fuzzy about whether a candidate for prime minister under indictment can be given authority to form a new government, and the country’s Supreme Court is expected to weigh in on the matter.

Israel’s president will soon begin consultations with the elected parties, which then recommend to him their preferred selection to lead the government. Typically, the candidate with the most recommendations is asked to try to form a government. As leader of the largest party, that is likely to be Netanyahu, even if as in the previous two elections his path is unclear.

In a bid to break the deadlock, Likud and its allies have been trying to find ways to bridge the gap. They have talked about luring “defectors” from opposition parties who could tick the right-wing bloc’s numbers up. But so far, no one has come forward, and a number of rumored defectors have issued statements denying the speculation.

Blue and White meanwhile said it would consider promoting legislation that would prevent an indicted prime minister from forming a government. But passing such legislation, particularly in the two weeks before the president taps a candidate to form a government, appeared unlikely, especially following an opinion against the idea by the Knesset’s legal adviser.

The most straightforward way out of the deadlock would be a power-sharing deal between Gantz and Netanyahu, whose parties together control a parliamentary majority. But Gantz has ruled out a partnership as long as Netanyahu heads Likud.

Netanyahu, on the other hand, insists on being prime minister of any unity government.

If neither candidate can form a government within the allotted time, Israel could face an unprecedented fourth straight election.