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Drug companies, including the ones making the vaccines now authorized in the U.S., widely oppose the move, which they say would undermine the global response to the pandemic and not have the intended effect of speeding up production. The Trump administration opposed it at the WTO. But House Democrats say they have already collected close to a hundred signatures on a letter urging Biden to change the U.S. position. Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) also have weighed in. Those critics accuse the drug companies of prioritizing profits over saving lives.

We need to make the vaccines available everywhere if we're going to crush this virus, and we need to make the public policy choices both in the U.S. and at the WTO that puts patients first, said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), one of the signatories on the House letter and chair of the powerful House Appropriations Committee.

The WTO has been deadlocked on the issue for six months, and so far the appeal from lawmakers and over 400 health, labor, religious and other groups has not persuaded Biden to change the U.S. position against the waiver. Since the WTO operates by consensus, all 164 members would have to agree to support the measure for it to take effect. But backers of the waiver request believe a U.S. switch in their direction would have a transformative effect on other opponents.

For now, Biden administration officials only say they will make a decision based on their analysis of how effective the waiver would be. They also point to Bidens pledge to provide $4 billion in contributions to COVAX, the international alliance to distribute vaccines to 92 low- and middle-income countries.

The top priority of the United States is saving lives and ending the pandemic, including by investing in COVAX and surging vaccine production and delivery, said Adam Hodge, a spokesperson for the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. We are exploring every avenue to coordinate with our global partners and are evaluating the efficacy of this specific proposal by its true potential to save lives.

The Trump administrations opposition to the waiver was a rare instance of solidarity with the European Union, which along with Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and several other WTO members also opposes waiving the intellectual property protections.

However, it is typical of rich countries, which host major pharmaceutical companies, to oppose any challenges to intellectual property rights from poorer nations.

The bloc of mostly developed countries argue strong patent protections have been key to the rapid development of the vaccines, and issuing a broad waiver would undermine the ability of the industry to respond to a future pandemic.

Top executives at 31 pharmaceutical companies, in a letter to Biden earlier this month, said waiver proponents have offered no evidence that patent and other protections are what is currently hindering vaccine availability, rather than the expected lag between developing the products and ramping up production to meet global demand.

"Despite the immense challenge of scaling manufacturing on novel technologies, current estimates are that Covid-19 vaccine manufacturers will supply approximately 10 billion doses by the end of 2021, enough to vaccinate the entire current global vaccine eligible population," they added.

At least two companies AstraZeneca and Novavax have allowed manufacturers in India, Japan and South Korea to produce their vaccines under voluntary licensing agreements.

But the World Health Organization, which supports India and South Africas waiver request, argues the terms of the voluntary license schemes being offered by some patent holders are not sufficient to address the current pandemic.

The Vatican, which has observer status at the WTO, has also jumped into the debate. Quoting Pope Francis, the Holy Sees representative argued during a meeting last month of the WTOs intellectual property council that the world should not allow the law of the marketplace and patents to take precedence over the health of humanity.

Supporters of the waiver hope those and other moral arguments will resonate with Biden, who is the U.S.s second Roman Catholic president and was photographed on his first day in office sitting in front of a picture of himself and the pontiff.

They also make an economic argument, saying any loss of pharmaceutical company profits would be more than offset by global economic gains that come from a quicker recovery, as well as the number of lives saved.

The next meeting to examine the issue at the WTO will take place over two days in mid-April. That gives Katherine Tai, Bidens newly confirmed U.S. trade representative, some time to dig into the issue. If there's no resolution, Biden could confront the issue head on later this year, when G-20 leaders hold their annual meeting in October in Rome. Both South Africa and India are members of the leading economy group, along the United States, China, Germany, France and the EU as a whole. India also could raise the issue when it attends the G7 summit in June as an invited guest.

Among major developing countries, only Brazil is openly opposed, while China has said the waiver request represents a good starting point for talks on any emergency trade measures that should be taken. India, a major generic drug manufacturer, claims the support of more than 100 countries for the proposal.

The WTOs new director general, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, former co-chair of the alliance behind COVAX, has suggested a third way solution to encourage vaccine patent holders to enter into voluntary licensing agreements with drug manufacturers around the world in order to scale up production.

A group of four Republican senators led by Tom Cotton of Arkansas also have urged Biden not to support the waiver.

"Waiving all rights to intellectual property would end the innovation pipeline and stop the development of new vaccines or boosters to address variants in the virus. It also wouldnt increase the supply of vaccines because of the tremendous time and resources needed to build new manufacturing plants and acquire the know-how to produce these complex medicines," the senators wrote.

But proponents of the waiver say the drug manufacturers cannot be trusted when they say 10 billion doses will be available by the end of year. Other estimates indicate it could be as late as 2023 or 2024 until there are enough vaccines to treat the worlds population, Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) said.

Time is also of the essence right now because there are the variants that are developing, Schakowsky said. The administration has made some moves in the right direction. But the real answer is to allow for the manufacture of these vaccines.

Read more:
Poor countries are fighting with drug companies over vaccines. Now Biden must pick a side. - POLITICO

Its really about Obama versus Bush, and Biden versus Trump, not the other way around, Mr. Emanuel said. We built long-lasting, robust economic growth. And I think comparing one to the other is, is historically not accurate. And also, more importantly, its strategically not advantageous.

David Axelrod, who served as a chief strategist to Mr. Obama, said he believed the current criticism was born of a desire to avoid a midterm shellacking similar to the one Democrats suffered in 2010.

It is irksome only in the sense that it was an entirely different situation, Mr. Axelrod said. If the Obama economic record were deficient, Im pretty sure Joe Biden wouldnt have run on it.

In many ways, the maneuvering is a stand-in for larger tensions within the party. Mr. Obamas close-knit circle is keenly devoted to protecting his policy legacy. A growing left wing wants more investments in health care and combating climate change, and a break from hard-line policy on immigration. Mr. Bidens administration is seeking to chart its own path.

In a recent address to House Democrats, Mr. Biden argued that it was Mr. Obamas humility that cost Democrats at the time, because the president didnt spend enough time explaining the benefits of his stimulus package to the American people.

Barack was so modest, he didnt want to take, as he said, a victory lap, Mr. Biden said. I kept saying, Tell people what we did. He said, We dont have time, Im not going to take a victory lap, and we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.

Excerpt from:
Democrats, Pushing Stimulus, Admit to Regrets on Obamas 2009 Response - The New York Times

Many Americans probably dont know exactly what terms such as anti-racism, cancel culture, racial equity, white privilege and systemic racism mean. And its likely even fewer could explain such concepts as woke ideology, critical race theory or intersectionality.

But these terms are now regularly invoked by activists, pundits and even some elected officials. Why? Largely because of two separate but related trends in American culture and politics. First, American institutions and voters, particularly on the left who have become more attuned and liberal on racial issues amid the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and increased attention on police killings of African Americans are now making a similar shift on other issues invoking equality and identity. That leftward shift is resulting in new initiatives and policies from corporations, local and state governments and, with President Biden in office, the federal government too. Many of these policies emanated from concepts like anti-racism and systemic racism that originated in academic or activist circles.

Second, many conservatives and Republican officials are now regularly invoking the term woke as an all-encompassing term for liberal ideas they dont like, particularly ones that have emerged recently, and warning that conservatives who object to these ideas are increasingly being canceled.

So its worth unpacking this new language and explaining what policies and values are behind them. This piece will focus on the political left and one later in the week on the right.

Ideas on the left that are ascendant

Here are 10 views, based on polls and public discourse, that are increasingly influential on the left. This is an informal list, but I think it captures some real sentiments on the left and ideas that people on the right are criticizing when they invoke the term woke:

These views are now expressed regularly by left-leaning people and Democrats particularly those who use Twitter, are involved in the Black Lives Matter movement and are under age 40. Books such as Ibram X. Kendis How to Be an Antiracist and Isabel Wilkersons Caste have become bestsellers because they appeal to people with these views and are likely pushing those who read them even further in this direction.

Perhaps most important, these views are powerfully shaping public discourse and policy. Examples include American news outlets describing the treatment by the British monarchy and press of Meghan Markle as part of a deeper structure of racism, with her husband, Prince Harry, portrayed as beginning to fully understand his own white privilege. There is also Goldman Sachs recent announcement of a $10 billion initiative to boost Black women specifically. And it is an increasingly mainstream and uncontroversial idea that America is behind other developed nations by many metrics, such as infrastructure.

The Biden administration has issued an executive order that describes ensuring racial equity and fighting systemic racism as one of its key goals, embraced a federal commission to study reparations and dramatically overhauled ICEs approach. It also enacted a $1.9 trillion economic stimulus package that reflects the concerns of Sen. Bernie Sanders and other liberal Democrats that capitalism as it currently operates in the U.S. isnt working for many Americans. Cities across the country are reducing spending on policing or reallocating police funds to other services. Cities and universities are instituting programs to make up for past discrimination of Black people.

What most stands out to me about the American Rescue Plan is that it points to the ascendancy of certain ideas in the national discussion and the fading of others, progressive author Anand Giridharadas wrote recently. He noted that the newly passed stimulus proposal focuses on the poor (so not just the middle class), gives direct cash benefits to most Americans and reflects little concern about increasing the national debt, three shifts from the Democratic Partys approach during the Clinton and Obama presidencies.

Where these views came from and why theyre ascendant

On the left, we are now seeing the culmination of a number of movements and events that happened over the last decade: Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, Sanderss 2016 campaign, Donald Trumps election, Trumps presidency, the emergence of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and The Squad, Sen. Elizabeth Warrens and Sanderss 2020 campaigns, and the protests after George Floyds death during a police arrest. These events and movements built on one another. For example, it is likely the protests over Floyds death were so large, in part, because many of the people attending them had become more passionate about fighting racism in America because of Trumps presidency (more on this in a moment). Ocasio-Cortez worked on Sanderss 2016 campaign and then was a key endorser of his 2020 run.

The result has been a big shift in public opinion on the left many of the views I noted above were held by few people and even fewer major public figures like politicians as recently as five years ago. These views go beyond the increased number of Americans who said they are more aware of the racial discrimination that Black Americans face after the rise of Black Lives Matter and Trumps election. In some cases, these views were once so out of the mainstream that we cant find much pre-2020 polling on them.

Share of Democratic voters that support each position according to polling

Pre-2016 refers to polling conducted before the 2016 presidential election. Most of these surveys were conducted in 2015-16, but in a few cases, the survey data is from earlier. For example, the cash reparations number is from 2002. We tried to use data from the same pollster, to reflect changes in the results that were not due to questions being phrased differently. Positions with no previous response is the result of a pollster not asking the question pre-2016. That finding suggests an issue is new to the political discourse. For example, Gallups non-polling on the reparations issue from 2002-19 was telling.

Sources: Pew Research Center, PRRI, Gallup, YouGov

The woke trend has impacted the polling field not only in what types of policy questions we ask, but in how we think about core constructs of survey demographics like race and gender, said Natalie Jackson, director of research at PRRI, a nonpartisan organization that focuses on public opinion about questions on cultural and demographic issues.

Such a shift, as you would expect, has a number of causes. First, it is likely the Trump presidency accelerated support for these views, because of his controversial actions and statements on issues of identity and race in particular and the general trend of thermostatic public opinion opinions tend to move against the positions of the incumbent president.

Second, the COVID-19 pandemic validated some of the views I listed above and pushed many Democrats, including President Biden, to support more aggressive policy solutions than they had before. The disproportionate number of Black, Native and Latino Americans who have died of COVID-19 no doubt contributed to Biden putting racial equity at the center of his agenda.

Third, many of these views are evidence-based rooted in a lot of data, history and research. For example, the evidence is strong that Black people are behind white people economically in America today in part because of the lingering effects of slavery and Jim Crow-era policies.

A big part of this is white people learning the things they didnt teach us in U.S. history classes the reality of Reconstruction; the casual, celebratory nature of lynchings; the effectiveness of white terrorism against Black successes, said Lilliana Mason, a government professor at the University of Maryland, College Park who has written extensively about partisan divides in American politics.

We were not taught any of these things, on purpose I assume, she added.

Fourth, many of these views are hard to forcefully disagree with in public. Some of them have a very strong moral force. For example, its likely that people who are transgender will gain more rights in the next few years and decades in the same way that gay and lesbian people did it is easy to make a case in public that people should be treated well no matter their gender or sexual identity and kind of uncomfortable to make the opposite case without sounding prejudiced and mean. Many of these emerging views are about issues of gender, race and sexual identity, so those who are wary of them (particularly cisgender, heterosexual white men) sometimes dont feel comfortable directly stating their objections, leading to more vague criticisms (like saying these ideas are too woke.) But it is hard to blunt growing support for an idea if you arent directly stating your objection to it.

Many of these ideas still arent likely to be enacted anytime soon

At the same time, many of the 10 views I listed above are opposed by a majority of the public, with even a sizable number of Democrats in opposition. This is not surprising. Movements and ideas that challenge the status quo are often unpopular at first. Some of them eventually become popular (gay marriage, for example), some remain unpopular but influence policy nonetheless (the abolition of ICE) and still others remain unpopular and are eventually abandoned (extensive busing programs for school integration).

As long as those poll numbers remain low, its hard to imagine Biden, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer or most Democratic mayors and governors will push many of the ideas forward in their purest form or even strongly support them rhetorically. (And those Democratic leaders, who tend to be more centrist than the partys activist wing, may oppose some of these ideas on the substance too.) So on reparations, Biden is officially supportive of a commission, but its clear that he and congressional Democrats are aware of the unpopularity of reparations and unlikely to push even the commission too hard. In terms of ICE, it seems like Biden will overhaul the agency but never abolish it nor invoke that language. It is unlikely Biden will give a speech suggesting that America is not an exceptional nation or that billionaires should not exist.

So dont expect most Black Americans to get cash reparations or for ICE or any big-city police department to be disbanded anytime soon.

Instead, over the next few years, we are likely to see Biden and other Democrats in elective office carefully negotiate with more left-wing people in his party. They will push Biden publicly and privately on policy, he will push back publicly and privately and its likely that policy will land somewhere between what would have been the Democratic mainstream five to 10 years ago and the lefts demands today.

Early in Warrens presidential campaign, in 2019, I suggested the Massachusetts senator would likely lose the primary but that her ideas and framing of policy might still end up shaping the Democratic Party. I think that dynamic has not only happened in the Democratic Party, but in a lot of other institutions in America: People like Warren, Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez and Kendi arent in charge, but those in charge are implementing some of their language and ideas.

This could change perhaps public opinion shifts right with Biden in office or there is a backlash as some of these ideas are implemented. But for now, the woke are winning.

See the original post here:
The Ideas That Are Reshaping The Democratic Party And America - FiveThirtyEight

Democrats on Wednesday passed their $1.9 trillion spending and welfare bill that would have been unimaginable even in the Obama years, and the big news is how easily they did it. The party is united behind the most left-wing agenda in decades, while Republicans are divided and in intellectual disarray. This is only the beginning of the progressive steamroller, and its worth understanding why.

One lesson from the Covid non-fight is that there are no Democratic moderates in Congress. The party base has moved so sharply left that even swing-state Members are more liberal than many liberals in the Clinton years. Democrats lost not a single vote in the Senate and only one in the House. The fear of primary challenges from the left, which took out House war horses in 2018 and 2020, has concentrated incumbent minds.

A second lesson is that President Biden is no moderating political force. Democrats in the House and Senate are setting the agenda, and Mr. Biden is along for the ride. Hes the ideal political front-man for this agenda with his talk of unity and anti-Trump persona, but he isnt shaping legislation. He is signing on to whatever chief of staff Ron Klain tells him he needs to support.

For now at least, there also isnt much of an opposition. With a few exceptions, the media are marching in lockstep support of whatever Democrats want. The substance of the Covid bill was barely covered outside of these pages. Opposition to H.R.1, the federal takeover of state election law, is literally reported as a revival of Jim Crow racism.

The business community has also been co-opted, as it often is at the beginning of a Democratic Presidency. Industries are trying to protect their specific iron rice bowls, but one price is their accommodation with the larger progressive agenda. Small business opposes the $15 minimum wage, but bigger businesses dont mind saddling smaller competitors with higher costs. Big Oil doesnt mind selling out independent frackers on climate rules.

Read this article:
Opinion: The Progressive Democratic Steamroller - The Wall Street Journal

The Lake Research survey produced an unexpected result: Latinos were more sympathetic than either white or Black voters to Republican dog whistle messages.

The dog whistle messages tested by Lake Research included:

Taking a second look at illegal immigration from places overrun with drugs and criminal gangs, is just common sense. And so is fully funding the police, so our communities are not threatened by people who refuse to follow our laws.

And

We need to make sure we take care of our own people first, especially the people who politicians have cast aside for too long to cater to whatever special interest groups yell the loudest or riot in the street.

The receptivity of Hispanics to such messages led Haney-Lpez to conclude that those Latinos most likely to vote Republican do so for racial reasons.

What matters most, Haney-Lpez continued, is susceptibility to Republican dog whistle racial frames that trumpet the threat from illegal aliens, rapists, rioters and terrorists.

Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, offered a distinct but similar explanation for the increased Hispanic support for Republicans.

What may be changing is how certain ethnic and nationality groups within Hispanics perceive themselves with regards to their racial and ideological identities, she wrote by email:

If Latinos perceive themselves more as white than as a person of color, then they will react to messages about racial injustice and defunding the police as whites do by using their ideological identity rather than racial identity to shape support.

Wronski reports that

there is also a burgeoning line of research on the role of skin tone among non-Whites. Nonwhites who perceive themselves as having lighter skin tone feel closer to whites and tend to be more conservative than their darker-skinned peers.

Wronski made the case that conservative Hispanics who voted Republican in 2020 are not permanently lost to the Democratic Party:

Identifying as a conservative and supporting conservative policy positions are not the same thing. This is especially true for economic issues, such as unemployment benefits and minimum wage. If you know that a group of Latinos tend to be symbolically conservative and economically liberal, then you can make appeals to them on the shared economic liberalism basis and avoid pointing out diverging views on social issues.

Marc Farinella, a former Democratic consultant who helped run many statewide campaigns in the Midwest and is now at the University of Chicagos Harris School of Public Policy, wrote in response to my inquiry that the fraying of Hispanic support is emblematic of a larger problem confronting Democrats:

American politics in recent decades has become increasingly democratized. Historically-marginalized groups have been brought into the political process, and this, of course, improves representation. But democratization has also, for better or for worse, been highly disruptive to our two-party system.

Traditionally, party leaders tend to support centrist polices and candidates; they are, after all, in the business of winning general elections, he continued:

However, the ability of party leaders to set the partys priorities and define its values has been eroded. They must now compete with activist factions that have been empowered by digital technologies that have greatly amplified their messaging.

As a result, Farinella wrote,

Its now less clear to general election voters precisely what are the Democratic Partys values and priorities. Last year, Republicans succeeded in exploiting this ambiguity by insisting that the messaging of certain leftist activist factions was an accurate reflection of the Partys policy positions and, by and large, the policy positions of most Democratic candidates. As far left activists compete with Democratic Party leaders to define party values and messaging, the centrist voters needed to achieve a durable majority will remain wary about Democratic desires for dominance.

On the other hand, according to Farinella, the lunacy currently underway within the Republican Party could prove to be the Democratic Partys ace in the hole:

A party that demands fealty to a single demagogic politician, condones or even embraces loopy conspiracy theories, recklessly undermines crucial democratic norms and institutions, and believes the best way to improve its electoral prospects is by making it more difficult to vote is not a party destined for long-term success. If the Republican Party continues on its current path, center-right voters might decide that their only real options are to vote Democratic or stay home.

Farinella acknowledged that this might just be wishful thinking.

Ryan Enos, a professor of government at Harvard, is concerned that liberal elites may threaten the vulnerable Democratic coalition:

The question for parties is whether members of their coalition are a liability because they repel other voters from the coalition. For Democrats, this may increasingly be the case with college-educated whites. They are increasingly concentrated into large cities, which mitigates their electoral impact, and they dominate certain institutions, such as universities and the media. The views emanating from these cities and institutions are out of step with a large portion of the electorate.

Many of these well-educated urban whites dont seem to appreciate the urgency of the struggles of middle and low-income Americans, Enos continued:

Most of them support, in theory, economically progressive agendas like minimum wage increases and affordable housing, but they dont approach these issues with any urgency even Covid relief and environmental protection take a back seat to a progressive agenda focused on social issues.

Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, whose firm, North Star Opinion Research, has studied Hispanic partisan allegiance, wrote in an email that Latinos are far more flexible in their voting than African-Americans:

As a general rule, about 50 percent of Hispanics vote fairly consistently for Democrats, 25 percent vote for Republicans and the remaining 25 percent are up for grabs.

In the Latino electorate, Ayres said, many are sensitive to charges of socialism because of their country of origin. Many are sensitive to law-and-order issues. And many are cultural conservatives, as Reagan argued years ago.

As a result, Ayres continued,

When white liberal Democrats start talking about defunding the police, the Green New Deal and promoting policies that can be described as socialistic, they repel a lot of Hispanic voters. In other words, most Hispanics, like most African-Americans, are not ideological liberals.

The current level of concern has been sharply elevated by a series of widely publicized interviews with David Shor, a 29-year-old Democratic data scientist whose analyses have captured the attention of Democratic elites.

Excerpt from:
Opinion | Democrats Are Anxious About 2022 and 2024 - The New York Times