A presidential nominee's choice of a running mate is one of the more high-profile decisions made prior to the general election. Political science research shows that these choices have limited impact, but in the kinds of agonizingly close elections that have characterized American presidential politics for most of this century, running mates can be consequential. 

The likely Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, is vetting her short list, and GOP nominee Donald Trump selected Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) earlier this month. Vance has subsequently come under fire for a series of controversial statements over the previous few years, fueling speculation that Trump might dump him from the ticket before it is too late. While it is much too early to say whether Vance will help or harm the Trump campaign, modern history is full of running mates who either helped the ticket across the finish line — or turned out to be a drag on losing campaigns. 

The best picks compensate for a nominee's weaknesses

George H.W. Bush (1980): In 1980, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan's brand of social and fiscal conservatism was in the process of taking over the GOP. But the party still included millions of moderates who were uncomfortable with the hawkish Reagan and considered him too extreme. So Reagan took the unusual step of tapping his moderate rival for the nomination, former U.S. Rep. and C.I.A. Director George H.W. Bush, as his running mate. Bush, who would later run successfully for the nomination and win the presidency in 1988, was from the Republican old guard of social liberals. He helped make voters comfortable with Reagan, who only a few years earlier was considered a firebrand who might accidentally start a nuclear war with the Soviets. The soft-spoken Bush ultimately helped Reagan deliver one of the worst defeats of an incumbent in American history when they vanquished Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a landslide. 

Mike Pence (2016): Critics derided him as "Mike Dense" and mocked Trump's selection of the pious incumbent governor of Indiana. But the staid and steady Pence helped solidify support from white evangelical voters – perhaps the single most important Republican voting bloc – who were uncomfortable with Trump's personal history as a twice-divorced man with a reputation for womanizing. When the infamous Access Hollywood tape that included Trump talking about sexually assaulting women was leaked to the press in October 2016, Pence's standing on the ticket may have made it possible for Trump to survive the episode. Pence's wife, Karen, told him that she "would no longer appear in public if he carried on as Trump's running mate," after hearing the tape, said journalist Tim Alberta. But Pence stuck with Trump, and together they won the election, in part by winning 80% of white evangelical voters, according to exit polls. 

Al Gore (1992): After 12 years of Republican control of the White House and three straight blowout presidential losses, Democrats were desperate to get their nominee right – especially because the incumbent, George H.W. Bush, looked increasingly vulnerable as the party conventions approached. Already dogged by allegations of extra-marital affairs (and possibly worse), Democrats worried that their nominee, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, would be seen as too liberal despite his status as one of the early members of the centrist Democratic Leadership Council (DLC). Gore, a Tennessee senator, was also a charter member of that centrist Democratic group, which wanted to move away from the party's reliance on a brand of liberalism that had become unpopular. Clinton gambled that a young ticket of self-styled ideological moderates would persuade the electorate to once again trust Democrats with the country's highest office, and they were proven right when they won the election decisively.

The worst picks compensate for the wrong problem

Sarah Palin (2008): Palin is the ultimate cautionary tale in running mate selection lore. GOP nominee John McCain, a longtime Arizona senator with a carefully cultivated image as a "maverick," wanted to pick his friend and longtime colleague Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) as his running mate. But Republican strategists feared that the party's base would revolt, and McCain impulsively chose the little-known Palin to increase enthusiasm from the conservative wing of the party. Despite an electric debut at the Republican National Convention, Palin later gave a series of disastrous interviews in the following weeks that led to her enduring Saturday Night Live caricature as an intellectual lightweight. In one infamous exchange, Palin was unable to tell CBS's Katie Couric the names of any newspapers that she read. As the campaign dragged on, even Palin's own staff grew frustrated with her and voters began to doubt her credibility as a possible successor to McCain, who would be 72 by Election Day. McCain went on to lose to Democratic nominee Barack Obama by 7.3 points. The "Palin effect," ultimately "cost McCain almost 2% of the final vote share," according to one 2010 study

Tim Kaine (2016): Riding high in public opinion polls and watching Republicans make the seemingly suicidal choice of Donald Trump as their nominee, Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton decided to pick Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) as her running mate. The moderate Kaine was not from a swing state, was not particularly charismatic, and did nothing to shore up Clinton's left flank with progressives still seething from the outcome of the bitter primary contest against Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Reports suggested that Clinton chose Kaine precisely because of their ideological affinity, a callback to her husband Bill Clinton's choice of Al Gore in 1992. Clinton and Kaine "are cut from the same political cloth," said The New Yorker's John Cassidy about the puzzling selection. Kaine was thought by Clinton's advisors to be "someone with whom they might work closely for four or eight years," Cassidy said. Instead, they only got to work together for a few months before their shock loss to the Trump-Pence ticket. 

Joe Lieberman (2000): For Democrats, it is hard to think about Joe Lieberman outside the context of what followed his losing campaign with then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000. A social moderate, Lieberman, a veteran senator for Connecticut, became so disenchanted with his party during George W. Bush's two terms that he ran successfully as an independent for another term in 2006.  In 2008 Lieberman campaigned for the Republican nominee, John McCain and appeared at the Republican National Convention. But in 2000, Gore chose him as a way of distancing himself from President Clinton's sordid personal history. Lieberman had given a fiery speech on the Senate floor during Clinton's 1998 impeachment trial denouncing his conduct while still voting to acquit. Lieberman was also the first Jewish candidate to serve on a major-party presidential ticket and was very popular in his home state. But Gore's real problem was with the disenchanted progressive wing of his own party, and enough people deserted him for Green Party candidate Ralph Nader to cost Gore the crucial swing state of Florida and thus the election. 

Edible insects could be coming to a supermarket near you. An Israeli company has devised brown, jellied sweets made from an edible, jumping insect - locusts, which are a type of grasshopper. “Grasshoppers taste like pecans, mushrooms, coffee and chocolate,” said the creator, Dror Tamir. “But with our range of food we can add in different flavours… the gummies come in orange and strawberry flavour.”

‘Sexy’ Bernie Sanders outfit launched for Halloween

Sky News said that the “scariest Halloween costume of the year” could be a sexy take on Bernie Sanders’ outfit from Joe Biden's inauguration. The manufacturers of the Trickz N’ Treatz Once Again Asking Costume Set say the look is meant for “you to be a viral internet meme! This political chairman costume comes with a grey coat, cozy mittens and a face mask for a total insta-worthy moment”.

Man, 100, given car he chauffeured in the 1960s

A 100-year-old man has been given the Bentley car he used to chauffeur in the 1960s. Eddie Hughes has never forgotten his time driving the car. He remembered: “I was king of the road, driving the best thing on four wheels and that was a great thrill!” His family found the Bentley for sale in America and made it road-ready again.

A small crotchet doll of Bernie Sanders has sold for $23,000 (£16,823) online. The doll, a tribute to the inauguration day photo of the veteran Vermont senator hunched over and wearing chunky knitted mittens, was made by Tobey King in Texas. Commenting on the price-tag, she said: “It’s mind-blowing.” King has donated the money to Meals on Wheels America.

Loch Ness Monster spotted twice

The Loch Ness Monster has been spotted twice this year, according to reports. Viewers say they spotted the mythical beast on a live webcam stream of Urquhart Bay, when they witnessed “unexplained” objects in the loch measuring around “a dozen feet long”. Meanwhile, Nessie watcher Eoin O’Faodhagain also claims he spotted the mysterious creature twice in a matter of days.

Man has nose removed to look like alien

A man has had his nose surgically removed to try and look like a “black alien”. Anthony Loffredo has also split his tongue and covered his entire body - including his eyeballs - in tattoos. During a live Q&A on Instagram, Loffredo said he also dreams of removing his skin and replacing it with metal. He previously told French newspaper Midi Libre: “From a very young age, I have been passionate about mutations and transformations of the human body.”

It's a little known fact that the presidential inauguration actually doubles as a fashion show of preppy winter 'fits, and President-elect Joe Biden's was no different. But the winner of the Capitol steps on Wednesday wasn't Michelle Obama, in her plum Sergio Hudson, or Vice President-elect Kamala Harris' step-daughter, Ella Emhoff, in her embellished coat, or Jill Biden, in her custom blue Markarian.

No, it was the grumpy chic outfit of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders:

Sanders, naturally, wears mittens made by a teacher from Essex Junction, Vermont, and knit from "repurposed wool sweaters and lined with fleece made from recycled plastic bottles," BuzzFeed News' Ruby Cramer reports.

Luke Letlow, a Republican congressman-elect from Louisiana's 5th District, died on Tuesday due to complications from COVID-19, his campaign manager announced.

Letlow, 41, contracted the virus last week, and was receiving treatment in the intensive care unit at a hospital in Shreveport, WDSU reports. He won his election in November with 62 percent of the vote, and was set to be sworn in as a congressman next month.

On Dec. 21, Letlow tweeted that he was thankful for the "continued outpouring of prayers and support for my family and me," and said he was "confident" that with the help of doctors, he would be "on the mend soon." Letlow added that he believed "strongly in the power of prayer" and had learned "firsthand how important plasma and blood donations are during this pandemic."


Letlow is survived by his wife, Julie Barnhill Letlow, and two young children.

Things reportedly got testy on Wednesday during an internal conference call as lawmakers tried to iron out a bipartisan agreement for a coronavirus relief bill, The Washington Post reports.

Multiple aides told the Post that tensions flared specifically between Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), who reportedly got into a heated exchange over how big stimulus checks should be. Checks were initially left out of the $900 billion proposal before reportedly being added as part of a compromise. Sanders argued for more robust direct payments, while Manchin advocated for a lower amount, instead preferring to emphasize unemployment benefits.

Reports the Post, members trying to rush the $900 billion proposal into law are "infuriated" by the potential for Sanders' opposition to blow up the whole deal.

Sanders, for his part, has called the inclusion of $600 checks a "good start," but is vowing to keep fighting "for more." Read more at The Washington Post.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Paul Ormerod in City A.M.

on pushing the coronavirus jab

Want people to get the Covid vaccine? Pay them

“Incentives need to be put in place. There are externalities involved: if I refuse to have a vaccination, I can infect others. That means vaccination cannot simply be left to individual self-interest. Some negative incentives seem obvious. For example, anyone who refuses the vaccine could be excluded from treatment if he or she caught the disease. Fines or even prison could be applied in vaccine refusers who are shown to have spread Covid. But such measures would create the wrong sort of climate. The best incentives in the current circumstances are positive ones. The idea being floated of a “vaccine passport” that would enable immunised people to experience more freedom in their day-to-day lives might work, though it would immediately create a market in forgeries. But there is a much simpler way: people should be paid when they get vaccinated.”

2. Allison Pearson in The Daily Telegraph

on the embattled home secretary

Most Britons back Priti’s hard line against Leftist snobs

“Increasingly, the Leftists who dominate our institutions get to define what constitutes offensive behaviour, then they come up with a new ‘ism’ to describe that behaviour (racism, sexism, Conservatism), the better to use as a cosh on anyone who dares challenge them. You can see where this is going, can’t you? In the days since, a report by Sir Alex Allan found Priti Patel guilty of breaking the ministerial code after she shouted and swore at civil servants. I haven’t spoken to a single person who believes the Home Secretary’s conduct was ‘bullying’. Outside bien pensant circles and TV studios, people seem to think it’s far more likely she came up against a bunch of white male snobs who seemed averse to actual work and accountability.”

3. Bernie Sanders in The Guardian

on the left’s route to victory

How do we avoid future authoritarians? Winning back the working class is key

“For a president who lies all the time, perhaps Donald Trump’s most outlandish lie is that he and his administration are friends of the working class in our country. The truth is that Trump put more billionaires into his administration than any president in history; he appointed vehemently anti-labor members to the National Relations Labor Board (NLRB) and he gave huge tax breaks to the very rich and large corporations while proposing massive cuts to education, housing and nutrition programs. Trump has tried to throw up to 32 million people off the healthcare they have and has produced budgets that called for tens of billions in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and social security.”

4. Andrew Mitrovica on Al Jazeera

on war crimes

Australia is guilty of state-sponsored terrorism

“These home-grown terrorists in battle fatigues were recruited by Australia. They were trained by Australia. They were paid by Australia. They were sent to Afghanistan by Australia. They murdered civilians, including children, in Australia’s name. The barbarity committed by Australia’s terrorists in battle fatigues – mostly, I suspect, white, Christian men – had one aim: to terrorise non-white, non-Christian Afghans. Aussie ‘soldiers’ murdered people not to achieve a ‘strategic objective’, but for a diseased, intoxicating sense of pleasure and, given the defining, competitive nature of Australians, they murdered people for sport. They accomplished their detestable mission.”

5. Holly Baxter in The Independent

on the departing president

The Thanksgiving turkey pardon was the final humiliation of Donald Trump

“There is nothing sadder than seeing a man who promised just a few short weeks ago that he was going to ‘make liberals cry again’ be reduced to a dejected comedian at an event about dinner. I almost offered him a little vial of my own tears, which naturally I carry on my person at all times, to perk him up. Slouching in with dead eyes, the president elicited a smatter of applause when he mentioned the highs of the Dow Jones this morning. He half-heartedly thanked Melania, as he usually does, for redoing the Rose Garden. He talked about the ‘doctors, nurses and scientists who have waged the battle against the China virus’. He said that members of the US military ‘keep America safe, keep America great and, as I say, America first’. No, that’s not a fully coherent sentence, despite the fact that he kept his eyes down on a printed piece of paper on the lectern in front of him the entire time, but at least it wasn’t a conspiracy theory about commie voting machines from Venezuela.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Martha Gill in The Times

on the idea that toil equals success

Young people get it - hard work doesn’t pay

“For the young... the workplace might look much as it does to a disillusioned 60-year-old. Opportunities thinning, success increasingly out of reach and subject anyway to forces outside your control. You could grind yourself into the ground working 12-hour days — but really, why would you bother? Trying to enjoy life a bit instead looks like a far safer investment. Generation burnout is here. What are employers to do about it? One idea, of course, is to fix unfairness where they can and hope the economy picks up. But cultural change is needed, too. The idea that anyone can succeed if they put in the hours just won’t cut it with the new workforce: they already know it’s not quite true... Sensibly, they don’t trust that rewards will come later, so, rationally, they would at least like a few small ones now.”

2. Philip Johnston in The Daily Telegraph

on hot the A-level fiasco will hit the Tories hard

Governments are rarely able to survive the stench of incompetence

“The reputation of the Conservative Party has always rested on the virtues of pragmatism and competence. Even when the former is supplanted by dogma, as with Mrs Thatcher, the latter has usually been its saving grace. But what voters cannot abide is a total screw-up and the perception of a loss of control. This is why the exams mess is so dangerous for Mr Johnson. Throughout the pandemic, polling has indicated general support for the Government. Enough people have been spooked by the prospect of their imminent demise to back any madcap response, whether mandatory mask wearing, arbitrary rules about weddings and funerals, or incoherent quarantine regulations... If Starmer can establish Labour as a credible alternative government and exorcise the spectre of loopy Left Corbynism (which remains a big if), Mr Johnson will be in trouble, not just with the voters but with his own MPs. As we have seen many times, there is no more ruthless political animal than a Tory backbencher fearing for his or her seat at the next election.”

3. Greta Thunberg in The Guardian

on acting like we are in a crisis

After two years of school strikes, the world is still in a state of climate crisis denial

“Over these past two years, the world has also emitted more than 80 gigatonnes of CO2. We have seen continuous natural disasters taking place across the globe: wildfires, heatwaves, flooding, hurricanes, storms, thawing of permafrost and collapsing of glaciers and whole ecosystems. Many lives and livelihoods have been lost. And this is only the very beginning. Today, leaders all over the world are speaking of an ‘existential crisis’. The climate emergency is discussed on countless panels and summits. Commitments are being made, big speeches are given. Yet, when it comes to action we are still in a state of denial. The climate and ecological crisis has never once been treated as a crisis. The gap between what we need to do and what’s actually being done is widening by the minute. Effectively, we have lost another two crucial years to political inaction.”

4. Holly Baxter in The Independent

on the future of the US left

In just 90 seconds, AOC told us everything we need to know about Joe Biden and the future of the Democrats

“Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was given just 90 seconds to speak at the Democratic National Convention [last night] - 30 longer than had been rumored - and she used them to great effect. The Bronx native chose to officially nominate Bernie Sanders in a race we all knew the Vermont senator had already lost... Not long ago, Joe Biden was the past, and plenty of young Democrats like Ocasio-Cortez are not ready to rejig their timelines and see him as the future. Today, she took the symbolic torch from Bernie Sanders - who has said that he will not run for president again - by appearing and reiterating her support not just for him but for ‘his movement’. That probably explains why Bernie sounded so wistful during his less-than-uplifting speech yesterday. And perhaps in 2028 or later, we will see AOC stand for the presidency herself as the Sanders legacy candidate, repeating some of the words she used when Biden ran in 2020. The young people who felt inspired by Sanders this year and in 2016 will remember her loyalty. But it’s a risky game: the moderate Democrats will similarly remember how she quite literally failed to toe the party line.”

5. Dr Elisabeth Rosenthal in The New York Times

on taking stock of our risk tolerance

Learning to Live With the Coronavirus

“As some parts of America gingerly begin to open up after months of near total lockdown, people have questions. Will it be safe to take a train? A plane? Visit the hair salon? An indoor restaurant? There are many knowable parameters in the equation: your health; the prevalence of cases where you live; the safety precautions being taken any place you want to visit. But the final answer may depend on your individual risk tolerance for exposure to infectious disease. Most Americans alive today have never before had to make that self-assessment. In the past, deadly outbreaks of plague, flu and polio were regular occurrences. Up until the mid to late 20th century there were mumps, measles and chickenpox to contend with. In a world of effective antibiotics and antivirals and other treatments, deaths or even serious illnesses from infectious disease seem nearly incomprehensible. So our fear is enormous, and our risk tolerance for exposure is just about zero.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Libby Purves in The Times

on the unravelling of Britain’s lockdown

Government confusion aggravates Covid despair

“The government’s practical mismanagement has been eloquently anatomised in these pages, so lay that aside. Equally dismaying is its failure to convey hope, resolve, strength and a sense of proportion. No wonder mournful voices pointlessly say that they yearn for New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern. Leaders in troubled times — ask any veteran — need to convey intelligence, good faith, consistency and calm. Ours rarely manage one. Early press conferences were OK, with scientists and the promise to ‘put an arm around’ us. Lockdown was too prolonged but had brief mood-raisers with the Queen’s speech and VE Day. But the unlocking is psychologically chaotic. Mr Johnson’s ‘over for Christmas’ speech was unhelpful, especially accompanied by silence or nervous throat-clearing from scientists. His unique selling point is bullish, flag-waving, Olympic-spirit zip wire merriment; that doesn’t work when we can see the wire sagging and him in a helpless dangle. Travel advice was mad: instead of fantasising about air bridges why not say ‘foreign holidays remain risky. You could suddenly get locked down there, or face isolation here. It could get expensive. Your risk.’”

2. Dr Alexis Paton, lecturer at Aston University and chair of the Committee on Ethical Issues in Medicine at the Royal College of Physicians, in The Independent

on threats to the health body

After Matt Hancock’s snap decision to axe Public Health England, this is everything we could lose

“That the government has chosen to axe Public Health England just after announcing a national initiative to fight obesity shows how little it understands the important role that Public Health England plays in maintaining our overall health and wellbeing... Public Health England holds a wealth of information and research on keeping people healthy and safe in their home and work environments, promoting and contributing to safety initiatives in all sectors. These three examples are only the tip of the public health iceberg. In the UK, we have had a tradition of public health that has almost nothing to do with pandemics and everything to do with improving the health of the whole nation for the long term... Public Health England currently has close to 60 targeted programmes in place to improve health and wellbeing across the whole population. Here are just the highlights. Are we willing to lose them so our government can save global face on their poor response to the pandemic? For me, the loss of any of these services is much too high a cost.”

3. John Harris in The Guardian

on the death of British community

No news, no shared space, no voice – the Tories are creating a cookie-cutter Britain

“The fact that whole swathes of basic administration are best handled at the local level is a banal insight that has eluded British governments for decades, and so it has proved again. For all that we are encouraged to think of the pandemic as a national issue, all outbreaks are essentially local – and like extreme weather events, they demand effective on-the-ground action and communication, and the kind of strong institutions that affirm people’s sense of place and solidarity. After a decade of cuts to local services, Covid-19 has cruelly highlighted the importance – and lack – of both. It has crystallised a question that goes beyond matters of politics and government into some of the most basic ways that places function: if the coronavirus has proved that doing things from the grassroots up is so crucial, why are so many aspects of our everyday lives being pushed in the opposite direction?”

4. Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph

on travelling abroad mid-pandemic

We are living with the consequences of other people’s terror

“I’m not on a mini-break. This is a mini-breakdown. I hate lockdown Britain and not just for the deaths we are trying to prevent but the paranoia and despair. I thought we cared about mental health? I suspect we were just trying to sound nice. When push came to shove, we told people to get on with being miserable – just as we told them to stuff their jobs and shove their schooling – and the consequence of not being able to imagine a future is utterly devastating. We will be living in this spiritually impoverished state for two years at least, because the moment there is a spike – and there will be a spike – they will shut everything down again. That’s what bureaucrats do and that’s what the public wants, even though a rise in localised outbreaks has not resulted in a rise in hospitalisations. You and I are living with the consequences of other people’s terror, and it’s as frightening as the disease itself. I shall get hate mail just for having the nerve to go abroad. ‘Is this an essential journey?’ a friend asked angrily. I said: ‘Well, it’s not quite the Bahamas, but it’ll do.’”

5. Elizabeth Bruenig in The New York Times

on how the US left stands a fighting chance

Despite Everything, Bernie Sanders Still Believes

“Mr. Sanders cited recent primary victories by some of the most progressive members of the House, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ilhan Omar as examples of left endurance, despite the machinations of powerful, moneyed opponents. There were new primary victories for the left as well: In New York, Jamaal Bowman took out Eliot Engel in a hard-fought race, while Cori Bush pulled off a surprise upset against William Lacy Clay in Missouri. Mr. Sanders pointed out that, down the ballot - sometimes way down the ballot - state and local governments are quietly welcoming new members from the Democratic Socialists of America, a major left organizing group that proudly backed Mr. Sanders. There are a few shoots coming up through the snow, and Mr. Sanders has no intention of giving up on these tender blooms his movement has nurtured.”

Cardi B's trademark long, acrylic nails "are typically adorned with around 500 crystals," so you know she has high standards when it comes to ungual upkeep. Still, during a Tuesday interview with former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders — whom Cardi B fondly refers to as "Uncle Bernie" — the rapper couldn't hide her dismay over her favorite senator's hands.

"I want you to take a look at my nails, how're they looking?" Sanders had asked when he signed onto the call, flashing his cuticles to the camera. Cardi wrinkled her nose, replying that they looked "very quarantine."

Did you get that, Bernie? Glue on some Swarovski crystals, and get back to us.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph

on political metaphors

Enough war bluster about beating coronavirus – let's steel ourselves to live with it instead

“Time to ditch the military analogies. Coronavirus may be something we must simply learn to live with. Such a message may be against the better nature of centrist politicians who have spent the last 30 years protecting us from the Other (Saddam Hussein) and ourselves (nativist populism). But they can yet change their attitude, and compellingly sell the truth of the matter to the public.”

2. Jonathan Freedland in The Guardian

on what really matters

Coronavirus crisis has transformed our view of what’s important

“Our public life has also been stripped to its essentials. We’ve come to see what’s indispensable and what is not. It turns out that we can function without celebrities or star athletes, but we really cannot function without nurses, doctors, care workers, delivery drivers, the stackers of supermarket shelves or, perhaps unexpectedly, good neighbours. If you didn’t value those people before – some of those belatedly recognised as key workers are among the lowest paid – you surely value them now.”

3. David Aaronovitch in The Times

on miracle cures

Don’t let fake news infect the war on Covid-19

“Many people for obvious and often noble reasons worry about the effects of a lockdown and argue that the game is not worth the candle. I think they’re wrong though I respect their motives. But for a section of the populist right, including pro-Trump websites, journals and news stations, this has become another part of their battle with the liberal establishment. And the championing of get-out-of-jail cures for the pandemic is the current go-to cause.”

4. Holly Baxter in The Independent

on the US presidential race

Coronavirus killed Bernie Sanders' campaign — but if he made a deal with Biden, we might see him in the White House yet

“Bernie’s soft-socialist, collectivist ideas are well-suited to the recession we will now have to weather. The age of unfettered American capitalism is over. A Republican White House sending out $1,200 checks to every US taxpayer would have been unthinkable just weeks ago; now that White House may be forced to bring in policies that some Democrats would have balked at in normal times.”

5. Financial Times Editorial Board

on an existential moment for the EU

Eurozone ministers must strike coronavirus deal

“For the survival of the eurozone and the entire post-1945 project of European unity, it is of paramount importance that ministers do not waste their second bite at the cherry. The issues at stake are politically divisive, at national and European level, and they raise genuine matters of principle for many governments. However, a second signal of high-level disagreement in less than a week would sow serious doubts in financial markets and around the world about Europe’s ability to get its act together.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

US Senator Bernie Sanders announced on Wednesday that he was dropping out of the race to be the Democratic party’s nominee for president - clearing the way for former vice president Joe Biden, who is now the party’s de-facto candidate.

The move had been rumoured for some weeks. After a formidable start to his campaign, the senator from Vermont performed poorly in a handful of crucial state primaries including those of Michigan, Missouri and Washington on 10 March - and with the field of rival candidates declaring their support for Biden, Sanders’ path to victory narrowed perilously.

Days later a national emergency was declared in response to the coronavirus pandemic and, with the nation’s attention focused elsewhere, any slim chance Sanders may have had of sparking a revival of his campaign, or at least of using his platform to espouse his social-democratic agenda, seemed to vanish.

Biden then won Arizona, Florida and Illinois on 17 March, and the die was cast.

On Wednesday, Sanders embraced the inevitable. “I wish I could give you better news, but I think you know the truth,” he said in a live stream. “I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere with the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour.”

Since running against Hillary Clinton in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election - one that ended calamitously for the Democrats, with Donald Trump seizing the White House - Sanders has become the figurehead of America’s liberal, left-leaning movement.

His absence from the race now raises a critical question: will Sanders’ supporters - a vast coalition of young, university-educated citizens, as well as hispanic Americans, other immigrants, and working class voters - unite behind Biden?

Many Sanders supporters resent what they consider to be an establishment cabal that pulls the strings of power in the Democratic party. However, a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found that, if Sanders dropped out, 15% of his supporters would vote for President Donald Trump, while 80% would vote for Biden.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“In many ways, Mr. Sanders never overcame the widely held view among Democrats that he was a political outlier, a self-described democratic socialist who proudly proclaimed himself to be an independent senator from Vermont rather than a member of the party establishment,” reflects The New York Times.

Nevertheless, Sanders was keen to exalt his left-wing movement, which, he hopes, will help shift the party’s - and the country’s - center-ground to the left.

“While this campaign is coming to an end, our movement is not,” he said during his speech to the camera. “While we are winning the ideological battle and while we are winning the support of so many young people and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful.“

Some, however, doubt Sanders and his two presidential campaigns had as much of an effect as he hoped.

“Sanders got beaten badly week after week, never changing his message. That message simply did not register with more than about 30 percent of the party,” writes Jennifer Rubin in The Washington Post. “The party did not shift far left, as many in the media predicted. If anything, Biden’s wins show that the heart of the party rests with moderate African Americans... Sanders’s ‘movement’ is far smaller than he would have liked us to believe.”

Joe Biden swept three key primaries last night, dominating a third week of consecutive presidental nomination elections.

Biden’s comfortable victories in Florida, Illinois and Arizona all but eliminated his rival Bernie Sanders, and came as Donald Trump formally sealed the Republican presidential nomination.

Biden now has more than 1,100 delegates, more than half of those needed to clinch the nomination. Sanders, who trails with just over 800, would need to win several of the upcoming primaries by huge margins to remain in the race.

“Biden is well on his way to being the presumptive Democratic nominee,” said USA Today, with CNN adding that he has a “near-insurmountable lead” over Sanders.

“Our campaign has had a very good night – and is a little closer to securing the Democratic party’s nomination for president,” Biden said in a speech from his home in Wilmington, Delaware.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Get your first six issues for £6–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Yesterday’s primaries took place to the backdrop of stringent measures to control the spread of coronavirus in the US, with President Trump advising Americans not to gather in groups of more than 10.

Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of Ohio, announced on Monday afternoon that he would seek to postpone his state’s election until 2 June. An Ohio county judge rejected the request, saying it would set a “terrible” precedent, however the vote was delayed after DeWine instructed the state’s director of health to declare a public health emergency.

Tom Perez, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, attacked the delay, claiming that it caused “more chaos and confusion”.

Meanwhile, pressure is now growing on Sanders to drop out of the race so that Democrats can unite behind one candidate.

“#DropOutBernie” was trending on Twitter last night, with The Guardian reporting that the Vermont senator is facing calls “to make a gesture worthy of wartime and call it quits for the national good”.

The paper notes that Biden has built up a “nearly indomitable lead”, with former George W. Bush aide, Lloyd Green, writing: “Biden has now amassed more than 1,000 delegates, more than half way to clinching the nomination. The primary battle is over in all but name. November looms.”

Sanders “needs to take a long, hard look at how and why he would stay in the race,” Chris Meagher, a former adviser to ex-presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, told CNN.

“And given how long he waited to drop out of the race in 2016, that pressure to drop out of the race when the writing is clearly on the wall is even greater.”

The spread of coronavirus has even overshadowed one of the most important elections in US history: the presidential vote in November.

President Donald Trump will square off against an opponent from the Democratic Party – Joe Biden or Bernie Sanders – in a bid to secure another four years in the White House.

But with a number of Democratic primary contests now being pushed back, it’s clear that this will be no ordinary election. As CNN’s Chris Cillizza puts it: “Given all of that recent history and the scope of the challenge now facing the country, it looks like the 2020 vote will be known as the coronavirus election.”

Here’s a look at how the virus might change the course of US politics.

Universal healthcare

The virus has drawn sharply into focus the drawbacks of the current healthcare system in the US.

The country has long resisted implementing the type of healthcare service seen in other developed nations, in which citizens are guaranteed taxpayer-funded healthcare that is either affordable or – as in the UK – free at the point of use. In the US, these systems are referred to as universal healthcare.

However, the US’s decision to retain its for-profit healthcare system has posed significant problems in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

“The US is in a particularly precarious situation when it comes to slowing the spread of Covid-19,” Ana Kasparian writes in The Hill. “We’re the only developed nation that does not offer universal healthcare, and we rely on a gluttonous private health care industry that consistently prioritises profits over lives.”

She notes that medical problems contribute to 66% of all bankruptcies in the US. This has been a focal point of the campaign of Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders, whose key policy proposal is a universal healthcare system called Medicare for All – something both Joe Biden, his rival for the Democratic nomination, and Donald Trump are ardently against.

Sanders has taken something of a battering in the more recent primary elections against Biden, but USA Today suggests that coronavirus “gives Sanders a chance” to reshape the election, and highlights a “shocking” disconnect “between Biden and a large chunk of the electorate”.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Trump’s response

As Chris Cillizza says, it is “getting ever more difficult to see how the ongoing coronavirus pandemic – and how President Donald Trump is viewed as he combats it – won’t be a major pivot point in his chances of winning a second term”.

At the moment, it’s not looking good. Trump’s response – consisting mainly of downplaying the crisis on Twitter before suddenly enacting sweeping travel bans – has prompted a savage backlash from health experts and the media alike.

“The president’s early response to warnings about coronavirus was to minimise its severity, assuring Americans that it was under control and saying the virus might simply disappear when warm weather arrived,” USA Today adds. “Factual errors in his Oval Office address to the nation Wednesday required administration officials to offer corrections and clarifications afterwards.”

Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, told The Guardian this week: “Denial, accusation, distraction, lies – these are his four principal responses to any rival.

“Only this time it’s not a person. When you think of that model, it doesn’t work with germs. A tweet doesn’t knock over a potential global pandemic.”

Stock market

One immediate metric of success from which Trump cannot hide is the country’s economy.

Global stock markets have been devastated by the virus, with billions of dollars’ worth of manufacturing, trade and travel halted across the world.

Since the start of the crisis, market volatility has only grown, with the S&P 500 posting its worst single-day loss since the Black Monday crash of 1987 last Thursday, before global stocks tumbled once again on Monday despite the US Federal Reserve’s emergency measures to address the economic slowdown.

And going by Bill Clinton’s candid admission in 1992 that US elections are won and lost on “the economy, stupid”, Trump could be in for a rough November.

So far, he has done little to help the situation. Last week, a presidential address was broadcast from the Oval Office in which he announced sweeping new restrictions on travel from Europe and scattered executive actions to help workers and businesses rocked by what he labelled a “foreign virus”.

The Straits Times reports that he “blamed allies for not adopting tough immigration measures that he said had prevented a wider outbreak in the US” – an approach which prompted Dow futures to plunge more than 1,000 points.

Turnout

On a more practical level, coronavirus appears to be threatening turnout in elections across the world, and the US may be next. For example, there was a record low turnout in French local elections on Sunday, with only 45.5% of potential voters going to the polls, compared with 63.5% in the last local elections in 2014. Iran saw similarly poor turnout in its parliamentary elections in late February.

Business Insider suggests that it is unclear whether fears about the virus will affect US voter turnout, but adds that if it is driven down, it could shape the entire election.

“Senior citizens have historically had the highest percentage of voter turnout. According to US census data, 66% of eligible voters 65 years old or older voted in the 2018 midterm elections – the highest out of any age demographic,” it says.

John Sides, a professor of political science at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, told the site: “There is a difference between a factor that might affect turnout of certain individual voters at the margins and something that would affect the outcome of an election.

“Right now, a variety of factors appear to be propelling Biden to the nomination, and it’s unclear that Covid-19 will change that trajectory – even if older, and therefore Biden-leaning, voters are less likely to vote in some places.”

Nevertheless, Time magazine adds that fears over coronavirus “don’t appear to have impacted voter turnout in the 2020 US primaries so far.

“In fact, Democratic voter turnout on Super Tuesday went up, exceeding the levels from 2016 in at least a dozen states,” the magazine says.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Sherelle Jacobs in The Telegraph

on science funding

The West’s neglect of science has left us chillingly exposed to deadly pandemics

“The only way to defend ourselves from the ravages of unfettered globalism is massive science innovation. There is one vital insight about the scale of this world crisis, which elites are being very careful not to broadcast: it was categorically avoidable. After the SARS outbreak in 2002, research funding for investigating SARS-like viruses exploded; within three years it fizzled out. We lost 15 years, and because we didn’t do the groundwork, precious time is now being wasted testing drugs we use for other viruses and piloting experimental vaccines and combinations. As it stands, it will take until mid next year to find a vaccine. This timetable is (through no fault of the scientists) disgraceful in its slowness; all the more so if you consider that another virus variation or mutation could prove more deadly.”

2. Caitlin Dulany in NBC Think

on restoring faith in humanity

Harvey Weinstein sentencing allows victims like me to believe the world has changed

“So when the guilty verdict came in on that fateful Monday morning, I was wholly unprepared to hear the news. I was astounded — in shock and full of emotion all at the same time. All of a sudden it was real. This man who hurt me and so many others was actually going to jail. As tears began streaming down my face, I was immediately flooded with phone calls and texts. I did my best to stay focused, because I very much wanted to use my voice to let anyone who was listening know how important this verdict was for me, for the many other women Harvey had harmed and for survivors everywhere.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

3. Bill Scher in Politico

on the dying embers of an era

Reflections on a failed Democratic revolution

“How the near future will impact you, young democratic socialist Berniecrats, remains to be seen. Maybe President Joe Biden would find a way to pass progressive legislation with bipartisan Senate supermajorities, which might change the way you think about compromises. Or maybe he runs into a brick wall of Republican obstruction, further deepening your conviction that only congressional rule changes and a mobilized grassroots can change the system. Or maybe Donald Trump beats Biden, bolstering your argument that Washington insiders peddling bipartisan gruel can’t win elections.”

4. David Aaronovitch in The Times

on strongmen getting stronger

Populism has revived the president-for-life

“When I was a teenager a lot of the world was run by people who governed till they dropped. Franco in Spain, Tito in Yugoslavia, Marcos in the Philippines, Castro in Cuba and probably some Paraguayan I’ve forgotten. Then the Berlin Wall fell and the consequent democratic tide washed away the era of strongmen, leaving only relicts, mostly in Africa and the Middle East. Thirty years on, however, and the president-for-life is making a comeback. In country after country populist rulers, faced with constitutional limitations on their periods in office, are responding to spontaneous calls from the masses demanding that they find some way of staying on.”

5. Julie Bindel in The Spectator

on inner turmoil

Why a trans woman thinks self-ID is a mistake

“I first met Claudia in 2003 shortly after she had sought legal advice to make a formal complaint about the way police officers had dealt with her report of a serious sexual assault. Claudia had been the victim of an attempted rape, but when she reported it, police undermined and ridiculed her because she was a trans woman. I wanted to write an article about the archaic, sexist diagnosis of ‘transsexual’, with the notion that it is possible to be ‘trapped in the wrong body’. I was not expecting Claudia to tell me, alongside the horrific story of her attack and police negligence, that she regretted undergoing a sex change all those years ago.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Robert Armstrong in the Financial Times

on an interconnected world

Coronavirus is a global crisis, not a crisis of globalisation

“There is no longer any doubting the seriousness of the coronavirus crisis. But we need to be clear about what kind of crisis this is. It has the potential to do worldwide economic and human harm. But it is not the result of a flaw in the organisation of the world economy, in the way people, goods and money flow across the globe. It is a global crisis, not a crisis of globalisation. The distinction is important, because if politicians and business leaders take the wrong lessons from this crisis, the world will be less prepared for the next. It is not surprising that, when Covid-19 still looked like a Chinese rather than a global problem, US commerce secretary Wilbur Ross said that the virus, regrettable though it was, would ‘help accelerate’ the return of jobs to North America. If you see the world economy as a zero-sum game, one country’s loss must be another’s gain.”

2. Rafael Behr in The Guardian

on an inexperienced chancellor

Rishi Sunak’s impossible task: sticking to a plan Johnson doesn’t have

“Sunak’s rapid ascent to the job of chancellor gives him status, not stature, and he goes into his first budget with authority already diminished by the circumstances of his promotion. Sajid Javid resigned rather than surrender his Treasury advisers to a command-and-control structure based in Downing Street. By accepting the job on terms that were unacceptable to his predecessor, Sunak advertised himself as the most submissive chancellor in living memory. If he has an independent streak, he keeps it covered in public. He is fluent in that polystyrene dialect that politicians use to pad out space in interviews when they would rather say nothing. That makes it hard to distinguish between caginess and mediocrity.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

3. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in The i

on the hardships of womanhood

After the optimism of International Women’s Day, it’s back to the hard reality of misogyny

“Online the worst of men spume misogynist vitriol; in public spaces they leer, touch and intimidate; at work they find ways to keep us in our places; and at home women and girls are forced to submit to them. Let me say emphatically, that this is not a slur on all men and boys. Many men are kind, supportive and stalwartly feminist. But reactionary maleness is resurgent and needs to be recognised.”

4. Hana Al-Khamri in Al Jazeera

on a dynasty of tyranny

MBS and the Saudi crisis of legitimacy

“Just like his predecessors, MBS [Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud] has struggled to resolve the most pressing problem of the House of Saud - that of legitimacy. His grandfather, King Abdulaziz Ibn Al Saud, the man who founded modern Saudi Arabia, set up the fledgeling Saudi state on two pillars: the distribution of oil wealth among the kingdom’s people in return for allegiance to the House of Saud and an alliance with the Wahabi religious establishment. He also concluded a strategic alliance with the US to ensure the country’s regional security, which one could see as the third pillar of the Saudi state. Despite MBS’s best efforts, however, cracks have appeared in all three.”

5. Sean Guillory in The Moscow Times

on America’s memory

Why should Bernie Sanders apologize for communism?

“No matter how much Sanders genuflects in the ritual denunciation of communist authoritarianism — and make no mistake it is a ritual — he will continue to be treated as if his signature had been alongside Stalin’s on NKVD execution orders. This is because the ritual isn’t about any real memory of the lived experience of communism, rather, it is an exercise in white-washing the US’s social and economic injustice and focusing the lens on imagined dark regimes elsewhere. Like most memory politics, the American memory politics of the communist past and how it is narrated is first and foremost a whip for ideological disciplining. At a time when the hegemony of the American political center trembles, the thrashes of this lash only intensify.”

Elizabeth Warren announced she will end her campaign to be the next president of the United States yesterday.

Her exit comes after she failed on Tuesday to make a significant impact during important votes in multiple states across the country, a day known in the US as Super Tuesday, and comes a day after the withdrawal of billionaire Mike Bloomberg, who abandoned his bid for the same reason.

Senator Warren’s departure simplifies the race. Tulsi Gabbard, the congresswoman from Hawaii, is still technically a participant, but in reality the presidential election in November will be contested between Donald Trump and one of Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders.

Why did Warren’s candidacy fail?

Speaking outside her house to announce the end of her campaign, Warren summed up what many believe was the central reason for its failure.

“I was told at the beginning of this undertaking that there were two lanes: a progressive lane that Bernie Sanders is the incumbent for, and a moderate lane that Joe Biden is the incumbent for, and no room for anyone else,” Warren said. “I thought that wasn’t right. Evidently, I was wrong.”

Warren won over many Americans with her promises to combat the inequities behind the 2008 financial crash, her detailed left-leaning policy proposals, and her down-to-earth persona.

In the end, however, progressive voters flocked in greater numbers to Bernie Sanders, who outflanked her on the left, whose name recognition was much higher after his 2016 battle with Hilary Clinton, and whose pugnacious style energises crowds.

For some, Warren’s exit from the campaign, marking as it does the end of any hopes for a woman in the Oval Office next term, is yet another example of the double standards facing women who seek power in the US.

“Sexism played a role in the failure of all her arguments,” writes Elie Mystal in The Nation. “Some people openly said that a woman couldn’t beat Donald Trump. Other people made the same point, but more subtly… She was called ‘shrill,’ she was called a ‘school-marm,’ she was called a ‘snake.’ She got criticized for not hitting certain candidates “hard enough” and then got criticized for vaporizing other candidates down to the molecular level.”

Warren herself acknowledged this reality yesterday, calling it a “trap” facing female candidates - if they confront the issue of sexism, she said, they’re called a “whiner”, but if they deny it “about a bazillion women think: ‘what planet do you live on’.”

The race to come

One of two white men in their seventies will now take on a third in November, and of the two, the establishment candidate is the frontrunner.

Only a week ago Biden’s campaign seemed lifeless, but his Lazarus-like comeback surge on Super Tuesday means the veteran vice president has now leapfrogged Sanders as the favourite.

“Joementum” is now undeniable, and likely to continue, with polls in the next batch of primaries due to be held this coming Tuesday heavily favouring Barack Obama’s former deputy.

“It’s done unless Joe makes some horrible mistake,” said Paul Maslin, a top Democratic pollster and campaigner, citing the fact that many of the states soon to vote have a high proportion of African American voters. “He will win blacks 75-25 minimum from here on in. He doesn’t have Hillary’s negatives. And people want to beat Trump big time. This race is over.”

Sanders continues to point to the movement of young people and latinos he has mobilised behind him, but there are doubts about that too since Tuesday.

“Most worrying for Mr. Sanders’s campaign, the hoped-for youth turnout did not materialize” during Super Tuesday, says The New York Times, “while Mr. Biden enjoyed the kind of suburban surge that handed Democrats the 2018 midterms.”

The crucial state to watch this Tuesday will be Michigan, which is, CNN argues, “hugely important, symbolically speaking, given that it was one of three critical Midwestern states President Donald Trump flipped to his side in the 2016 presidential race.”

One wildcard that could upset Biden’s resurgence will be which candidate Warren voters will favour now she has left the race, and “exit poll data indicates Sanders is the most natural beneficiary of Warren’s decision to end her campaign,” reports The Washington Post.

“Next week’s five primaries in Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, Mississippi and Washington will be key test of whether Sanders can consolidate support among Warren backers who are clearly closer to him on ideological grounds.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. John Connolly in The Spectator

on Labour hopefuls

Starmer and Long-Bailey fail to impress on Andrew Neil

“At the beginning of the year Lisa Nandy became the first Labour leadership candidate to subject herself to a grilling by Andrew Neil. It took almost two months, but this evening the two other candidates left in the race, Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, finally appeared on the show as well. And while both survived the encounter, neither particularly impressed. Keir Starmer appeared to have trouble defining his political relationship with Jeremy Corbyn. The Holborn and St Pancras MP admitted that Corbyn was a major issue on the doorstep at the last election, but then unconvincingly denied there were any rifts between him and the Labour leader over the party’s Brexit policy last year. At one point, Starmer even suggested that Corbyn was ‘utterly relaxed’ that his Shadow Brexit Secretary had gone off-script in calling for a second referendum, a month before it became official party policy.”

2. Robyn Urback in The Globe and Mail

on the threat of Trump

Joe Biden is anything but a sure thing

“The presumption is that Mr. Biden can turn purple states blue in a way Mr. Sanders cannot. The problem with that line of thinking, however, is that it failed spectacularly in the not-so-distant past, when the party backed Hillary Clinton over the same flailing Vermont senator. Her team overestimated Ms. Clinton’s base of support in states such as Michigan and Wisconsin and underappreciated the appeal of a disruptor such as Mr. Trump to an American electorate hungry for an outsider. The results of that election were not only a shock to pollsters but also a blow to the political dictum that the most broadly palatable candidate will necessarily be the successful one.”

3. Poorna Bell in The i

on addiction and grief

I hadn’t even told my parents about my husband’s addiction. When he died by suicide, I decided to tell the world

“After he died, I realised that the isolation of now being a suicide widow was unbearable. Suicide is a death that tends to horrify people, and grief in general is not something we feel comfortable discussing. I was faced with two paths. One was to try and work through my grief in silence, the best way I could. The other was to try and help other people in the same situation so that they knew there was love and understanding out there, and more importantly, that they knew there were options in terms of help, and how to get recovery. Removing the shame around addiction and mental illness was also a crucial part of this, because I had seen how it had been such a big blocker to Rob and I in terms of accessing help.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

4. David Aaronovitch in The Times

on nudists

The law only seems to protect trendy beliefs

“I have nothing against naturists. The offence caused to me by happening upon unexpected genitals while walking an isolated bit of shingle is nothing compared with that caused by men in sleeveless vests, people who don’t even acknowledge you when you’ve held the door open for them, and loud music in restaurants. I have never been mugged by a nudist. But should abusing a naturist be classified as a ‘hate crime’? The head of British Naturism, Dr Mark Bass, argued this week that it should. About once a month, said Dr Bass, he receives a report from one of his 9,000 members saying that they’ve been subjected to distressing abuse (usually verbal) on the grounds of their naturism. Sometimes this would happen when they were naked, sometimes just because they were known to be naturists. The police, he argued, should have the same ability to take action as they would if the victim were being abused for their race, sexuality, gender, disability or religion.”

5. Michael Chugani in the South China Morning Post

on hypocrisy

Chinese who cry racial abuse amid the coronavirus epidemic forget they are as bad as the rest of us

“Yes, racism runs deep in American society. But the same goes for China, Hong Kong, Japan, India and elsewhere. At least the US admits it has a problem and tries to right its wrongs. There is legal recourse against racism. Can I say the same of Hong Kong, where I was born, and China? I grew up being called mo lo cha, a racial slur against Indians. Many Hong Kong landlords still don’t rent properties to South Asians. Up until recently, there was an area in Guangzhou which Chinese nicknamed ‘Chocolate City’ because a large number of Africans lived there. Just imagine the outcry if a US district was dubbed ‘Yellow City’.”

Michael Bloomberg has dropped out of the 2020 US presidential race after splashing at least $409m (£313m) of his own money in a bid to become the Democratic Party’s nominee.

Following a tough Super Tuesday, the former mayor of New York said: “Three months ago, I entered the race for president to defeat Donald Trump. Today, I am leaving the race for the same reason.”

Reaction has been dominated by commentary about Bloomberg’s huge campaign budget. “All those hundreds of millions of dollars were spent for a win in American Samoa,” says The Guardian, referring to his only win in an area 6,000 miles from US mainland.

“In Virginia... 56% of primary voters viewed him unfavourably,” writes the BBC’s Anthony Zurcher. “Hundreds of millions of dollars in slick television adverts and glossy mailers won’t do any good if voters don't trust you.”

Fox News goes in hard, with Greg Gutfeld writing: “Bloomberg spent millions per delegate, all to convince people he was better than Trump. If you see some portly dude with a toupee buying everyone at the bar drinks, you can bet he’s a campaign consultant. Bloomberg’s loss is his new Porsche.”

CNN says Bloomberg’s downfall began at the 19 February debate in Las Vegas. “His support for tough policing tactics as mayor of New York City, along with lewd remarks he’d allegedly made to employees at his company, gave Bloomberg’s opponents ample fodder for attacks,” writes Dan Merica. “And other candidates, led by Elizabeth Warren, seized on it.”

Bloomberg had “dismissed scrutiny of his past treatment of women saying those who’ve stepped forward with allegations of workplace harassment simply ‘didn’t like a joke I told’”, says The Guardian.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The New York Post blames Bloomberg’s “stony face, ironbound certainty that he is always right and his gargantuan ego”, saying all three were “distilled in that stunning moment during his first debate when the mask slipped and he blurted that he had bought the current Democratic majority in the House”.

Bloomberg has said he will now endorse Joe Biden, who restored his status as favourite on Super Tuesday.

Final word goes to Donald Trump. Taking to Twitter, the US president said: “Mini Mike Bloomberg just ‘quit’ the race for President. I could have told him long ago that he didn’t have what it takes, and he would have saved himself a billion dollars, the real cost.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Aisha Moodie-Mills on CNN

on winning over the electorate

The Super Tuesday no one predicted a week ago: Black voters matter

“Tonight's results affirm that the pathway to the Democratic nomination runs directly through the black community. Candidates who are unable to break through to black voters just aren't viable contenders despite how great they might be on issues of racial justice and regardless of how many endorsements they receive from black influencers. Take Elizabeth Warren, for example, who literally has a comprehensive plan to address everything, including a host of issues that disproportionately impact black people. Even though she amassed an impressive list of endorsements from black leaders - from Black Womxn For to the founders of Black Lives Matter - she's been unable to break through to black voters in any contest thus far.”

2. Alex Massie in The Spectator

on a PM up against the ropes

The government’s political capital is waning

“Upon how many fronts can a government fight at any one time? Political capital has a short-enough half-life as it is without the risk of it being diluted through simultaneous multiple battles. Concentration of political firepower matters. At a rough count, Boris Johnson’s ministry is currently fighting the civil service, the media, the European Union and now, of course, a looming public health emergency from a likely coronavirus epidemic. There is also the small matter of a budget and the government’s actual – or, if you prefer, notional – plans for ‘levelling-up’ the United Kingdom.”

3. Jonn Elledge in the New Statesman

on the UK housing secretary

Why Robert Jenrick is the worst cabinet minister you haven’t heard of

“The idea that the government should be taking active steps towards making housing cheaper seems not to have occurred to Jenrick. And why should it? He owned three houses (yes, yes, ‘class war’, I know, I know). He’s only been an MP for six years: his prospects within the Conservative Party are not likely to be improved by garnering a reputation for being the guy who crashed the housing market and brought back council housing. Much better to keep stoking the fire.”

4. The civil servant in The Guardian

on the bullying claims against the home secretary

The Priti Patel allegations are turning into a #MeToo moment for the civil service

“It might not be a stretch to say that this feels like like a sort of #MeToo moment for the civil service. Those who, like me, have been around government for several years reckon more allegations are on the way. There may be blood. It probably won’t be Patel’s. For now, an investigation has been promised into whether she has broken the ministerial code, but swift endorsements from Michael Gove – the minister for the Cabinet Office, which will conduct that investigation – and the prime minister suggest the outcome is already secure. The message seems clear: Priti’s safe.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

5. The editorial board in The Telegraph

on Israel’s election

The age of Netanyahu is not yet over

“Against the odds, and with everyone expecting his Likud-led government to be trounced, the Right-wing coalition he leads has won the most seats. Rather than go backwards as many incumbents do – especially when they are facing trial on corruption charges – he won more seats than last time, boosted by recent diplomatic successes and a booming economy. It turns out that the age of Netanyahu is not over after all.”

Joe Biden was the big winner on Super Tuesday, claiming eight of the 14 states that voted to pick a Democratic White House candidate.

The former US vice-president has swept Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia.

“We are very much alive,” he told supporters in Los Angeles. “Make no mistake about it, this campaign will send Donald Trump packing.”

The BBC says Biden “appears to have won convincingly among the type of suburban voters who pollsters say have been turning away from the current US president”.

Bernie Sanders won the biggest prize of the night, California, and three other states. He told his own supporters: “We're taking on the political establishment. You cannot beat Trump with the same-old, same-old kind of politics.”

It was a disappointing night for Michael Bloomberg. The billionaire spent more than half a billion dollars of his own money but could only pick up a consolation win in American Samoa.

Elizabeth Warren, once the frontrunner, also had a tough evening. She endured an ignominious defeat to Biden in her home state of Massachusetts. The Guardian says she has suffered “crushing losses”.

“Looking ahead, this race is shaping up as two clear choices for Democratic primary voters,” attorney Raul A. Reyes told CNN.

“Sanders is offering a reshaping of what he sees as our country's broken and inequitable institutions. Biden is promising a return to an era when lawmakers on both sides of the aisle could work together. The question for voters is whether they want a revolution - or a restoration.”

Taking to Twitter, Donald Trump mocked Bloomberg and Warren. “The biggest loser tonight, by far, is Mini Mike Bloomberg,” he wrote. “$700 million washed down the drain, and he got nothing for it but the nickname Mini Mike, and the complete destruction of his reputation. Way to go Mike!”

Turning his attention to Warren, he said: “She didn’t even come close to winning her home state of Massachusetts. Well, now she can just sit back with her husband and have a nice cold beer!”

Meanwhile, the results put the Democrats at a clear crossroads: do voters opt for the moderate pragmatism of Biden or the progressive policies of Bernie Sanders. The successful candidate will need to secure at least 1,991 to secure the party's nomination.

Whichever of the pair wins, the next White House election is now set to be contested between two white men in their seventies.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Get your first six issues for £6–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Paul Taylor in Politico EU

on tussles in Brussels

Britain plays hardball in Brexit trade talks

“The government has dropped all talk of seeking a ‘deep and special’ relationship, or of ‘frictionless trade’, and seems to have written off hope of a long-term deal ensuring access for the UK’s giant financial services industry. Ministers have made clear that they put the sovereign right to diverge from EU rules above any economic benefit, and they have instructed business and farmers to prepare for friction at the borders. It could all be a grand bluff. But barring another last-minute Johnson pivot in mid-year as the steep cost of a chaotic no-deal rupture comes into sharper focus, the UK appears to be steering toward a far more disruptive break on a much shorter timescale than EU policymakers had contemplated.”

2. Neil Mackay in The Herald Scotland

on the future of disease response

Coronavirus could change our world forever

“The coronavirus has a wickedly dark sense of humour, and a taste for rather biting irony and symbolism. When it comes to comedy, our budding pandemic – newly arrived in Scotland – has very modern sensibilities. Of course, anthropomorphism is one of humanity’s dumbest tendencies. We can’t help but see human traits in objects and things which aren’t human. We ascribe emotions to animals, we see moods in weather and landscape. Nevertheless, it’s hard to shake the notion that coronavirus has something to say about life in 2020.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

3. Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine

on a resurgent former VP

Why Democratic endorsements can help Joe Biden win

“One reason why the Republican Party failed to stop Trump is that its voters were intensely skeptical of their leaders. Conservatism never fails, it is only failed, as Rick Perlstein famously remarked. The movement’s radical and impractical ideology was never going to be carried out, and so it was necessary to blame its failings on the shortcomings of the party leadership. Conservative-movement politics has spent decades telling its audience that they have failed because they were sold out by weak-willed leaders in Washington. Trump used that exact message to discredit his intraparty adversaries, painting them all as losers, and promising that he would finally enable them to win. The Sanders campaign is, in many ways, an attempt to run the same play in a different party. Sanders may not be Trump’s perfect ideological mirror image, but his notion of a political revolution that mobilizes the people to destroy an Establishment has much of the same flavor.”

4. Soline Humbert in The Irish Times

on Catholicism’s misogyny

Pope’s view on women in the church has brought frustration, anger and tears

“Our sense of vocation is treated a priori as an egotistic delusion, a sinful hankering for power, a failure to accept our womanhood, the product of a clericalist mentality, an evil threat to the church. We are dangerous women to be kept out in the cold. No warm embrace from male-governed Mother Church for us. I was not one of the women who shed tears reading the pope’s latest words on what women can and cannot be, can and cannot do. All my tears, and they were copious and anguished, have been shed long ago. These words no longer held any power over me, no longer had the power to wound me. To put it bluntly, I do not recognise myself in the pope’s view of women, and haven’t done so for a very long time.”

5. Clifford M. Kulwin in the Los Angeles Times

on the dangers of reductionism

Why ‘pro-Israel’ is a dangerous label

“Pro-Israel is a phrase I’ve come to abhor. Far from being useful or accurate, it’s meaningless, and even dangerous. How can one’s feelings about another country be reduced to a binary state? Is there really a line that, when crossed, transforms one from ‘pro’ to ‘anti’? And who gets to decide where that line is? For example, I strongly disagree with some Israeli policies, like the theocracy that discriminates against women and non-orthodox Jews, tacitly endorsed by generations of Israeli leaders. The current Israeli government uses scare tactics to inflate a sense of threat, diverting attention from Israel’s myriad social inequities, like the far longer life expectancy of Israeli Jews compared with Israeli Arabs. I am also uncomfortable with the ties being forged by the Israeli government with authoritarian leaders of Hungary, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.”

The race to secure the Democratic nomination to challenge Donald Trump in November’s presidential election is reaching fever pitch as so-called “Super Tuesday” gets under way.

The busiest day of primary voting will see citizens in 14 states and the US territory of American Samoa casting their ballots. Opinion polls and results from other states that have already voted put progressive Vermont senator Bernie Sanders at the front of the pack.

But former vice president Joe Biden is celebrating a resurgence in his once-floundering campaign, claiming victory in South Carolina last week. Biden has had a further boost after securing the backing of former rivals Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Beto O’Rourke, who have all dropped out of the race.

What is Super Tuesday?

Super Tuesday is the most important day in the party primaries, a contest staggered across a five-month period at the beginning of an election year to determine which candidate will represent each side in an upcoming presidential election.

Primaries are held in 46 of the 50 US states, plus Washington DC and US territories. The remaining four states - Nevada, Iowa, Wyoming and North Dakota - use a caucus voting system.

To become the Democratic presidential nominee, the candidate must secure the support of 1,991 pledged delegates from a total of 4,750.

The Super Tuesday phenomenon began during the run-up to the 1980 presidential election, where a high number of ballots were held on a Tuesday.

The Guardian reports that less than 5% of delegates have been allotted so far in the current contest, but today more than a third of available delegates are up for grabs – “giving it the potential to propel one candidate to front-runner status, and prompt others who perform badly to quit the race”.

Both Democrats and Republicans will be voting, but because Trump does not face any serious challengers, all eyes will be on the Democratic contest.

Ballots are being cast today in Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont and Virginia, plus the territory of American Samoa.

ABC News reports that polls will close at various times between 7pm Eastern Time (midnight GMT) and 11pm (4am GMT), though it is “unlikely a winner will be projected in every state before the close of the night”.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Who will win?

Until Monday, Sanders held sizeable polling leads in a number of states. But Biden’s prospects are looking up following the withdrawal from the contest of relative moderates Buttigieg and Klobuchar, allowing the former VP to run with the centrist torch.

Having trailed Sanders in most Super Tuesday states, some polling firms now put Biden in pole position to take the most delegates today.

However, there could be a twist in the tale. Michael Bloomberg has yet to drop out of the race, and having focused heavily on the Super Tuesday states, the former New York City mayor could siphon off some of the moderate support from Biden’s campaign.

Then again, Bloomberg has little backing among black voters, unlike Biden, according to political commentators.

Here’s a look at the polling going into Super Tuesday:

Alabama: With a large African-American population, this is easily the safest contest for Biden, who is expected to win by a considerable margin.

Arkansas: Bloomberg, Sanders and Biden have all been polling well in this traditionally red state. But opinion polls by FiveThirtyEight suggest that Biden might now edge it after securing the endorsements of Klobuchar and Buttigieg.

California: This is comfortable Sanders territory. According to polls, he has 84% chance of victory in the so-called Golden State, which offers the most pledged delegates of any state, at 494.

Colorado: Another left-leaning state, another easy win for Sanders, with Biden and Elizabeth Warren vying for a distant second place, the BBC reports.

Maine: New England, of which Maine is a part, is likely going to be a clean sweep for Sanders. Data from the state’s Colby College puts the Vermont senator in a comfortable first place.

Massachusetts: The only New England state which might see Sanders wobble is Massachussetts, where state senator Warren looks set to give him a run for his money. Still, Sanders leads the polls.

Minnesota: Klobuchar, a Minnesota native and the state’s senior senator, was firm favourite to win here. But her decision to drop out of the race and endorse Biden appears to have backfired - Sanders now looks set for an easy win in Minnesota.

North Carolina: Like its southern neighbour, North Carolina will probably be a landslide for Biden, who has focused heavily on the two states in his campaign.

Oklahoma: Until Monday, this was a hard one to call, with Biden, Sanders and Bloomberg all polling neck-and-neck. But on Monday evening, Biden spiked in the polls and now looks set to win here. Meanwhile, Oklahoma native Warren is given 100/1 odds of winning by FiveThirtyEight.

Tennessee: Biden has a large lead here, but not so large as to guarantee victory over Sanders, currently polling in second.

Texas: Perhaps the most important Super Tuesday race is also the closest - Biden and Sanders both have a 50% of winning in this hugely diverse state. With Sanders already certain to win California, a win in Texas could effectively hand him the nomination. Biden needs to consolidate his support with wins in traditionally red states, Texas included, to keep Sanders at bay.

Utah: Sanders has a gigantic lead in Utah. Warren, who is in second, has a mere 5% chance of winning, according to FiveThirtyEight.

Vermont: This is home territory for Sanders, who has lived and worked in the tiny mountainous state since 1968. “There’s a chance no one except Sanders will cross the 15% threshold of votes and get any delegates,” the BBC says.

Virginia: This was another close race between Sanders and Biden until this week, when the latter stormed ahead with a formidable polling lead. An easy win for the former VP is expected.

Overall: With almost all states expected to go to either Sanders or Biden, those opposing the Vermont senator’s nomination will have to pin all their hopes on the former VP. For a long time, overcoming Sanders’ formidable lead looked like it may be a bridge too far for Biden.

But with the backing of the party’s moderate former candidates, Biden has shot into first place in a number of key states, making the outcome of Super Tuesday far less easy to predict.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Matthew Walther on The Week US

on Pete Buttigieg pulling out of the Democratic race

The undoing of Mayor Pete

“Mayor Pete’s undoing was his utterly predictable failure to connect with white working-class, Hispanic, and, especially, black voters. There are a number of reasons for this — his thin resume, his vague platform, his record with South Bend’s African-American population — but the most obvious one has been the subject of comparatively little public discussion: namely, the fact that many millions of poor and minority voters still disapprove of same-sex marriage. When footage emerged last month of an Iowa caucus participant asking to retract her vote upon learning that Buttigieg is married to a person of the same sex, the woman was discussed as if she were a curiosity as opposed to a fairly typical representative of the Democratic electorate outside of the party establishment and activist circles.”

2. Maureen Dowd in The New York Times

on how to mishandle a health crisis

Trump makes us ill

“Trump is already doing his orange clown pufferfish routine, acting as though he knows more about viruses than anyone, just as he has bragged that he knows more about the military, taxes, trade, infrastructure, ISIS, renewables, visas, banking, debt and ‘the horror of nuclear’... Trump’s history in business — he makes people feel good for a while and then it ends badly — could presage a stock market crash before he exits. And it’s conceivable that a crash — along with hospitals being overwhelmed by the uninsured — could lead to the election of a real populist promising Medicare for All. And that would be a very Trumpian arc indeed.”

3. The editorial board in The Telegraph

on the rise of a new evil

Africa’s Sahel must not replace Afghanistan as a haven for international terrorists

“The absolute condition on the Taliban is that they do not allow Afghanistan to become once again the headquarters of Islamist terrorists intent upon striking against the West. If that were to happen, said President Trump, ‘we’ll go back with a force like no one’s ever seen’. But for Washington, this marks the point where the American heavy lifting ends and other countries are expected to step into the breach. As we report today, this is precisely what is going on in sub-Saharan Africa, where the Islamist fanatics kicked out of Afghanistan and the Middle East have been regrouping.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

4. Marwan Bishara on Al Jazeera

on redefining modern Judaism in America

US and Israel vote: Two ‘racist’ incumbents and two proud Jews

“Even if Sanders falls behind in the primaries, he has already let the genie out of the bottle. Young Americans, including American Jewish youth from all walks of life, are determined to take a fresh and daring stance on religious fanaticism, racism and inequality in both the United States and Israel. No Democratic nominee will be able to win without them, as Hillary Clinton learned the hard way in 2016. Today, they stand evermore united against Trump’s white supremacist and fanatical evangelical supporters who love Israel, because of a biblical prophecy, but hate Jews. This is a hugely important milestone in the fight against both racism and anti-Semitism.”

5. Dorothy Byrne in The Guardian

on a forgotten demographic

Older women are needlessly going blind. Why isn’t it a national scandal?

“If hundreds of children were losing their sight for no good medical reason, it would be on the front page of every paper. Somehow, old women losing their sight doesn’t seem to be a scandal. Hey, we’re getting on; we should expect horrible things to happen to us medically. It’s not like most of us are economically active, so who cares? Of course, the extra scandal about all of this is that elderly people who lose sight become a burden on health and care services. A study showed that saving the sight of people with GCA actually saves the health service money.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. The Editorial Board at The New York Times

on a better way to do democracy

The primaries are just dumb

“As the country learned in 2016 with Republicans, the primaries and caucuses are a mess, giving the illusion of a choice in a situation where in fact voters have just the opposite — no clear choice. This year, Bernie Sanders won close to a majority in Nevada, but in the two earlier contests, in Iowa and New Hampshire, no candidate won more than 26 percent of the vote. This fragmentation helps those candidates with passionate followings, like Mr. Sanders, as it helped Donald Trump in 2016, but it produces nothing like a consensus candidate… This is no way to pick the person who will challenge a president — one who was himself nominated first by a minority within his party, then elected by a minority nationwide.”

2. Paul Kelso at Sky News

on the Court of Appeal finding third runway plans ‘unlawful’

Why the Heathrow ruling is a landmark moment

“The repercussions of this judgment will be felt well beyond the suburbs and villages surrounding Heathrow. The Court of Appeal justices have not just lifted the immediate threat of demolition from homes in the path of the third runway. By finding against the government on environmental grounds they have raised the bar for all infrastructure projects, public and private, and prioritised consideration of the impact of carbon emissions.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

3. Patrick Maguire in The Guardian

on Keir Starmer’s bid to be Bernie Sanders

Long-Bailey’s shift to attack mode shows what awaits Starmer if he wins

“Which Labour leadership candidate has most in common with Bernie Sanders? Few of the Democratic presidential candidate’s admirers on the British left would say the answer was Keir Starmer. Yet that is precisely the comparison the favourite for the Labour leadership wants 580,000 members and supporters to make as they begin to cast their ballots this week. In an implicit rebuke to Lisa Nandy and Rebecca Long-Bailey, Starmer says he is not just in the business of uniting a fractured party at Westminster, but broadening its base in the country. Cultivating new support across class and ethnic divides has put Sanders on the road to the Democratic nomination, and Starmer believes that the same approach can put Labour back on the path to power: keep left, rebuild a diverse coalition of voters, and look beyond the red wall.”

4. Kate Harding in Time

on grappling with words and identity after rape

I’ve been told I’m a survivor, not a victim. But what’s wrong with being a victim?

“The question that first struck me at 17 and continues to haunt me at 43 is this: What’s wrong with being a victim? Obviously, becoming a victim is undesirable. We don’t wish for bad things beyond our control to come along and interfere with our plans. But once the bad thing has happened, why are we so allergic to using the simplest, most accurate language to describe the condition of being post-bad thing? I had been violated without being in fear for my life, ergo I was far more accurately termed a ‘victim’ than a ‘survivor.’ That part was simple enough. The complicated part was that many other people who had been raped preferred survivor and found victim actively insulting.”

5. The Editorial Board at The Independent

on the UK response to coronavirus

Matt Hancock’s worries about the coronavirus don’t go far enough – now is the time for action

“Although Matt Hancock, the health secretary, has professed himself ‘worried’ by the situation – understandably – it seems to be under control. In the commons, when Mr Hancock gave an update on the position, the mood was calm, and the opposition spokesperson, Jonathan Ashworth, was broadly supportive. Covid-19 has not yet, so to speak, gone viral as a political issue. But is that right? Are the government and the NHS well prepared to deal with this virus? As The Independent reports, the NHS is already suffering from intense pressure on bed space, and it is difficult to believe that the NHS will indeed be able to deal with a rapid escalation in cases.”

Two days before California joins 13 other states to parcel out a huge number of delegates in the Democratic presidential race, Sen. Bernie Sanders will appear in Los Angeles with Public Enemy Radio, plus comedian Sarah Silverman and TV legend Dick Van Dyke, the Sanders campaign announced Wednesday night. They even made a poster for the March 1 rally.

Sanders already hosted The Strokes at a rally in New Hampshire, and adding Public Enemy, Silverman, and Van Dyke plants cultural flags in every decade back to the 1960s. Sanders doesn't have a corner on the market: TLC performed at a Tom Steyer rally, John Mellencamp cut an ad for Mike Bloomberg, and John Legend stumped for Sen. Elizabeth Warren on Wednesday night in Charleston, South Carolina.

Democratic primary voters should pick their candidate based on the issues and all that, but Chuck D is a good get and that's a great poster for Sanders.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Ed Platt in the New Statesman

on flooding in the UK

How floods divided Britain

“Urban versus rural tensions are building after years of favouritism, powerlessness and blame... Place names matter in Britain, for they encode unexpected connections. When I arrived in the Somerset village of Thorney in January 2014, to find it under four feet of water, I was fascinated by the way its name tied it to the place that many of its inhabitants blamed for the floods that had engulfed their homes. Westminster - the seat of government and the home of the Environment Agency, the quasi-independent body responsible for managing flooding - was originally called Thorney, for like Thorney, Somerset, it began life as an island in the marshy fringes of a river. I thought of Thorney, Somerset and Thorney, Westminster as twin towns of a kind, for one was subject to decisions made in the other - though by the time the winter was over, the inhabitants of the village and its neighbours would reverse the pattern, by forcing those at the centre to accept their perception of the causes of the flood.”

2. Roger Boyes in The Times

on how corrupt regimes profit from catastrophe

Why do some failing states never fail?

“Revolutions erupt because of rising but thwarted expectations. So the primary task of kleptocrats is to banish ambition. The ambitious, the able-bodied, the desperate flee the country in droves. And the leaders are OK with that, too. One day, they figure, the pressure of refugees mounting up in western countries will force the outside world to strike a deal with leaders who have demonstrated their survival skills. Allowing their states to fail gives them a perverse advantage: it makes them indispensable. As a result many people in these miserable states don’t even pretend to trust their leaders. Better muddle through with the ruler we know, is the short-term calculation, than topple him and risk the wholesale collapse of society. They keep their focus on family, not state; the health of their children and elders. Venezuela used to have the best-funded health system in Latin America. Now nursing staff have to pump incubators by hand for newborn babies. Such everyday tragedies have to inform our policies.”

3. Ramzy Alwakeel on HuffPost

on the need to rout out sexual abuse in politcs

Carl Beech lied about Westminster sex abuse but its real victims need to be believed more than ever

“The notion that we should trust and respect people who allege rape and sexual abuse is still fragile; the Me Too movement, which secured a landmark prosecution this week in the form of Harvey Weinstein, is a welcome and desperately needed step in the right direction, but there is still so much further to go. A fraction of rape allegations end in prosecution, never mind conviction; the figure was less than 2% last year. Partly that is because of a system stacked against victims – invasive or impossible tests they must satisfy, demands they give evidence in traumatising circumstances, and a culture that more readily believes men, especially powerful ones, than women. The fact police didn’t spot Carl Beech’s lies sooner is disappointing, but it was right that they took his allegations seriously.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

4. Matt Stoller on Wired

on the potential for a global pandemic to reveal economic failings

Covid-19 will mark the end of afluence politics

“With potential shortages of goods, and restrictions on people’s movement, both parties are heading into unknown territory. It is likely Democrats will use this opportunity to further their case for Medicare for All... Republicans are likely to take a more xenophobic approach, emphasizing restrictions on foreigners and infected Americans... The Democratic Party primaries certainly echo those of the Great Depression, with candidates from Bernie Sanders to Amy Klobuchar trying to wrap themselves in FDR’s mantle. Regardless, the end of affluence politics means focusing on whether medicine is on shelves, not bitter disputes over bloated and wasteful hospital and insurance billing departments. It means caring about bureaucratic competence in government, and accuracy in media, not because these are nice things to have but because they are necessary to avoid immense widespread suffering.”

5. Karen Rothmyer in The Nation

on the differences between Bernie 2016 and Bernie 2020

Not ‘Feeling the Bern’

“Four years ago at this time, my “Bernie for President” yard sign had already been up for over six months. I remember very clearly the summer day when I stuck it on my front lawn because someone stopped his car in front of the house soon afterward and rolled down the window. At first, I was worried that he was an irate Republican who was going to yell at me. But it turned out that all the guy wanted to do was to take a photo... I mention all this because I suddenly realized that it’s only a few weeks until the April 28 New York state primary, which the latest poll shows Sanders winning (and running strongest among upstate voters), but I still haven’t made up my mind whom to support. Not only have I not posted a yard sign, but I also don’t even have a candidate. And in talks with local Democratic acquaintances, I’ve discovered that they are mostly in the same boat. Perhaps that’s because there is an abundance of riches in terms of the candidates, but I suspect it’s a lack of intense devotion to any of them. And that makes me nervous.”

Bernie Sanders has come under attack in the final Democrat debate before the critical South Carolina presidential primary and Super Tuesday contests.

The debate was the most shambolic and noisy so far. The Guardian said the candidates “bickered and shouted over each other in a series of chaotic exchanges”.

Lawyer and political commentator Raul A. Reyes told CNN the debate was “somewhere between an episode of The Jerry Springer Show and a Real Housewives reunion: messy, chaotic and embarrassing for nearly everyone involved”.

Fox News says Sanders faced multiple claims that his “sweeping plans were little more than an expensive path to a ‘catastrophic, Corbyn-esque downballot rout” at the polls.

Writing on Twitter, Piers Morgan said it was a “terrible debate… just don’t seen any of them beating an incumbent President”. The BBC adds that the debate “was full of tense moments and sharp exchanges”.

One such exchange came when Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, raised reports that Moscow was attempting to help Sanders' campaign. He said that Russians were interested in Sanders' campaign because a Sanders nomination would give Trump the best chance of a second term.

The former vice President Joe Biden accused Sanders of wanting to launch a primary campaign against former President Barack Obama, saying that was not evidence of Sanders being “progressive”. Sanders denies the accusation.

Pete Buttigieg said: “If you think the last four years has been chaotic, divisive, toxic, exhausting, imagine spending the better part of 2020 with Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump.”

In the face of this onslaught, front-runner Sanders quipped: “I'm hearing my name mentioned a little bit tonight - I wonder why.”

Buttigieg was chosen by CNN as its winner on the night. He was “at his absolute best in this debate,” it said, adding: “If voters were looking for a Sanders alternative who looked like he could be commander in chief in this debate, Buttigieg made a very good case for himself.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Coronavirus? Never heard of her.

Fox Business host Charles Payne is attributing Monday's massive stock market drop — which is widely considered to be connected to the deadly coronavirus outbreak — to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

According to Payne, Sanders' recent presidential primary win in Nevada is what caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to tumble to its biggest one-day point drop in three years, rather than the deadly COVID-19 outbreak that has claimed over 2,600 lives and continues to surge in new countries.

Sanders decisively won the Nevada Democratic caucuses Saturday, boasting high numbers in the Democratic primary's most diverse contest thus far. Payne pointed to a dive in several health insurance stocks following Sanders' win, saying "the Bernie factor is finally rearing its head in the stock market."

Sanders' has made health care the hallmark of his campaign, but Payne attributing this to the stock market plunge might be a little iffy.

China, where the outbreak originated, boasts the world's second-largest economy, so it shouldn't be too surprising that the largest economy would be affected. Both the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite fell 3.2 percent and 4 percent, respectively, on Monday, and several major industries, including several that rely heavily on Chinese consumers, have taken hits.

Still, Payne said this may be the first time Wall Street is taking "Sanders very seriously."

But Payne should know that age-old wisdom tells us Sanders' Nevada win wouldn't travel far anyway — what happens in Vegas is supposed to stay in Vegas.

Aspiring Democratic president Bernie Sanders, the Senator for Vermont, cemented his place as the race’s clear frontrunner over the weekend, sweeping the Nevada caucus on Saturday night.

While the winning margin was indeed wide, it was the nature of his victory that felt just as significant, with the self-described democratic socialist attracting a broad social, multi-racial coalition of immigrants, college students, Hispanic and black voters, and even some moderates - a group that has traditionally balked at his radical policy proposals.

Sanders’ previous strong showings were in mostly white states, and so Nevada was seen a test of his appeal to a broader electorate, one he passed resoundingly.

It remains to be seen if his lead can be cut when, eventually, the more moderate vote is united behind a single candidate, but for now, with that vote split, Sanders looks like the runaway favourite to be the person to confront President Donald Trump in the election this November.

Of those centrist candidates, it seems likely that one of Vice President Joe Biden, South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, or Mike Bloomberg - the billionaire media mogul who is a relatively recent entry to the race - will be the last person standing to face Sanders.

Amy Klobuchar, another moderate, seems to have fallen irrevocably behind after her poor showing in Nevada, while Elizabeth Warren, for all her qualities as a speaker and thinker, came in fourth place in Nevada with less than 10% of the vote, and seems to have fallen behind Sanders as the flagbearer of the party’s left.

With 88% of the vote counted, Sanders led with 47.1% of the vote. Coming in second, Joe Biden scored 21%, with Buttigieg on 13.7%, and Warren 9.6%. Sanders had done well in the previous states’ primaries, but “Nevada was different,” says The Washington Post. “It was a Sanders blowout.”

“When I look out at an audience like this and I see the diversity and beauty in this audience... I have absolute confidence we can create a government based on compassion, based on love and based on truth, not what we have now of greed, corruption and lies,” said the 78-year-old in his victory speech.

Sanders’ ascendancy has brought attacks from the centrist candidates, particularly from Mayor Pete Buttigieg:

“Senator Sanders’ revolution has the tenor of combat, division and polarisation, a vision where whoever wins the day, nothing will change the toxic tone of our politics,” Buttigieg said in a speech to supporters, urging the wider party to take a “sober look at the consequences” of a Sanders nomination.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Get your first six issues free–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

“The tight race between Mr Biden and Mr Buttigieg will frustrate those who had hoped the more so-called 'moderate' Democrats would coalesce around an alternative to Mr Sanders,” says The Financial Times.

Donald Trump seemed to revel in the division besetting his rivals:

Super Tuesday on 3 March, when fourteen states hold their votes to decide the Democratic candidate, is now a day of huge importance for the race.

Sanders’ “rivals are now running out of time and, with the exception of former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, (who has) the resources required to blunt his momentum,” says CNN. “If Sanders continues to gain steam and support, he could - in as few as 10 days - amass a practically unbreakable delegate lead on Super Tuesday.”

While Sanders’ broad coalition in Nevada was unexpected, many commentators continue to predict his firebrand style and radical policy proposals will fail to resonate with the whole country in November, and are concerned that the party may be self-immolating ahead of its crucial bid to oust Trump.

“The Democratic Party… looks like a derelict ship awaiting capture by a band of pirates,” writes Ross Douthat in The New York Times. “The center-left establishment… seems old, exhausted, promising to mildly reform a status quo that an intense and motivated portion of its base regards as too decadent to be worth preserving. And the party actors who don’t want to see Sanders nominated are finding… that it’s awfully hard to stop a candidate if you can’t agree on the alternative.”

If the field of moderates can coalesce quickly, then Sanders’ path to victory my narrow, but for now, says Nate Silver, writing for FiveThirtyEight, he “is easily the most likely Democrat to win the nomination.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Frank Bruni in The New York Times

on a disastrous night for the newcomer

Despite his billions, Bloomberg busts

“Making his first appearance alongside other contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bloomberg knew that he would be under furious attack and had clearly resolved not to show any negative emotion. But that meant that he often showed no emotion at all. Or he looked vaguely bemused, and that didn’t communicate the coolness that he intended. It signaled an aloofness that he very much needed to avoid. He made a groaner of a joke about his wealth, saying that he could hardly use a plebeian instrument like TurboTax to ready his tax returns for public consumption. He made light of past harassment-related complaints from female employees.”

2. Peter Garrison in the Los Angeles Times

on the perils of instrument flight rules

To understand the Kobe Bryant crash, it helps to know what it’s like to fly in iffy weather

“Pilots tend to move along, imperceptibly accustoming themselves to worsening conditions. Their impulse is always to go a little farther. They want to reach the destination. And they hope the weather is going to get better somewhere ahead. Gradually, they may begin to accept downward visibility in place of forward visibility. Flying low, as helicopters often do, they can see the ground below even when they can barely make out what’s straight ahead. People watching from below see them pass overhead and vanish into cloud; but the pilots can still see the ground, and they think to themselves, ‘So far, so good.’ Then they start to lose sight of the ground, and they realize that this is not going to work. What now?”

3. Natasha Amar on HuffPost

on what makes a woman

My sister died during her pregnancy. Stop asking me when I’ll have kids

“A decade has gone by and I’ll never know why my sister was adamant about having kids even though she was told it could cost her life. But I always wonder if it was society’s obsession with motherhood that made my sister feel like she had to have a child despite what doctors told her. I fear I lost my sister to this idea that women’s lives are incomplete until they’ve been through childbirth. Until they’ve become mothers. Why does society tell us that having children and being mothers is what completes a woman’s life?”

4. Meagan Francis on NBC Think

on the agony of budget air travel

Airplane seat recline rage misses the point: the airlines, not passengers, are at fault

“The fact is, airline seats are (mostly) made with a recline function. If it’s rude to take advantage of that built-in feature, then perhaps airlines should stop offering reclining seats, or give passengers more instruction on the proper way to use them? Or, here’s a really novel concept: Maybe airlines can work to create an atmosphere in which people are just a little less aggravated and pissed-off from the get-go. I don’t think most people mean to be rude; I think we’re usually just confused and trying to get through a flight with the least possible damage to ourselves. Unfortunately, being shuffled through a dehumanizing security line, nickel-and-dimed over every baseline ‘perk’ and crammed into tiny spaces with complete strangers doesn’t do much to create a sense of community and cooperation.”

5. Daniel Moss in the Japan Times

on self-fulfilling fearmongering

COVID-19’s economic hit is all in your mind

“Hindsight can be an asset during an epidemic: Lessons from the past help steer public decision-making and avoid repeating mistakes. Unfortunately, rearview mirrors appear to be in short supply these days. For all the stimulus measures that officials are rolling out to combat the economic impact of the coronavirus, lower interest rates and bigger budgets are unlikely to make people feel immune. And it is consumer behavior that will influence the magnitude of any hit. The gap between how people perceive the risk of becoming ill and the likelihood of actually contracting the virus can be vast, driven wider by feelings from past experiences, vivid images or simply fright.”

Last night’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas was the most bitter yet, as some of the high-profile candidates falling behind in the polls tried to jump-start their faltering campaigns.

Adding to the discord was the emergence of billionaire media and former mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg - formerly a Republican - who was making his first appearance on the debate stage more than a year after some of his opponents launched their campaigns.

Bloomberg has arrived late in the campaign, bulldozing his way into serious contention with unprecedented spending on advertising and targeted donations, and his opponents on stage, many of whom are running on pledges to strictly regulate campaign spending, accused him of trying to “buy the nomination.”

Polls show a considerable lead for Senator Bernie Sanders, but the battle is on to be the remaining candidate who will hope to unite Democratic voters who find his left-wing policies unappealing, and it may be that Bloomberg is emerging as the most likely representative of the party’s right.

As such, he was attacked from the off, for his “stop-and-frisk” policy as New York mayor, which has been shown to have disproportionately targeted racial minorities, and for which he has apologised, and for his record on women.

How did Bloomberg fare on the debate stage?

“It got ugly in a hurry for Bloomberg,” concluded The Washington Post. “He was the big target from the jump. He came off as very technocratic, and he often didn’t jump in to defend himself, apparently hoping the bad moments would pass. But they persisted.”

“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against: a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians,” said Senator Elizabeth Warren. “And no, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”

“The unrelenting attacks reflected the urgency of the moment,” The New York Times reported, “as Mr. Sanders gains strength and those hoping to slow his candidacy are increasingly crowded out by Mr. Bloomberg and his unprecedented spending spree.”

It remains to be seen if the debate in Nevada will change anything, but the prospect of the two final Democrat candidates occupying two polar extremes of party politics is appalling many within the party.

Who is Mike Bloomberg?

Bloomberg, 77, became mayor of New York City in 2002 running as a Republican, before leaving the party during his tenure to win re-election for his third term as an independent. It was during his time as mayor of New York that Bloomberg adopted the controversial “stop-and-frisk” policy that his opponents attacked him for last night.

He co-founded the real-time financial data provider Bloomberg L.P. - of which he is still the CEO and majority owner - in 1981, and the company has grown to form the cornerstone of a business empire that has made Bloomberg one of the world’s richest people, with a fortune of $61.8 billion.

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Bloomberg is America’s highest-spending philanthropist, giving $3.3 billion last year to various causes. However, despite funding many social impact causes, this spending has not gone without scrutiny - even scepticism.

Since he announced he was running for president, says MarketWatch, “critics have examined his philanthropy in a new light, contending that he’s used his donations - which target some of the most pressing issues of our time - to serve his political ambitions.”

“The answer to one Republican New York billionaire is surely not going to be a slightly richer Republican New York billionaire,” one Biden ally told The Atlantic, comparing Bloomberg to Trump. “It’s laughable we even have to say that out loud.”

How can he be joining the race so late?

Bloomerg launched his bid for president on 21 November, almost a year after other candidates had begun their campaigns. There is no formal deadline to announce a candidacy, instead there is a practical timeframe.

Most of the time, candidates need time to build support, and, crucially, funding, in order to run for president. With his high profile and higher bank balance, Bloomberg was able to skip the bitter jostling for position and begin a massive advertising campaign to boost his profile late last year.

There’s no doubt his main campaign asset, at least so far, has been his money - he has spent $408m in his first four months: $64 million more that Trump did during his entire victorious 2016 campaign.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Get your first six issues free–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

In the US, individual states hold elections for their prefered candidate, and the first states to vote have an outweighed effect on the outcome because they are seen as a bellwether for a candidate’s momentum.

The field of candidates always shrinks rapidly after the votes in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina, even though these states have a relatively small effect in terms of voting numbers alone. Bloomberg bucked custom and chose not even to contest these states, avoiding party infighting while focusing his attention on states of higher electoral importance.

“Mr Bloomberg has flipped traditional campaign spending on its head,” says The Financial Times. “Unfettered by fundraising constraints, he has bypassed the earliest-voting states to cast his eye on big, populous states where he can splash out in proportion to the number of delegates on offer.”

Two candidates for president spent the $10 million necessary to buy a 60 second TV slot at the Super Bowl last month - Donald Trump, and Michael Bloomberg. “Advertising works,” said Brian Wieser, president of business intelligence for GroupM. “That’s the obvious, single biggest takeaway.”

Buzzfeed News argues that the scale of Bloomberg’s campaign is what attracts many voters to him. “Many Democrats will do anything to get rid of Trump, and to them, Bloomberg’s resources and the vastness of his campaign are a plus,” it says. “They don’t want anything to do with an ideological battle over the future of the Democratic Party; they want Trump gone, and they want someone who will stand up to Trump. Bloomberg’s appeal echoes this.”

The question now is, can his heavy-spending campaign survive the intense public scrutiny of an election campaign?

Former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg turned 78 years old last Friday. That makes him the same age as his top rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), and six months older than former Vice President Joe Biden.

Everybody is expected to pile on Bloomberg in Wednesday night's Democratic debate in Nevada, and Sanders tested out his salvos in a CNN town hall on Tuesday night. But age isn't the only thing Bloomberg and Sanders have in common. Neither has been a Democrat for most of the past two decades, and both have had two coronary arterial stents inserted near their hearts to relieve blockages.

Sanders, who had a heart attack in October, said Tuesday night he won't release his full medical records. After getting out of the hospital, he had said "the people do have a right to know about the health of a senator, somebody who's running for president of the United States — full disclosure." But on Tuesday, Sanders said the three letters he released from doctors equal "a detailed medical report," and when pressed on whether he plans to release his medical records, he said, "I don't think we will, no."

Bloomberg disclosed his 2000 heart operation for the first time in 2007. In December, he released a letter from his longtime physician, Dr. Stephen Sisson at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, attesting that Bloomberg is "in outstanding health," though he developed an irregular heartbeat called an "atrial fibrillation" last year and is treating it with blood thinners. Bloomberg "has had normal cardiac stress testing annually" since he had the stents inserted in 2000, Sisson wrote, and the artery has not become clogged again.

"Heart problems are extremely common in older adults," The Associated Press notes. Nevertheless, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Tuesday found 53 percent of voters have "some reservations" or are "very uncomfortable" with a candidate who had a recent heart attack.

Former Vice President Joe Biden zeroed in this weekend on one of his top competitors, who many consider to have eclipsed him as the Democratic presidential frontrunner.

In an interview set to air on NBC's Meet the Press on Sunday, Biden waded into a controversy surrounding Sanders supporters who have been accused of threatening members of Nevada's Culinary Workers Union for not backing Sanders' Medicare-for-all proposal. Biden said Sanders isn't necessarily directly responsible for such behavior, but he's not sure he's done enough to put a stop to it, either.

Biden also criticized Sanders' policy proposals, arguing that while the senator has talked about Medicare-for-all for 35 years, he has nothing to show for it. Biden said people, like those in the Culinary Workers Union, have "broken their necks" to procure their current insurance, and he's not sure why Sanders wants to force them to give it up.

And on Saturday evening, the former vice president put Sanders' 2005 vote to exempt gun manufacturers from liability in shootings on blast. He didn't name Sanders outright, but he called out "some of the people running for office" who voted for the exemption. Sanders, for what it's worth, has since changed his position on the matter. Read more at The Associated Press.

Bernie Sanders has declared “a great victory” in the New Hampshire primary, after edging out rival Pete Buttigieg.

“Let me say that this victory here is the beginning of the end for Donald Trump,” the Vermont senator said.

He also said his “unprecedented grassroots movement” stretched from coast to coast. “What I can tell you with absolute certainty is… we are going to unite together and defeat the most dangerous president in the modern history of this country.”

CNN says that Sanders’ projected win makes “an argument that he is the race's front-runner in a win powered by his strength among blue-collar, younger and more liberal voters” and marks “an extraordinary comeback for a candidate who was all but written off by many after he suffered a heart attack in early October”.

Sanders’ gain was also fellow progressive Elizabeth Warren’s loss, The Guardian says. “Barring a shock success in South Carolina, Sanders might have the progressive vote to himself by the end of the month,” the paper's US columnist Cas Mudde says.

Mudde adds that “Joe Biden seems on his way out” because Pete Buttigieg is “picking up his donors and voters”. Both will soon face billionaire Michael Bloomberg, “whose deep pockets and endless ads are starting to pay off in the polls,” meaning the moderate vote is now “wide open”.

The results leave Sanders tied overall with former mayor Buttigieg. USA Today points out that “since 1972, no Democratic candidate finishing lower than second in the New Hampshire primary has gone on to win the nomination” and in “the last six contested Democratic primaries, New Hampshire voted for the party’s eventual nominee half the time”.

Two candidates have dropped out after last night’s results came in. Businessman Andrew Yang, whose signature policy offered Americans a universal basic income, said the number showed it was time for him to step aside, calling it “bitterly disappointing”.

Colorado senator Michael Bennet also ended his campaign. Deval Patrick, the former Massachusetts governor, is expected to suspend his later today.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Frank Bruni in The New York Times

on chaos at the caucus

Iowa’s unholy mess

“Brad Parscale, the president’s campaign manager, sent a tweet out before midnight Eastern time. ‘Democrat party meltdown,’ he wrote. ‘They can’t even run a caucus and they want to run the government. No thank you.’ Lovely — and not the last of it. Trump himself was sure to join the gloating and taunting, which, after golf, are his favorite sports. He, Parscale and the rest of their wretched gang will fold what happened in Iowa into their persistent narrative: Democrats are hapless, and the traditions and institutions that Americans are asked to trust don’t deserve that deference. Iowa is a prompt for cynicism. Cynicism is Trump’s lifeblood.”

2. Zoe Williams in The Guardian

on where candidates really stand

Labour’s leadership battle is playing havoc with the old left-right divide

“Jess Phillips threw a spanner in the consensus when, upon withdrawing, she threw her support behind Nandy, who thereby became de facto the candidate of the centre (history doesn’t relate how she felt about this favour). Many still hold Starmer as the natural centrist, his popularity a sign that ‘sensible Labour’ (as Paddy Ashdown used to call it) is returning to its senses and dominance. This is mainly visual. He has none of the sartorial cues of radicalism – Michael Foot chic, if you like – therefore, if he says anything radical, then he’s taken to be strategically tilting left. This analysis offers no clue as to why he never says anything remotely centrist.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

3. Zainab Mudallal in The Washington Post

on an Arabic expression at the Super Bowl

Why it isn’t surprising that no one knew what Shakira’s ‘tongue thing’ was

“Sunday night’s Super Bowl was full of twists, turns and a historic comeback for the ultimately victorious Kansas City Chiefs. But only one moment got me on my feet. In the middle of the halftime show, the singer Shakira let loose a stadium-shaking wail, high-pitched and accompanied by her tongue flicking up and down... Twitter was immediately flooded with memes of the moment, mostly making unflattering comparisons, particularly to turkeys, SpongeBob SquarePants and even sexual acts. The confusion surrounding the act, whose origin dates to the pre-Islamic era, was understandable. It’s a symptom of the West’s broader problem of poor representation of Arab and Middle Eastern life. For once, an Arabic expression of utter delight, not the violent stereotypes that plague American TV and movies, was on one of our biggest national stages. And next to no one recognised it.”

4. The editorial board in the Financial Times

on the containment of infection

Coronavirus has put globalisation into reverse

“The spread of the epidemic amounts to an experiment in deglobalisation. Barriers are being put up not to halt trade and migration flows but to stymie the spread of infection. The economic effects, however, are similar: snarled-up supply chains, lower business confidence and less international trade. Policymakers can provide stimulus to support growth but can do little against the shock to economies’ capacity to produce goods and services. This leaves the global economy largely at the mercy of nature. How much worse the impact on global growth becomes will depend on how quickly the virus can be contained.”

5. Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times

on defrosting politics

It is time for Sinn Fein to come in from the cold

“There can be no progressive government in Ireland without Sinn Fein. That is not a value judgment. It is merely a fact that anyone who wants to see radical change on the four great issues of housing, healthcare, climate change and child poverty has to face. If the polls are even vaguely right, Sinn Fein will be the overwhelmingly dominant force on the Irish left. To treat it as a political pariah is, in effect, to deny any serious possibility of breaking the duopoly that has created the status quo. This is an uncomfortable reality for many of us. But it is undeniable: to keep Sinn Fein out in the cold is to keep Irish politics frozen in its all-too-familiar postures.”

The national chairman of the US Democratic National Committee (DNC) has called for a review of votes cast in the Iowa primary.

The contest to pick a presidential nominee suffered a number of technical problems which delayed the final results by three days.

“Enough is enough,” said Tom Perez, who added that he wanted a “review of the worksheets from each caucus site to ensure accuracy.''

The final results of the Iowa vote came in on Thursday local time, with the local party declaring Pete Buttigieg the winner by a small margin.

But left-wing candidate Bernie Sanders declared a “very strong victory” for his campaign.

Results gave Buttigieg a lead of 0.1% in the number of delegates ahead of Sanders, though Sanders won a greater share of the popular vote, says the BBC.

“When more than 6,000 more people come out for you in an election than your nearest opponent, we here in northern New England call that a victory,” said Sanders, talking in New Hampshire ahead of next week’s primary.

The Democratic Party blamed the delay in announcing results on a coding error in the voting app, which is being used for the first time to report votes.

The Iowa Democratic Party said it had found “inconsistencies” in the voting process, but insisted that the hold-up was a “reporting issue” and not a “hack or an intrusion”, according to The New York Times.

The party insisted that the flaw in the app did not impact the accuracy of voting data.

Responding to Perez’s calls for a review of total votes cast, Iowa Democratic Party (IDP) chair Tony Price acknowledged that “reporting circumstances on Monday night were unacceptable”, but pushed back at the chairman’s remarks.

“We owe it to the thousands of Iowa Democratic volunteers and caucus goers to remain focused on collecting and reviewing incoming results,” said Price.

He added, however, that the IDP would be prepared for a recanvass should any presidential campaign requested one. Only the IDP has the power to call for a recanvass of votes.

Voters had flocked to over 1,600 schools, libraries and churches across 99 counties to pick which candidate will represent the Democrats for the upcoming presidential election. The candidates are vying to win the opening contest of the 2020 White House campaign and become the Democratic nominee who will challenge Donald Trump in the 3 November election.

The front-runners among the 11 remaining contenders are Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Amy Klobuchar.

Donald Trump easily defeated his primary rivals in the Iowa Republican caucus, winning roughly 97% of the vote. His two challengers - former Massachusetts governor Bill Weld and former Illinois congressman Joe Walsh – took around 1% each.

Trump’s campaign has further sought to capitalise on the Democrat debacle, with Trump 2020 manager Brad Parscale saying in a statement: “Democrats are stewing in a caucus mess of their own creation with the sloppiest train wreck in history... It would be natural for people to doubt the fairness of the process.”

The Iowa caucuses take place today, kicking off the process of nominating a Democratic presidential candidate who will take on Donald Trump in November’s US election.

The nomination race is made up of a series of votes called primaries and caucuses, which take place in all 50 states plus Washington DC and outlying territories.

After the voting and counting is complete, parties will have selected their presidential nominees from the candidates who are running.

What is the voting all about?

In the UK, parties elect a leader internally, who is an MP, but will become the prime minister if their party wins the most seats in the House of Commons in a general election.

America, however, works under a presidential system, where the race for the White House is not contingent on the amount of seats a presidential candidate’s party wins in Congress.

This is why – for example, during the last two years of Barack Obama’s presidency – it is possible to have a Democrat president with a Republican majority in Congress.

Because the parties do not elect a leader themselves, they use primaries and caucuses to choose the party’s presidential candidate.

What is a primary?

A primary is an election held across a US state to pick a party’s nominee to run for office (in this case, the presidency). Voters pick their candidate in a secret ballot.

As the BBC reports, there are different types of primary. An “open primary” is open to all registered voters in that state, and they can vote for any candidate. “A Republican voter can vote in the state’s Democratic primary, and vice-versa,” the broadcaster notes.

The alternative is a “closed primary”, where only registered voters affiliated with each party in that state can vote. So, for example, only members of the Democratic Party could vote for the party’s candidate.

How does a caucus differ?

“Generally, primaries are open to more voters – they’re held across the state, while caucuses are held in one place at a particular time, and are open only to party members,” the BBC reports.

Caucuses used to be far more popular than primaries as a means of choosing a candidate, but are not used as often now.

Al Jazeera describes caucuses as “small private gatherings in churches, schools, libraries or even members’ private homes”.

Unlike in a secret ballot, members openly express their preference for one candidate over another, but they have been criticised for excluding “marginal voices and favour[ing] only the most engaged and informed voters”.

Tonight’s vote in Iowa is a caucus, not a primary.

How does voting work?

The goal in these contests is for candidates to amass support from voters that translates into delegates at the party conventions, which take place in July and August. Delegates here then nominate presidential candidates.

In a primary, voting works the same as in a normal election, with a private booth for voters to tick a box on a ballot paper.

This is not how a caucus - for example tonight in Iowa - works.

Instead, as The Guardian reports, “a representative for each candidate will be standing in a certain area of the room”. So, for example, there will be a Joe Biden area, a Bernie Sanders area, an Elizabeth Warren area and so on.

“Voters have to go and stand in the area where their candidate is represented,” the newspaper adds.

If a candidate does not win 15% of the vote, they are removed from the process and their supporters can recast their vote and move to another part of the room. So, for example, a moderate Pete Buttigieg supporter could see their candidate booted out of the voting, but could then vote for another moderate, like Biden.

The votes are totted up, and state delegates are awarded to each candidate. That then decides how many national convention delegates each candidate has.

What can we learn from Iowa?

The Iowa caucus kicks off the voting on who the candidates for each party should be.

There are only three candidates challenging President Trump for the Republican nomination and none has a real chance of beating him, so instead all eyes are on the Democrats’ race.

As Reuters notes, “in the grand scheme of things”, Iowa’s relatively small size means they have “little influence over the final delegate count for the Democratic nominee”.

Iowa has just 41 delegates and 1,991 are needed for a candidate to secure the nomination. For context, Texas has 228 and California has 415.

But, the news agency adds, “Iowa exerts outsized influence by going first” as traditionally the field narrows to three or four favourites after Iowa. There are currently 11 candidates in the Democratic field.

This influence is evidenced by the fact that the winner of the Iowa caucuses has gone on to be the party’s nominee in the past five Democratic primaries.

Bernie Sanders is currently the favourite to win in Iowa, with odds of 4/7. Joe Biden is second at 9/4, with Pete Buttigieg (7/1) and Elizabeth Warren (10/1) in third and fourth respectively.

What happens after Iowa?

After Iowa, the next big vote to look out for is New Hampshire on 11 February.

As New Hampshire is a primary, with a secret ballot, it is seen as a key indicator of the candidates’ popularity. The then New Hampshire Governor John H. Sununu alluded to this in 1988 when he said: “The people of Iowa pick corn, the people of New Hampshire pick presidents.”

In 2016, Sanders won the New Hampshire primary with 60% of the vote, with future presidential candidate Hillary Clinton coming second.

After New Hampshire, the next big date for your diary is “Super Tuesday” on 3 March.

On this date, Alabama, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Georgia, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia all hold their primaries.

The Democratic National Convention then takes place four months later from 13-16 July. The Republican convention, which is likely to be a formal crowning for President Trump, is from 24-27 August.

The presidential election date is 3 November.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Alex Brummer in the Daily Mail

on the next recession

With the world’s second largest economy locked down by coronavirus, will China crisis tip us into recession?

“As if the public health impact of the coronavirus outbreak is not scary enough, the economic fallout from the disease could be just as contagious - and dangerous. The close-down of commerce in large parts of China threatens not just the output of the second largest economy on the planet but the whole world. The interwoven nature of global trade means that the business and economic consequences of the disease could move rapidly from the Asia-Pacific region, infecting the US and an already stagnating European economy.”

2. Clare Foges in The Times

on the myth of working-class heroes

Labour should ditch its obsession with class

“We’ve had Old Labour and New Labour; this is Retro Labour. Retro Labour is intensely nostalgic. It longs for Thatcheresque villains to give drama to its narrative and lend the glow of heroism to its fighters. It is hopelessly sentimental about Britain’s industrial past; misty-eyed over colliery bands and pit-town solidarity, boiler suits and steel capped boots, trade unionism and self-education, workers, as Philip Larkin put it, ‘who leave at dawn low-terraced houses/Timed for factory, yard and site’. Above all, Retro Labour is obsessed with class war, seeing 90 per cent of the British experience as a Ken Loach film made real, and the rest as Brideshead Revisited peopled by red-cheeked toffs. The trouble with Retro Labour is that it speaks of an imaginary country. In its appeal to ‘the working class’ as one monolithic entity, Retro Labourites are appealing to a bloc that no longer exists. Though around half the population will, if asked, define themselves as working class rather than middle class, this description is not central to the identity of millions, as it was in the heyday of friendly societies, working men’s clubs and trade unionism.”

3. Yuval Noah Harari in The New York Times

on why people vote

Elections are not about truth

“Elections are not a method for finding the truth. They are a method for reaching peaceful compromise between the conflicting desires of different people. You might find yourself sharing a country with people who you consider ignorant, stupid and even malicious - and they might think exactly the same of you. Still, do you want to reach a peaceful compromise with these people, or would you rather settle your disagreements with guns and bombs? Since elections are a method for reaching a compromise about our desires, in the polling stations people aren’t asked ‘What is the truth?’ They are asked ‘What do you want?’ That’s why all citizens have equal voting rights. When searching for the truth, the opinions of different people carry different weights. But when it comes to desire, everybody should be treated the same.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

4. Tim Stanley in The Daily Telegraph

on the US election

If Brexit and Trump can win, then so can Bernie Sanders

“Trump’s victory has shown that anyone can win, that everything previously considered a roadblock to the presidency is a myth the establishment imposed on itself to justify the continuation of the status quo. Given that America has already voted for an African-American – overcoming centuries of racial prejudice – and a businessman with no political experience and a bucketload of bad press, Sanders’ radicalism not only isn’t a problem but roots him much better in the zeitgeist than old Biden.”

5. John Harris in The Guardian

on tech and healthcare

Will having longer, healthier lives be worth losing the most basic kinds of privacy?

“The biggest problem, perhaps, is that even the most trailblazing steps towards regulating the relationship between tech and health are just a start, and that governments and legislators will only firmly grasp the problem once the public pushes them. Therein lies one of the central tensions of our time: that more and more innovations are quietly revolutionising the most sensitive aspects of how we live, while most of us look the other way.”

If you were wondering how President Trump would attack each of the top Democrats who might face off against him in November, Fox News host Sean Hannity saved you the trouble. In an interview that aired before the Super Bowl on Sunday, Hannity asked Trump what "comes to your mind" when he read the names of various Democratic contenders. Former Vice President Joe Biden was "sleepy," Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) was a "fairy tale," and Michael Bloomberg was "little."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who draws his inspiration from European-style democratic socialism, got "communist," in part because he and his wife, Jane, took their "honeymoon" in the Soviet Union in 1988. Trump has his own odd relationship with Russia, and his answer appeared to reflect that, too. "I think he's a communist," Trump told Hannity. "I mean, you know, look, I think of communism when I think of Bernie. Now, you could say socialist, but didn't he get married in Moscow? And that's wonderful, Moscow is wonderful."

"Might have been his honeymoon, I'm not sure." Hannity said. "Well, whatever," Trump continued "But you don't necessarily think in terms of marriage, Moscow. And it's wonderful. I'm not knocking it, but I think of Bernie sort of as a socialist but far beyond a socialist."

If you are curious about Trump's other word-association attacks on some of the leading Democrats, you can read the transcript below. Peter Weber

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. David Aaronovitch in The Times

on political tribes

Trump v Thunberg is the battle of our age

“Not since the days of Stalin and his pseudo-biologist Lysenko has science been ideologically driven: viruses, resistant bacteria, melting ice caps, the challenge of massive technological change are common problems with common (if complex) solutions. Yet increasingly everything is treated as though it was a matter for partisan contention. We find our camp, locate our tribe and set about the business of mutual reinforcement. The leaders of the tribes gain their positions by telling their audiences how very, very right they are and how very, very wrong are the others.”

2. Sherelle Jacobs in The Daily Telegraph

on climate change extremists

Davos doom-mongers herald a new dark age for climate science

“When did Western civilisation enter this new Dark Age? The creepy scenes of Greta’s machinic protestations at Davos offer a clue. Managerialism, an ideology that has filled the vacuum created by the collapse of communism and post-Seventies disillusionment with market capitalism, infects every corner of society. The twist is that it relies for its survival on the flagrant denial of the chaotic complexity upon which it feeds. It deems that all problems (like all corporations) share more similarities than differences, and can thus be solved through generic, optimised processes. Thus activists like Greta reduce climate change to a clearly diagnosed illness that can be treated by meeting precise deadlines, while the rest of us pay the bill. And thus our elites – who share the same arrogant belief that we have all the expertise to address the Earth’s intricacies – cravenly refuse to acknowledge anything that throws into doubt established ‘facts’. Sadly, until the era of managerialism falls in on itself, we are probably stuck.”

3. Suzanne Moore in The Guardian

on beating Boris Johnson

The left’s top priority: know thine enemy

“Boris Johnson is a chameleon, and modern conservatism is opportunism presented as modernisation: it has an ability to meld wildly different views, and adapt. This new Tory hegemony is not a rerun of Thatcherism or Cameronism, though it has absorbed those things. The left’s response that it is simply a retread is an insult to voters’ intelligence. It is also a refusal to deal with the present. Shouting about austerity and neoliberalism may have felt righteous, but it was never policy.”

4. Janan Ganesh in the Financial Times

on finding the political sweetspot

America is still waiting for a true populist

“In a vaunted age of populism, the US does not have a true populist. No politician of national clout stands for both the economic and cultural sides of the creed. Mr Trump did, more or less, in his 2016 campaign but then — tariffs aside — governed as a Republican supply-sider. Mr Sanders also came close to a balanced populism before softening on immigration. Each man intuited the blend of policies that Americans wanted and decided not to give it to them. The same could be said of much of the political class. The marginal voter appears to crave universal healthcare and higher taxes on the rich, but also tighter borders and less strident identity politics. That ‘but’ is a slander, of course, as no theoretical conflict exists here. It all adds up to a coherent belief in social cohesion under paternalist government. A European would recognise it as Christian Democracy or One Nation Toryism or even Gaullism, but it is just the politics of mid-20th century America, when immigration was low and the welfare state filled out.”

5. Jan-Werner Muller in The New York Times

on left and right politics

Stop comparing Bernie to Trump. It’s ridiculous

“It is high time to retire the horseshoe theory according to which extremes of right and left must always meet somewhere, such that the only salvation from ‘political sociopaths’ lies with the center. Conventional wisdom has it that populists criticize elites. In recent years, with the rise of populists around the globe, there is also the suspicion that they pose a systematic threat to liberal democracy as such. But it is wrong simply to equate populism with being ‘anti-establishment.’ After all, any old civics textbook will say that keeping a critical eye on the powerful is actually a hallmark of being a good democratic citizen, and nothing particularly populist.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The battle between US Democrats vying to take on Donald Trump in the presidential election has fuelled many political rivalries - but few so fierce as that developing between former allies Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

The pair of progressives got into a public spate during the seventh Democratic primary debate on Tuesday, after Warren claimed that the Vermont senator had once said he believed a women could not win the presidency.

She then appeared to refuse to shake hands with Sanders at the end of the televised showdown, in Iowa. Now, new light has been shed on their post-debate exchange after CNN released audio that appears to feature Warren saying: “I think you called me a liar on national TV.”

Sanders responds that it was she who called him a liar, adding: “Let’s not do it right now.” But just what lies behind their escalation of hostilities?

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

What does Warren allege?

Earlier this week, CNN published an article about a meeting between Sanders and Massachusetts senator Warren at her apartment back in 2018 to discuss tactics for the 2020 presidential election.

According to the broadcaster, the pair “discussed how to best take on President Donald Trump”, with Warren laying out the “two main reasons she believed she would be a strong candidate: she could make a robust argument about the economy and earn broad support from female voters”.

“Sanders responded that he did not believe a woman could win,” says CNN.

Following widespread debate about that claim, Warren released a statement that said: “Bernie and I met for more than two hours in December 2018 to discuss the 2020 election, our past work together and our shared goals.

“Among the topics that came up was what would happen if Democrats nominated a female candidate. I thought a woman could win; he disagreed.”

What has Sanders said?

Sanders has denied making the comment, telling CNN: “It is ludicrous to believe that at the same meeting where Elizabeth Warren told me she was going to run for president, I would tell her that a woman couldn’t win.”

He added: “What I did say that night was that Donald Trump is a sexist, a racist and a liar who would weaponise whatever he could. Do I believe a woman can win in 2020? Of course! After all, Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump by three million votes in 2016.”

Sanders refuted the claim again during this week’s debate, pointing to his record of support of gender equality - prompting Warren’s reported complaints about being called a liar.

And the reaction?

The fallout from the debate has seen some supporters from the Warren and Sanders camps turning against each other.

The hashtag “#neverWarren” has been trending on Twitter as Sanders allies accuse his rival of twisting the truth.

Sanders is also under attack on the social media platform, with one user tweeting: “That moment when the dude who called himself a ‘feminist’ on his profile shows his true colors on date 5...You hate to see it.”

But other commentators argue that the drama over a simple handshake is a distraction from the wider issue of sexism. Vox describes the row as “an example of a media - and human - tendency to allow the minor to obscure the major”.

“Making a handshake the biggest moment of January’s debate has drawn attention away from important things that informed it: narrowly, Sanders and Warren working hard to bury the hatchet in the name of advancing the progressivism they share, and broadly, conversations around the sexism inherent to questions of whether a woman can be president,” the news site says.

That view has been echoed by some on Twitter. Julian Brave NoiseCat, a strategist at progress think-tank Data for Progress, has lamented the cycle of “partisans yelling at each other through the internet about who didn’t shake whose hand”, The Guardian reports.

But the feeling of despair about the Warren-Sanders spate is perhaps best summed up by Varshini Prakash, director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement against climate change, who tweeted: “Mom and dad are fighting and all I wanna do is go to my room and put my headphones on.”

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Tom Harris in The Daily Telegraph

on gender politics

Instead of indulging in identity politics, Labour should choose a leader who can actually win

“It would be wrong to assume that there is any kind of public yearning for a female leader, or that gender is seen as some kind of political qualification. Like a northern accent, being female is neither the most important line in a candidate’s CV, nor a reason to exclude you from the race.”

2. Gerard Baker

on learning from past mistakes

Democrats are clinging to their own Corbyn

The prospect of a Democratic Party led by the firebrand senator (Bernie Sanders) in November terrifies many Democratic leaders in Washington. They say that, however it may look to Democratic activists, a candidate with his consistent record of opposing much of US foreign policy, favouring massive tax increases and vastly expanding the role of the state is just too much of a leap for the crucial swing voters who will determine the election. The senator’s supporters say that Donald Trump demonstrated in 2016 that this traditional way of looking at electoral politics is obsolete. Gone are the days when a candidate needs to appeal to the centre ground. Instead Sanders’ radical left-wing populism is, they argue, the perfect counterpoint to Trump’s radical right-wing populism. Seasoned observers of politics on both sides of the Atlantic are sceptical. They note what happened in Britain last month and see no reason why Americans would not do the same thing.”

3. Martin Kettle in The Guardian

on independence

The Scottish standoff will not be decided at Westminster

“One of the consequences of ignoring a subject for too long is that once people are forced to engage, they can adopt and speak up for stances that don’t withstand scrutiny. That’s a live danger in this debate, especially for English politicians who can all too easily find themselves feeding nationalist grievances by making ignorant and condescending remarks. This certainly applies to many English Conservatives, who have suddenly rediscovered their unionism but without having thought what 21st-century unionism might look like.”

4. Donnachadh McCarthy in The Independent

on climate change and the media

The Australian bushfires have caused a rift in the Murdoch family that could help fix our climate crisis

“Media corporations are the crucial linchpin to unlocking the global action needed on the climate emergency. There are about 30 media corporate leaders globally who have the power to save humanity and what is left of nature. James Murdoch has the credibility to call a global climate summit of these media leaders. Such a summit would literally have more power to engender change than the UN’s climate conference in September. If he could inspire them to step up to the historic existential responsibility with which fate has entrusted them, then maybe, just maybe we might find a precious tiny ray of hope emerging from the smoking embers of the devastated Australian rainforests.”

5. Steven Glover in The Daily Mail

on national celebration

There's no need for a ding-dong, but Big Ben should ring out for Brexit

“Big Ben is a national symbol. When it strikes the hour — though it is mostly silent during the absurdly prolonged four-year restoration of the Elizabeth Tower — it marks out time for the British State. No one thinks, on hearing the inimitable sound of Big Ben, of celebration. It is just formidably there — through wars, successive governments and political upheavals, as it was when our grandparents were alive, and their grandparents before them. That is why, even while the tower that houses it is being lengthily restored (I expect the Chinese could build a dozen brand new replicas in four years), Big Ben has been allowed to strike on Remembrance Sunday and New Year’s Eve. Why not on the day we leave the European Union? Our departure is a huge national event, whether you like it or not, and that is what Big Ben is in the business of noting.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. The Times editorial board

on the forced hand of a fiscally tight government

Flybe’s fortunes

“The failure of Flybe, the largest regional airline in Europe, would have damaged transport links in parts of the country beyond the cities. It operates 189 routes in Britain and Europe. Most domestic flights that do not include a London airport are operated by the company. It is responsible for the great majority of flights from smaller airports, including Anglesey, Southampton, Belfast City, Exeter and Newquay. For a new government that has put ‘levelling up’ Britain’s regions outside London at the heart of its agenda, Flybe’s collapse this week would have been particularly politically awkward.”

2. Anushay Hossain on CNN

on what the president deems insulting

Trump’s outrageous retweet of hate

“On Monday, the President retweeted a blatantly doctored, fake image of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer in Middle Eastern garb together in front of an Iranian flag... All of this is a new low, even for the impeached president who is infamous for making low blows, and it’s a new low for the people who work for him. Trump’s tweeting the racist pictures show that this president apparently believes portraying someone as Muslim and as sympathetic to a Muslim country is a good way to insult them. Making fun of Islamic clothing, reducing the world’s roughly 1.6 billion Muslim population to turbans and veils is offensive and incorrect, especially considering not all Muslims choose to cover or wear religious headgear.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

3. Ahmad Sadri on Al Jazeera

on accountability in a secretive nation

Why did Iran lie about shooting down the Ukrainian plane?

“[American] whistle-blowers are seen as heroes, not public enemies - even when a president wishes to make such an allegation. They are protected by laws and valorised in public for their commitment to truth. The constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran does the opposite. It is a unique blend of theocracy and democracy - and it is uniquely godawful when it comes to transparency. By covering the state under a sacred shroud of theocratic sanction, the system unifies, rather than divides its ruling elites. This makes a mockery of the separation of powers that is in the letter of the Iranian Constitution.”

4. Jessa Crispin in The Guardian

on a boring brawl in Iowa

Who won the Democratic debate?

“Look. We’re all tired of this. Every time they broadcast one of these debates the viewership drops by a lot. The candidates are tired of this, of being asked to explain within 40 seconds complicated policy and ideology. The viewership is clearly tired of being asked to decide the future of our country based on 40 seconds of information. The only people who are excited are the moderators, who get to have their big moment on cable television. What fun it must be for them to talk over someone explaining how we might lower insulin prices enough so that people don’t have to ration lifesaving treatment to ask how they feel about the latest Trump tweet.”

5. Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. in the Wall Street Journal

on Boeing’s inconsistent self-reflection

Boeing emails explain nothing

“The email furor not only sheds no light here. It gets matters exactly backward. If the hypercritical people seen in these messages had known about MCAS’s design flaws, it never would have gotten through. Where are the emails referring to the last-minute changes that disastrously increased its scope of action, that allowed it to intervene during low-speed maneuvers right after takeoff, that made it repeatedly triggerable by a single, fallible data input?”

The final Democratic presidential debate before the pivotal Iowa caucuses was held last night, with six candidates facing off for two hours in Des Moines.

Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren clashed over disputed reports that Sanders had privately told Warren in December 2018 that a woman could not realistically become president.

“Well as a matter of fact I didn’t say it,” Sanders insisted last night. Warren then observed that the four men on the stage had lost 10 races while the two women on stage - she and Amy Klobuchar - had never lost a race.

The Guardian says that thanks to the “media oxygen” that will be devoted to that exchange, Joe Biden will remain the frontrunner by default. “The debate was largely inconsequential,” it says. “That will suit the national front runner just fine.”

USA Today also felt that nothing happened to shake up the pack, saying: “In short, the top candidates avoided major blunders and didn't do anything that would substantially diminish their current standing in the top tier of candidates.”

It adds that Biden was “concise with many of his answers and laid out his points more clearly than he has in past debates”. The BBC feels that the smaller debate stage has “benefited” Biden. “He’s far from a lock for the nomination, but he's keeping his ship afloat,” it concludes.

However, CNN says Biden put in a bad shift, saying “he consistently seemed to forget or misstate a point, forcing him to go back and restate it to make sure he got it right. It made for a halting performance”.

It suggests that Pete Buttigieg proved “he is the best debater in this field,” saying that in the first 30 minutes, he “showed a competency, steadiness and depth of knowledge coupled with personal experience that should help him pass the commander-in-chief test in the eyes of voters”.

The Independent said there was an air of desperation at the debate, as “the candidates could clearly sense that time is running out to make an impression”. Tom Steyer was “much less of a focus than the front-runners,” it says, adding that Klobuchar “sought to attract moderate votes”

Meanwhile, Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Milwaukee as the debate began. He criticised some of the Democratic hopefuls, describing Bernie Sanders a “nasty guy” who was “surging”. He also referred to “Elizabeth Pocahontas Warren and “Sleepy Joe Biden”.

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Former FBI special agent Ali H. Soufan in The New York Times

on the cycle of disorder in the Middle East

Suleimani is dead, Iraq is in chaos and Isis is very happy

“Like all terrorist groups, the Islamic State draws fuel from chaos and division. The killing of General Suleimani promises much of both to come. The Islamic State still has deep pockets, affiliates around the world, and a knack for recruitment. General Suleimani’s death will have its leaders rubbing their hands in anticipation. The damage is done. Without a major cooling of tensions, a jihadist resurgence might now be all but inevitable.”

2. Gene Seymour on CNN

on an Academy losing touch with moviegoers

This year’s Oscars are a joke

“As I keep telling people year after year, the industry - not the critics or the audience - votes on these things. And people in the industry don’t just vote for what’s great or even good: They vote for what they want the rest of the world to know about their trade, their product and their shared values - and not necessarily in that order.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

3. Bhaskar Sunkara in The Guardian

on a Bernie surge

Sanders is leading the pack in Iowa – and that’s good news for Democrats

“Sanders is an anti-establishment figure, and one with a decades-long history on the left, but his policy commitments are not outside the new American mainstream. If he can galvanize the same ‘moderate’ irregular voters who have been drawn to him in the past, he won’t just beat Trump, he’ll set the stage for a long-term political realignment – the political revolution he calls for. Sanders is a rebel, but he’s one who people know and trust. In other words, he’s the perfect candidate for 2020.”

4. Oliver Gill in The Telegraph

on a lack of transparency at Flybe

Flybe in a tailspin with too many planes and not enough passengers

“Despite its troubled history, news that Flybe was back on the brink has blindsided many industry watchers. Away from the glare of the public markets, Flybe’s latest travails have gone largely unnoticed. As a listed company, the airline had to provide regular updates on load factors – the number of people it was putting on its aircraft – and profitability. The burden of such transparency is removed as a private company. Flybe had suffered ‘soft’ winter trading, senior industry sources said. In itself, that is hardly a major cause for concern, but has been enough to spook the credit card companies. They gated millions of pounds of customer payments instead of passing the money onto the airline. That action has left a big hole in Flybe’s finances.”

5. Patsy McGarry in The Irish Times

on a party-crashing pontiff

Papal duty: Benedict XVI intervention raises question of what to do with a retired pope

“This latest intervention by Benedict, whether by intent or manipulation, raises the fundamental question – what do you do with a retired pope? Was it a mistake to allow Benedict to retain the title Pope Emeritus and continue to wear the white cassock peculiar to popes? It would appear so. It lends an authority which can be abused. It might have been better had Benedict simply become Bishop Emeritus of Rome, and taken the advice offered to retired bishops by former Archbishop of Dublin Cardinal Desmond Connell – ‘get lost’.”

Stephen Colbert asked Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on Thursday's Late Show if he'd like to respond to Republicans who claim Democrats are "mourning" Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed by a drone strike in Baghdad on President Trump's orders. "No, nobody I know is 'mourning' Soleimani, but I'll tell you what we are fearful of," Sanders said: Trump is dragging the U.S. into another Vietnam or the Iraq War, "the two worst foreign policy blunders in the modern history of this country, and both of those wars were built on lies."

"I will do everything that I can to stop a war with Iran that I think will be a disaster," Sanders said. He agreed with Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and others that Wednesday's classified breifing on Soleimani's killing was unpersuasive, with CIA and military briefers unable to even give a clear answer about whether Trump thinks he would need congressional authorization to assassinate the leadership of Iran.

"Mike Lee is a conservative Republican with whom I disagree on almost everything, but he and I have worked together because Mike is maybe old fashioned enough, as I am, to believe in the Constitution of the United Sates," something "Trump, I think, has not yet read or understands," Sanders said. "The Constitution is extremely clear: It is the Congress of the United States that has war-making powers, not the president," Sanders said. "It has been a long time since Congress has exerted that power," Colbert noted, and Sanders agreed, pointing to political demagoguery and the sad reality that diplomacy isn't as "sexy" as militarism.

Sanders said the "vast majority" of Senate Democrats want to hear first-hand evidence in Trump's impeachment trial, and he's "very distressed the Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, wants to have a so-called 'trial' but does not want to bring up witnesses."

"Iowa's coming up," Colbert said. "Yeah, I heard about that," Sanders deadpanned. Colbert asked about rumors that "in order to sit for the Senate trial and campaign in Iowa, you're going to be using private jets at night." "Well, probably one jet," Sanders quipped, adding that he'd consider jetpooling to Iowa with his fellow Senate Democrats running for president. Watch below. Peter Weber

As 2019 drew to a close, many Americans looked back on the year and the past decade and ran through their accomplishments and things they hope to improve in the 2020s. President Trump apparently did at least the first half of that exercise, tweeting a few hours before midnight on New Year's Eve that one of his "greatest honors" was "to have gotten CHOICE approved for our great Veterans. Others have tried for decades, and failed!" Maybe others failed, but former President Barack Obama did not — he signed the Veterans Choice Act into law in 2014.

What's more, the law was written by the late Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a frequent Trump critic, and current 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Trump has been making this same false claim for months. In its fact-check from May, The Associated Press notes that "Trump did expand eligibility for the program," allowing veterans to opt for a private doctor if the VA wait was more than 20 days (28 days for specialists), not 30 days as under the Sanders-McCain bill, or they had to drive more than 30 minutes to a VA facility, not 40 miles. And VA Secretary Robert Wilkie — who also falsely claimed credit for changes implemented under Obama, AP notes — acknowledged that full implementation of the expanded Choice program won't happen for "years." Maybe by that point, the next president can take an undeserved victory lap.

The Week’s daily round-up highlights the five best opinion pieces from across the British and international media, with excerpts from each.

1. Rachel Sylvester in The Times

on a race to the bottom

This election is an unpopularity contest

“Mr Johnson and Mr Corbyn are politicians for whom the ends justify the means. They want power and, like Hogarth’s caricatures, they will do almost anything to get there. Whichever of them is installed in No 10, they will be faced with the reality of hard choices and competing demands. It is often said that the seeds of victory lie in defeat but at this election the seeds of defeat will lie in any victory.”

2. Alana Lentin in The Guardian

on missing the point when discussing prejudice

All the talk of racism in this election reveals how poorly we understand it

“With unprecedented attention being given to antisemitism in these elections, anti-racists have asked why there has been a dominant tendency to treat this form of racism as so much more severe than that facing black people, Muslims, Roma people, migrants and asylum seekers. Rather than understanding that all racisms, while distinct, are entangled with each other, we are encouraged to regard racisms as organised on a hierarchy of severity – one that perversely mirrors the power imbalance established by the idea of race itself. The reason why antisemitism is seen as more representative of ‘serious’ racism is precisely because it has largely been seen as belonging to a ‘more racist era’ in the past. In contrast, the fact that Facebook ruled Islamophobic posts did not violate its ‘community standards’ shows that Islamophobia has seeped so much into the everyday as to be seen as something other than racism.”

3. Emir Suljagic, former deputy defence minister of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on Al Jazeera

on the ‘otherness’ of Bosnia in Europe

Peter Handke and the power of denial

“With the decision to award Handke its prize for literature, the Nobel Committee excluded Bosniaks from the European moral universe once again; and this decision was no accident. It is indicative of a shift in the European attitude towards Bosnia and, I daresay, towards Muslims in general. The horrors that were uncovered by the trials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia pushed into the background for a brief period some of the more virulent elements in the European political mainstream which were whitewashing war crimes. Throughout the war, these members of the European political elite continuously justified and rationalised the slaughter of the Bosniaks by presenting the genocide as an operation carried out by a ‘professional military’ against a people that does not belong in Europe.”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a weekly round-up of the best articles and columns from the UK and abroad, try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today –––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

4. Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor in The New York Times

on the slow creep of progressive politics

Bernie Sanders’s path to victory? The multiracial working class

“Mr. Sanders has reached the typically invisible, downwardly mobile working class with his language of ‘class warfare’. He has tapped into the anger and bitterness coursing through the lives of regular people who have found it increasingly impossible to make ends meet in this grossly unequal society. Without cynicism or the typical racist explanations that blame African-Americans and Latino immigrants for their own financial hardship, Mr. Sanders blames capitalism. His demands for a redistribution of wealth from the top to the rest of society and universal, government-backed programs have resonated with the forgotten residents of the country.”

5. Former ambassador Mahmood Hasan in The Daily Star (Bangladesh)

on Aung San Suu Kyi’s ICJ appearance

Nobel peace laureate will defend genocide

“Why should she stake her position to defend the crimes committed by the military? Her international reputation has been tarnished substantially for not doing anything about the atrocities committed by the military against the Rohingyas. By leading the Myanmar team to The Hague, Suu Kyi is now openly admitting that she is a party to the decisions and the military’s genocidal actions against the Rohingyas. Strangely, after suffering incarceration for 15 years at the hands of the military and even after having strained relations with Army Chief Min Aung Hlaing, she has proved that she is a virulent defender of the military.”

A day of dramatic testimony in the ongoing Donald Trump impeachment hearings on Wednesday was followed by the latest Democratic Party primary debate.

The fifth such event, this time in Atlanta, saw ten contenders endure a two-and-a-half-hour grilling on topics ranging from paid maternity leave to US foreign relations.

Here are five key moments from the fiery political showdown:

Harris and Booker make comebacks

Initially among the favourites to clinch the nomination, senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker have faded dramatically.

But last night Harris came out all guns blazing with impassioned answers, and she had a powerful moment when speaking about Democrat voters of colour. “Folks get tired of saying oh thank me for showing up, and say – well, show up for me!” she said, reports Newsweek.

Booker salvaged his campaign with a superb showing in the final 20 minutes. Notably, he brushed off Pete Buttigieg’s attempts to cater to black voters by noting he’s “been one since I turned 18”, says The New York Times.

Gabbard vs everyone

Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard failed to read the room, attempting to capitalise on her anti-establishment image by butting heads with anyone who would take her on - and coming off worse every time.

Sparring with Harris over her loyalty to the party, Harris accused Gabbard of “spending four years full-time on Fox News criticising President Obama”, adding that she had “buddied up to Steve Bannon”, says Newsweek.

Gabbard also accused Buttigieg of demonstrating his “inexperience in national security and foreign policy” by saying he was “willing to send our troops to Mexico to fight the cartels” - a referencence to Buttigieg’s pledge to partake in “security cooperations” with Mexican authorities.

Buttigieg called the allegation “outlandish”, reports The Hill, before mockingly asking: “Do you seriously think anybody on this stage is proposing invading Mexico?”

–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––For a round-up of the most important stories from around the world - and a concise, refreshing and balanced take on the week’s news agenda - try The Week magazine. Start your trial subscription today–––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––

Biden stumbles

The debate format hasn’t been kind to Joe Biden and the former vice-president continued his habit of mis-speaking and giving rambling answers that were difficult to follow. When responding to a question about the #MeToo movement, he brought up his role in passing the Violence Against Women Act in the 1990s, saying “we have to just change the culture, period, and keep punching at it”, reports BuzzFeed News – a poor choice of words.

He further raised eyebrows by stating “I come out of a black community in terms of my support” - an unusual claim for a white candidate - and later said that he has the endorsement the “only African American woman who’s been elected to the Senate”, referring to Carol Moseley Braun but seemingly forgetting that Kamala Harris was literally on the stage debating him, The Guardian reports.

Personal quibbles but political harmony

“The great ideological divide in the primary is clear: will the Democratic Party choose a standard-bearer from the left, such as [Elizabeth] Warren or [Bernie] Sanders, or from the centre, such as Biden or Buttigieg?” asks The Hill.

But while the Atlanta debate saw the occasional flare-up between candidates on issues of age, experience and loyalty, the ideological divide appears to be softening, with only a handful of exchanges on long-standing centrist bugbears such as Medicare.

This time around, the focus “shifted to which candidate was best positioned to take on the president”, the BBC adds.

The party has little patience for Tom Steyer

Hedge fund manager Tom Steyer has been something of a wild card in the debates. He has defended billionaires in the face of criticism from Elizabeth Warren, claimed he is the only candidate prioritising the climate crisis and is also pushing for congressional term limits - something Vox calls the “single worst idea” from any of the debates.

His claim that he is the only one who will declare a national emergency over the climate crisis was critically undermined by Biden’s claim that Steyer, through investments made by his company, “was producing more coal mines and producing more coal around the world, according to the press, than all of Great Britain produces” - which NBC reports to be factually accurate.