Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
5 — Tuesday, April 14, 2020
ANIK JOSHI | COLUMN
EMILY ULRICH | COLUMN
S
en.
Bernie
Sanders,
I-Vt., will not be the
Democratic
nominee
for president in 2020, just as
he wasn’t the nominee in 2016.
The 2016 run was the first time
a number of left-wing ideas
were reintroduced in the public
square and they (and Sanders)
consistently
polled
well.
Though Hillary Clinton won the
race, some Sanders supporters
saw a moral victory and many
saw better odds for him in
2020; he was seen as one of the
frontrunners from the first day
of speculation surrounding this
race.
How did it all fall apart? A
primary reason is that people
drew the wrong conclusions
from the 2016 primary and thus
went into 2020 with a misshapen
strategy. 2016 was a unique
primary for the Democrats — no
one except Clinton was really
in it. She immediately cleared
the field as the Clintons have
been bastions of Democratic
politics since the 1980s, and
there was no reason for people
to risk crossing her when, in
all likelihood, she would come
out on top. Hillary and more
broadly, the Clintons, were well-
liked within the party apparatus
but she was thought to be better
liked by the voters within the
party than she actually was.
In other words, she was
something of a paper tiger which
Sanders (and his campaign)
readily
took
advantage
of.
Photos
of
Sanders’s
2015
announcement of his first run
are incredible in how sparsely
attended they are. Within a year
of this conference, Sanders was
able to summon ten thousand to
an arena with three days notice.
Sanders
wasn’t
especially
known but he was also not
especially hidden — he had been
on The Daily Show back when
Jon Stewart was hosting it.
Sanders won more than 20
contests in the 2016 primary
but still lost by millions of
votes nationwide. Because he
was seen to have performed so
strongly, there was immediate
speculation
about
his
2020
plans. As the most left-wing
candidate
since
George
McGovern in the 1970s, Sanders
was seen by many to be a
frontrunner from nearly the day
he entered the race. However,
it faded slowly and eventually,
former
Vice
President
Joe
Biden effectively locked up the
nomination after a triumphant
victory in South Carolina and a
strong Super Tuesday showing.
The problem with Sanders’s
2020 campaign was that it was
built off the presumption that
he did well in 2016 because
people liked him. While this
was part of it, a much bigger
part of his support seemed
to come from those seeking
“ABC,” or “Anyone But Clinton.”
The
problem
with
building
a
strategy
centered
around
having an incredibly unpopular
person as the frontrunner is
that it only works when there is
an incredibly unpopular person
as the frontrunner. There was
one of those in 2016 but there
wasn’t one in 2020 and as a
result, Sanders saw far worse
results.
Beyond this, the Sanders
campaign was built on an
expectation that the splintered
field would endure far longer
than it actually did. President
Donald Trump was able to win
the nomination in 2016 because
there was no single anti-Trump
candidate. There was former
Gov. of Ohio John Kasich, Sens.
Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Marco
Rubio, R-Fla., and so many
more. None of them were able
or willing to exit the race and so
they continued splintering the
vote. That wasn’t a problem on
the Democratic side this year.
Right before the start of Super
Tuesday a number of moderate
candidates who would have
split Biden’s vote dropped out,
including
former
Mayor
of
South Bend, Ind., Pete Buttigieg,
and
Sen.
Amy
Klobuchar,
D-Minn. After this, Biden held a
Texas rally where many former
candidates
(including
ones
that had dropped out earlier)
endorsed him. This support,
combined with Biden’s strong
Super Tuesday showing ensured
he would be the nominee.
Looking forward however,
not all is lost. Biden will
probably have a more liberal
platform than either of the
previous times he was on the top
of the ticket. Consequently, his
governance will in all likelihood
be to the left of Barack Obama.
But, if Sanders (or someone
subscribing to his theory of
politics) is to run and win, they
must first accept that both a
strategy of having an unpopular
avatar
for
middlebrow
liberalism and a strategy of
counting on a splintered field
are good ideas in theory, but
don’t tend to hold in practice.
T
here have been four global
recessions
to
date:
1975,
1982, 1991 and 2009 with
2020 currently being added to this
list. The economic downfall that we
are experiencing due to the COVID-
19 pandemic is predicted to exceed
any of the previous recessions. Over
ten million Americans applied for
unemployment
benefits
in
March
alone. The number of jobs lost due
to COVID-19 in the last two weeks is
comparable to the total jobs lost over
a span of two years during the Great
Recession. The intense restrictions
placed on businesses are leading to
not only a deep but also long-lasting
downturn in the economy. Every
region of the world is experiencing
this financial crisis. However, there is
one business that seems to be booming
during this cataclysm — Amazon.com,
Inc.
People are lenient to spend money
right now, but the money that is being
spent is concentrated in online delivery
businesses. While most companies
are laying off employees, Amazon.
com Inc. is expected to hire 100,000
new employees in order to meet the
consumer demands for home deliveries.
The convenience of having groceries,
toiletries, dog food, etc., arriving at
your doorstep is appreciable, especially
during a pandemic.
However, convenience comes with a
cost, and Amazon employees are paying
the toll.
While most of the world is motivating
people to stay home and flatten the
curve, Amazon is encouraging the
opposite. The company raised wages
$2 an hour and offered overtime at
double the hourly rate. Instead of
doing everything to protect its workers,
Amazon is going against government
shelter in place orders and jeopardizing
employee health. At some locations,
employees
are
working
without
masks, proper gloves, hand sanitizer
or wipes, making Amazon warehouses
playgrounds for the virus. More than
50 of their warehouses already have
confirmed cases of COVID-19.
The company informs its employees
only after word has already leaked
to the press about confirmed cases.
Many employees walked off the job
once they heard of confirmed cases
of COVID-19 in their warehouse,
leaving the remaining employees with
twice as much work to do. Amazon
employees have organized workplace
walkouts and held protests outside
the warehouses trying to prove that
their health is just as essential as any
package.
Amazon agreed to pay for two
weeks of sick time off for individuals
that were diagnosed with the virus.
Many employees who believed that
they needed to self-quarantine due
to compromised immune systems or
because they had come in contact with
others who tested positive were not
eligible for this paid time off. Owing
to this policy, many employees worked
while exhibiting symptoms since they
had to wait for their test results to
receive the time off. These employees
could have been spreading the virus
abundantly throughout the warehouse
for up to two weeks. Additionally,
there is limited access to COVID-19
tests, making paid time off even less
attainable. This policy has been mildly
adjusted to accommodate employees
who are caring for family members
with COVID-19.
The warehouse in Queens, New York,
had the first publicly known case of
COVID-19. The company shut down the
warehouse for two days for cleaning,
but employees returned to work as
normal
shortly
after.
Frustrations
have risen among warehouse workers
as they continue to move extraneous
products. It is hard to comprehend that
the company would risk the health of
hundreds of thousands of employees to
ship items such as puzzles or books.
The
divide
between
what
is
essential
and
nonessential
seems
to
be
misinterpreted
by
Amazon
headquarters. Home delivery orders
are surging for all kinds of products and
fulfilling these orders is asking workers
to put themselves at risk. Corporate
profit is being valued over employees
during this public health crisis. Before
placing a nonessential order, we must
consider if the convenience is worth
the cost.
Before you place your next Amazon order ...
Bernie 2016, 2020 and beyond
Anik Joshi can be reached at
anikj@umich.edu.
Emily Ulrich can be reached at
emulrich@umich.edu.
ANNA GETZINGER | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT GETZINGA@UMICH.EDU
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