Something rare for North Carolina politics happened today. Governor Cooper and the Republicans controlling the North Carolina Legislature actually agreed on something:
The plan calls for all elementary schools to open under “Plan A,” a category that means full in-person classes without the distancing requirements of “Plan B,” which has typically been implemented as a mix of in-person and online instruction to cut class sizes and spread students out.
Middle schools and high schools around the state would pick from Plan A, Plan B or a blend of both under the deal. The difference is based on ages: Older students are thought to transmit the virus that causes COVID-19 more easily than younger children.
All grades still have to provide parents with an online-only option.
Our school board members in Cumberland County should proceed with this plan immediately. They won’t, but they should. Other large counties, like Wake, sent their kids back in February. Instead, the Cumberland School Board will wait until the last possible moment under the law to get our kids in school full-time. It’s looking like April for us, and it’s a lesson that power and control, once acquired, are difficult to give up.
Due to the nature of our for-profit health care system, a tremendous responsibility lies with regional hospitals to help coordinate and distribute the Covid vaccine. Here in Fayetteville, Cape Fear Valley Hospital needs to step up to the plate and save lives in the community that keeps it in business.
“We Saw this Coming”
Thus far, the only people in Fayetteville that have been vaccinated are the employees of Cape Fear Valley. Our hospital got right to it and started shooting up its staff as soon as the doses arrived in Mid-December:
“We’re very excited and proud that we have three of the very first 11 hospitals (in North Carolina) to receive the vaccine so we’re very excited about that,“ said Chris Tart, the vice president of professional services.
Tart oversees the hospital’s pharmacy services which bought a special freezer in the summer to make sure staff was ready for the vaccine.
“We saw this coming and went ahead and purchased deep freezers and have them in strategic locations on backup generators, temperature monitoring and very secure locations, as well as a lot of backups,” he explained.
Fayetteville’s not special in this regard. Health care workers were put at the front of the line across the country. There are good policy reasons for this, but wouldn’t it have been better to vaccinate the elderly, first, instead of young, healthy hospital workers? Wouldn’t this have saved more lives?
But “life” is not always the linchpin of American medicine. We’ll need your method of payment, first, sir.
N.C. Lags Behind
North Carolina can’t seem to figure out the vaccine distribution quandary. We’re told the plan is advancing, but the evidence doesn’t support the talking points. Per yesterday’s news:
Some 462,000 doses of vaccine have been shipped to North Carolina since mid-December, but only a fraction of them have been administered.
North Carolina’s vaccination rate so far is 966 per 100,000 people, lagging behind most other states in the country. That number for most states is between 1,000 and 2,000.
Based on the CDC’s vaccination rate data, only five states have a lower rate than North Carolina; Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Kansas and Arizona.
You never want to be compared to Alabama and Mississippi when it comes to health care. Yet, here we are.
Fewer Doses for Cumberland?
All we hear about is a vaccine “shortage,” yet, per the CDC’s data, North Carolina is literally “sitting on” about 200,000 vaccination doses, today. Life saving medicine is stuck in freezers across the state in the middle of the bleakest winter we’ve had in 100 years. Schools are closed because of it. Businesses are shutting down. People are dying. It’s inexcusable.
Now here’s the scary part for us, locally:
“To increase the pace of vaccinations, DHHS sent a letter to all hospitals and local health departments alerting them that future vaccine allocations will be modified based on the number of vaccines administered that they have reported to the state,” the department said.
If you sit on your allocation of doses, you get less in the future. It’s that simple.
So what’s our hospital doing? They “saw it coming” and bought freezers and backup generators to keep the doses cold for their employees, but I can’t tell you what their plan is to help vaccinate everyone else. Maybe they are doing something, but they’re not letting the public know about it. The only thing about Covid on the hospital’s website is the new visitor restrictions they put in place.
Cape Fear’s Failure to Lead
I often talk about the blurry lines between public and private interests and the legitimate role of government intervention into both spheres. For example, Fayetteville’s one-sided public-private partnership with Prince Charles Holdings got us an unfinished 17-million dollar parking deck downtown.
But what do you do when you’re dealing with people’s lives?
The American health care system blurs the hell out of public and private interests due to the mix of funds that keep it running. Hospitals like Cape Fear Valley have a difficult dance to perform. But do not forget that the number one priority for a business entity is survival. The hospital only stays open if it makes money, whether it comes from the government, private insurance, or your checking account.
So what happens when a massive public health crisis arises that requires the distribution of a vaccine, but there isn’t a financial incentive for a local hospital to assist?
The need for safety during Covid has caused a withdrawal from public life. We’re not participating in communal events like church, school, and family gatherings. Our institutions are going through the motions in zoom meetings, waiting for the pharmaceutical companies to save the planet. The recent presidential election made government seem important, but once it was over, a lot of the issues that had folks fighting in the streets have receded from our consciousness. Look at the Fayetteville City Council’s Agenda this month. Hard decisions on the future of the Market House have been pushed off to 2021. It’s just zoning changes for the rest of the year. The North Carolina General Assembly hasn’t done anything since Covid began besides spend some federal money. Don’t get me started on Congress.
It’s stagnant.
But I need to look in the mirror. Maybe I’m projecting? Although writing a political blog is a hobby, I feel a sense of responsibility to point out the truth on local issues as I see them. But I’ve withdrawn to my little covid safety routine, as I’m sure many of you have. I quit writing for a while. Once you stop putting in the work, it’s harder to start up again.
Death Spiral?
A recent article that popped up on my newsfeed got me thinking about the dangers of sitting in our safe, private spaces.
It’s worth a quick read. It argues that our withdrawal from public life will permanently degrade our public institutions. Public schools are hit the worst, as many upper-middle class families are leaving for private schools (that are actually open). These families aren’t coming back. Public transportation isn’t being used because people aren’t going to work or travelling. Each of these public services will lose funding and each will suffer long term ramifications that will last well beyond the pandemic.
The result is this:
An increasingly large (and increasingly expensive) à la carte menu of necessary private services for those that can afford them.
Crappy government services for the poor.
Income inequality widens. America suffers.
The C.S. Lewis Answer
I’m going to throw some religion on this fire:
In his famous book, The Screwtape Letters, C.S. Lewis has a demon, Screwtape, writing to his nephew (also a demon), giving him advice on how to capture a man’s soul. In a relevant correspondence, Screwtape offers the following:
The great thing is to prevent his doing anything. As long as he does not convert it into action, it does not matter how much he thinks about this new repentance. Let the little brute wallow in it. Let him, if he has any bent that way, write a book about it; that is often an excellent way of sterilising the seeds which the Enemy plants in a human soul. Let him do anything but act. No amount of piety in his imagination and affections will harm us if we can keep it out of his will. As one of the humans has said, active habits are strengthened by repetition but passive ones are weakened. The more often he feels without acting, the less he will be able ever to act, and, in the long run, the less he will be able to feel.
Feel numb to it all lately? You’re not alone.
You’ve been told to stay indoors, cover your face, hide your kids, hide your wives! Don’t do anything! Just sit there! A vaccine is on the way, next year! Your little county is now code level burnt orange due to rising positivity rates, so don’t even think about seeing your elderly parents this Christmas!
What active habits that don’t involve a screen have you actually done more of? Are even those becoming dull? Thought of writing a book about it? A blog post?
Inherent Design Flaw?
When I was in public school, I did have some screen time, and we got to play “educational” games. The best was the Oregon Trail. Your mission was to get your party from Missouri to Oregon in a covered wagon. The worst thing that could happen in the game was disease.
But you kept going. Sitting still wasn’t an option. A wagon is made to roll. Similarly, a human being is not made to sit still for years at a time. We’re designed to create, to move.
I would argue that the American political system is built on the recognition of this truth, and maybe that’s why we’re so bad at pandemics. The constant strain of personal freedom vs. the public good combined with a lack of leadership has caused a spiritual sickness in this country. We’ve lost our ability to act and our ability to feel is right behind it.
The Fayetteville Observer supports the closure of Cumberland County’s public schools. Myron Pitts et al. believe the risks of Covid outweigh the benefits of in-person, public education.
The Fayetteville Observer supports the opening of Segra Stadium for “Pecktoberfest.” Myron Pitts et al. believe the risks of Covid do not outweigh the benefits of in-person, public beer festivals.
If our kids had money to spend on advertising, they might get a fair shake from their corporate-owned “local” paper. Instead, they get a double standard for the rest of 2020.
If you played kickball or baseball in the 1990’s, you quickly learned one of the schoolyard’s most basic principles: “Tie goes to the runner!”
The gist is this: if the ball and the runner reach the base at the same time, the runner is safe.
A few days ago, the idea popped in my head to apply this rule to politics.
Political “Field”
First, some basics to set up the analogy:
The “runner” is the challenger. He’s trying to score.
The incumbent is on defense. The incumbent controls the field and generally has more money and people trying to help his/her campaign. These advantages pay off. The incumbent generally wins. It’s aggravating at times.
Sometimes, for various reasons, an incumbent will face a close race for re-election. Here, we can infer political momentum because the incumbent’s inherent advantage must have dwindled for a reason. Perhaps the incumbent did something wrong? Perhaps the incumbent is swept up into national partisan trends? Or, perhaps, the particular challenger happens to be a bad ass.
A general rule emerges: If a race is close as election day approaches, you should bet on the challenger. The reason: the momentum that he/she used to close the gap will more than likely carry him/her to victory.
“Tie goes to the runner”
The 2020 Ticket
We’ll start at the top:
President: Biden has not only closed the gap on the incumbent, he’s favored in every poll. Biden’s going to win. So you’ll know I’m consistent, I wrote a post in July called “Trump is Going to Lose.” It’s the most unoriginal title I ever came up with, but my feelings haven’t changed. Unless something drastic happens in 2020, we’ll have a new President in 2021.
WINNER: RUNNER (BIDEN)
US Senate: This is a race where my theory gets put to the test. Cal Cunningham was leading in most polls against the unpopular incumbent, Tom Tillis. You had to like Cunningham’s chances. Then, Cal got caught sexting with a woman in a different state. Cal’s basically in hiding now, refusing to answer questions. He’s trying to run out the clock.
I still like his chances. Why? He’s in a close race with an incumbent that’s coming down to the wire. People obviously didn’t like Tillis to begin with, and Cunningham’s personal mishaps aren’t going to change that. “Tie goes to the runner.”
WINNER: RUNNER (CUNNINGHAM) by less than 2 points.
Governor: This race has never been close, so our theory doesn’t apply.
WINNER: COOPER
U.S. House (District 8): Incumbent Richard Hudson faces his most serious challenger yet in former NC Supreme Court Justice and Fayetteville native, Patricia Timmons-Goodson.
The partisan makeup of the 8th District favors a Republican. The middle, rural parts of the district are solidly “red.”
For a Democrat to win, they have to drive up Democratic vote on the “ends” of the District (Cumberland and Cabarrus).
If Trump keeps imploding, he could turn “lean Republican” races like this one into “toss-ups.” Tie goes to the runner in toss-ups.
The cracks are forming in the Trump foundation, but there’s a whole lot of MAGA in the middle of NC’s 8th District that will fight (and vote) to the end.
As a side note, this race is somewhat personal to me. My old man ran for this seat in 2002 when I was a senior in high school and lost in the Democratic Primary. In addition, I clerked for Justice Timmons-Goodson while I was in law school. She’d be an excellent Congresswoman and Fayetteville would benefit substantially from having a resident member of Congress. Hudson has never held a real job outside of politics and lives in Washington D.C. Let’s get Hudson some work in the private sector.
Please vote for Timmons-Goodson.
WINNER: TRUMP SAVES OR KILLS HUDSON
If Trump implodes and loses nationally by >8 points, then this race goes to the “runner,” Timmons-Goodson. If not, Hudson keeps his seat.
NC SenateDistrict 19
Kirk deViere vs. Wesley Meredith, Part II.
This one is always fun to cover, and I’ve written about it extensively. This seat is the epitome of North Carolina’s purple politics and produces close and expensive races.
I never miss the chance to remind folks that I called this race within .03 of a percentage point in 2018, and I kept the receipts:
Surprisingly, the race seems quieter this time around. I keep waiting for a bombshell that hasn’t materialized from Meredith, the king of attack ads. From what I can tell, its been mostly a mailbox battle. Maybe Meredith’s not getting as much money from the Republican Party this time around?
Regardless, the race is likely to be close again, but it’s hard to say if our baseball theory applies this time. Meredith’s only been out of this seat for one term and held it longer than deViere prior to losing in 2018. Who’s the runner? Who’s in the field?
I think this one ends up a lot like 2018, with deViere gaining a little more ground due to Democratic enthusiasm. I’ll call it to the 10th of a percentage point to see if I can re-create my crystal ball magic:
WINNER: Kirk deViere 51.3%, Wesley Meredith 48.7%
Wrap-Up
After I wrote this post, I googled the “tie goes to the runner” rule. I came across a post on a blog for umpires. There’s a blog for everyone nowadays.
Cross Creek Divide 