US Democratic Candidates 2020:

Impact and Implications?

KB Teo

SYNOPSIS

There are seven candidates to challenge President Trump in November 2020.  The leading ones are Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and former Vice President Joe Biden.  Billionaire Mike Bloomberg is rising fast.

COMMENTARY

Joe Biden remains the frontrunner in national polls but lacklustre fundraising and a fourth place finish in the Iowa caucus suggest his star is fading.  Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, meanwhile, are on the up after finishing in a virtual tie in Iowa and topping polls in New Hampshire, the next state in the primary process.

The BBC took an in-depth look at the polls, the fundraising numbers and a few other things that can help shed some light on the current state of play.  There were nearly 30 Democrats running just a few months ago, but the field has narrowed to just 11 candidates now. But only a handful of them have a real shot at winning.  

1

Only twice since 1976 has the Democrat who won the Iowa caucuses not gone on to become the party’s presidential nominee.  The state of Iowa usually offers a clue as to how the race is shaping up. This time, however, just 0.1% separated the top two candidates – Democratic socialist Bernie Sanders and moderate millennial Pete Buttigieg (it’s pronounced boot-edge-edge, by the way).

If you look at the national polls, there is a clear top tier of candidates: Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.  Biden’s lead was pretty steady throughout 2019, hovering between 25-35% apart from a short jump to 40% after he officially announced his candidacy in April 2018. Warren very briefly overtook him in October, but her numbers dropped after that and she soon fell back behind Sanders.

2

When it comes to assessing how the Iowa results have changed things, it does appear as if Sanders is the one with the momentum at the moment.  His numbers were on an upward trajectory even before Iowa, suggesting that a very public disagreement between him and Warren about whether he did or didn’t say a woman could not win the presidency hasn’t hindered his chances. One other notable thing is how quickly Michael Bloomberg has risen. The billionaire only joined the race in November 2019, but he is well positioned to gain if Biden continues to lose support.

Looking at the chart, it shows the latest average for candidates in five states that vote in the next month – New Hampshire, Nevada, South Carolina, California and Texas.  Of those five contests, Joe Biden leads in three and Bernie Sanders is ahead in two. Elizabeth Warren’s best hope is in California, where she is currently second in the polls, but she’s a long way off the top in the other states at the moment.

3

Michael Bloomberg does not feature in the next three states as he’s chosen to focus on Super Tuesday on 3 March, when more than a dozen states, including California and Texas, cast their votes.   But even there, his current numbers are low.

Pete Buttigieg, meanwhile, looks set to give Bernie Sanders a fight in New Hampshire after the bounce from his performance in Iowa. But unless he gets a surprise victory there and receives another bounce, it looks unlikely that he’ll have a shot in the other four states.  Of the others, only hedge-fund billionaire Tom Steyer is showing any sign of challenging the top tier candidates, sitting in second place in South Carolina and fourth in Nevada.

The amount a candidate raises is no firm sign of their eventual success.  Jeb Bush, for example, led the Republican money race in 2016, but was still beaten by Donald Trump.

It is, however, a useful guide to how much enthusiasm there is for their candidacy and in Bernie Sanders’ case, there is still an awful lot of energy behind him.  He raised the most money from individual donors last year, and his $34.4m haul in the fourth quarter was the highest quarterly total of any candidate. Joe Biden, by comparison, raised $23.2m.

4

Much of Sanders’ power comes from the network of supporters he built during his battle with Hillary Clinton in 2016. A detailed analysis by the New York Times showed that network stretched right across the US – whereas most candidates get the majority of their support from the areas they have represented.

The other thing to note is just how well Pete Buttigieg has done up to now. He raised $76m last year, $5m more than Elizabeth Warren and over $15m more than Joe Biden – although the former vice-president entered the race after the first quarter.

Michael Bloomberg is not accepting donations to his campaign – hence why he’s at the bottom on $0 in the chart above – but that isn’t affecting his spending power.

Along with Tom Steyer, the other billionaire in the race, he has spent huge sums of money on an advertising campaign that included a 60-second ad during the Super Bowl that reportedly cost around $10 million.  The bad news for Joe Biden is that both men are targeting his supporters and not those of Bernie Sanders.

5

There are signs the Bloomberg campaign is having some success, most notably his climb in the national polls mentioned above, but it’s still hard to imagine him winning enough delegates to become the Democratic nominee.

If, however, we get to July 2020 and there is still no clear winner, there would be a “contested” convention where “superdelegates” could break the deadlock. Many of these delegates are senior party officials past and present and they may look kindly on a centrist candidate like Bloomberg who has donated millions to the Democratic Party in the past.

The BBC has correctly pointed out that the Democrat Party convention is a long way off yet though.  There could be more surprises along the way.

6

————————————————————————————————

KB Teo is a former diplomat with the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He attended the UN General Assembly as part of the MFA delegation.

Wuhan Virus: Origins,

Impact, and Implications

KB Teo

SYNOPSIS

Wuhan is a major city in Hubei, central China.  The virus started in mid-December 2019. It has already claimed at least 2236 victims in China and 76,000 infected globally (22/2/20).  The WHO is worried that it may spread very fast throughout the world.

COMMENTARY

The Wuhan virus belongs to a family of viruses known as coronaviruses. These viruses infect mostly bats, pigs and small mammals. But they mutate easily and animals to humans, and from one human to another. In recent years, they have become a growing player in infectious-disease outbreaks world-wide.

The spread of the deadly Wuhan virus from its country of origin, China, to other countries in Asia and the US has raised fears that the virus could lead to a global pandemic.  

1

Here’s how the virus could impact the global economy as a whole, according to the economic impacts from past outbreaks.

• At least nine people have died in China from the Wuhan virus, with more than 440 infections reported in the country.
• The virus has spread from China to other Asian countries like South Korea and Japan, and the first documented case in the US was announced this week.
• The spread of the virus has raised fears of a global pandemic, which has impacted stocks around the world.
• Here’s how the Wuhan virus could impact the global economy, based on what we know about past outbreaks.

A new respiratory virus has emerged, sickening hundreds and causing some deaths. The virus originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan (Hubei province), quickly spread throughout China and other countries in Asia, and has come to the U.S. Health authorities expect that it will spread even further.

2

Still, the World Health Organization declined on 23 January 2020 to declare the outbreak a global public health emergency, citing a limited number of cases abroad and efforts under way to bring it under control.

WHO Director-General Tedros Adhamom Ghebreyesus said he would reconvene the committee if the situation changes—even if that happens in the next couple of days. “This is an emergency in China, but it has not yet become a global health emergency,” he said. “It may yet become one.”

The outbreak is believed to have originated in December 2019 in a seafood and meat market in Wuhan. After spreading throughout China and other countries in Asia, it recently arrived in the U.S. The U.S. case involves a Washington state man in his 30s who had recently traveled to Wuhan. In China, the outbreak is responsible for hundreds of confirmed cases and more than a dozen deaths.

3

Patients have had a fever, cough and other symptoms of pneumonia. Public-health officials have developed diagnostic tests, which are being used to confirm whether a patient has the Wuhan coronavirus or another infection. Five major airports in the U.S. are screening arriving international travelers for fever; those who have one are then screened for other symptoms.

So far, the Wuhan virus appears to be milder than SARS or MERS, though it has sickened some people severely and there have been deaths. MERS killed about a third of those infected, while SARS resulted in the deaths of about one in 10. By contrast, the mortality rate from the Wuhan virus is tracking at roughly 3%. Many patients who have died were over 60 years old, had other illnesses such as diabetes and were admitted to hospitals when their illness was advanced.

4

There are not any vaccines approved specifically for the Wuhan virus. Antivirals already on the market might treat the infection, which researchers say they will start to investigate. In addition, a few vaccine makers have recently said they would begin developing products targeting the Wuhan virus.

Sharing data during an outbreak is vital for public health. But it can also lead to sensational research, like a controversial new paper claiming that people probably picked up a novel coronavirus from snakes.  One of the many mysteries behind the outbreak of a new respiratory-tract-attacking virus that’s now infected nearly 650 people and killed 18 in China is where, exactly, it came from. The initial cluster of pneumonia-like cases showed up in the city of Wuhan mid-December 2019. Most of those patients had some tie to a wet market there—a place where people sell both live and dead animals, including exotic species.

5

Though nothing has been confirmed, epidemiologists suspect that the novel coronavirus crossed over into humans somewhere inside the market, which has been shuttered since 1 January 2020. Tracking down the right viral culprit is vital to preventing future interspecies spillover. In 2003, SARS ripped through the same area of China.  The outbreak was fully contained only when civet cats, which had passed the virus along to humans, were removed from the region’s markets.

A national task force of Chinese researchers working swiftly to isolate and sequence the virus shared a draft of its genome in a public database earlier this month. This enabled labs all over the world to design diagnostic tests to flag cases as they spread outside of China. So far, fewer than a dozen cases have been confirmed in other countries, including Japan, Korea, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, and the US. The release of genetic data has also spurred a flurry of new research. 

6

What started as a cluster of 27 people with pneumonia – with common symptoms including fever, dry cough, chest tightness and difficulty breathing – has spiralled to 9692 confirmed cases, including medical staff, and 513 deaths (as of 31/1/20).  The cases span 13 provinces in mainland China as well as Thailand, Japan, South Korea, the United States, Taiwan and Macau.

China was very efficient and open in identifying the virus, a new strain of coronavirus, within just over a week. Chinese scientists sequenced the virus’s genetic code and, within days, shared that information with the world.  This allowed researchers from Germany to rapidly develop and openly share a suite of specific nucleic acid tests that sensitively identify the virus by detecting small amounts of its ribonucleic acid (DNA). Researchers in Hong Kong and from the Chinese Centre for Disease Control then published their own different tests.

7

————————————————————————————————

KB Teo is a former diplomat with the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He attended the UN General Assembly as part of the MFA delegation.