Stat News, a medical-business-technology website, has an important report laying out in detail how Pfizer adjusted its vaccine Phase III trial plan midstream, effectively delaying it until after the election by "leaving samples in storage" until the day after the election:
The first analysis was to occur after 32 volunteers — both those who received the vaccine and those on placebo — had contracted Covid-19. If fewer than six volunteers in the group who received the vaccine had developed Covid-19, the companies would make an announcement that the vaccine appeared to be effective. The study would continue until at least 164 cases of Covid-19 — individuals with at least one symptom and a positive test result — had been reported.
That study design, as well as those of other drug makers, came under fire from experts who worried that, even if it was statistically valid, these interim analyses would not provide enough data when a vaccine could be given to billions of people.
In looking at how President Trump managed to win in Texas and Florida but apparently not in some of the other swing states, it's worth thinking about the decision, as part of the Trump tax cuts, to cap the deduction for state and local taxes at $10,000 a filing. Neither Texas nor Florida have a state income tax, and property values and taxes are low enough that relatively few people experienced the capping of the state and local tax deduction as a painful tax increase. In other states where there are state income taxes, relatively prosperous people felt like Trump was raising their taxes, or at least taking away one of their favorite deductions. I totally get the incentives and simplification and even progressivity case ("The SALT tax deduction is a handout for the rich. It should be eliminated not expanded," a Brookings analysis insists) for limiting this deduction, and I also realize the revenue it generated helped make possible other tax moves, such as raising the standard deduction or cutting corporate rates. But as a political matter, in places such as the high-property tax suburbs of Philadelphia, suburban Atlanta, Arizona—Biden's promise to un-cap this deduction against Trump's imposition of the cap may have helped reduce what is usually a Republican advantage on the tax issue. In retrospect, perhaps Trump and congressional Republicans loaded too much of their tax cuts onto the corporate rate side of things and not enough on the individual side of things. The corporate lobbyists are good at getting in there when the Finance Committee or Ways and Means are marking up or negotiating these bills. But the corporations don't vote. I understand the corporate tax cuts flow through to individual shareholders. But for Republicans, there are political risks in any tax increase, even limiting a deduction as part of an overall tax-cutting reform.
This election will take a while to process, and it may not even be until after we get the results of Georgia Senate runoff elections before we understand the full story of what the voters are saying. A few more thoughts are worth passing along, though:
•The Constitution, in Article II, dictates the method of choosing a president: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress." In other words, it's not up to the Associated Press, or to President Trump, or to Nate Silver, or the Fox News Channel decision desk, or the one at ABC News, or even the courts, to name the president. It's up to the states, and up to the electors they choose by the manners directed by their legislatures themselves. The Constitution goes on to say that "The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States."
RealClearPolitics has a page listing the pre-election polling for the 2020 presidential election. Some highlights, or lowlights: A Quinnipiac University Poll showing Biden leading by 11 percentage points. An Economist/YouGov poll showing Biden winning by 10 percentage points. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal (yes, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled Wall Street Journal) poll showing Biden up by 10 percentage points. Votes (or mail-in ballots, which may not be exactly the same as votes) are still being being counted, but at the moment, the race looks much closer, closer to 3 percentage points. How many people decided not to spend the time or risk catching Covid-19 to vote because they figured it wasn't even going to be close?
This commercial, from something called the 45Committee, also aired during the Patriots game Sunday on CBS in Boston.
Notice it doesn't say "Vote for Trump." It doesn't mention Trump. Biden, or any other candidate for office. It just says, "Tell Washington: American needs jobs, not mobs."
If for whatever reason (maybe fear of the mobs) you don't want to show up on a list of Trump campaign contributors, you can pay for an ad like this, and the level of disclosure and even scrutiny involved is minimal. As far as the calculus about whether images of the mobs help Trump or hurt him (because they took place on his watch), I guess whoever paid for this has worked it through.
One of the under-noticed stories is the way that corporate America has been pouring money in to back the Biden campaign in a way that doesn't even get tracked by Federal Election Commission filings.
Two examples leapt out at me in recent days.
First, I can barely open Twitter without seeing a "promoted tweet"—that is, a paid ad—from Goldman Sachs of former Clinton and Obama administration official, now Goldman executive Jake Siewert interviewing author, historian, and columnist Anne Applebaum about the evidence that "democracy is in danger" from the "radical far right." Does that get disclosed as a campaign expenditure for Biden? Nope. But it sure helps him.
Second, this Gap ad, which I saw watching the Patriots football game. There's no explict "vote for Joe Biden," but the message: "Stand United" meshes conveniently with Biden's "unity over division" campaign theme, as does the brief visual of wind turbines.
People are starting to focus on Joe Biden's plan to raise the long-term capital gains tax rate to 43.4% from the current 23.8% for taxpayers earning more than $1 million a year.
The Washington Post reprints a Bloomberg column by Jared Dillian warning, "Such a high rate will likely result in a situation where those sitting on substantial gains will choose to hold those assets far longer than otherwise. A 2010 paper from the Congressional Research Service describes behavioral responses to changes in capital gains tax rates as a "lock-in effect," imposing "efficiency losses because investors may be encouraged to hold suboptimal portfolios." This means that investors will hold onto a stock for tax reasons, rather than selling it and buying a better one, which leads to market inefficiencies."
Over the past four years we've poured out an hourly flow of anti-Trump diatribes and in almost every case they rise to the top of the charts — most liked, most retweeted, most read.
Even when justified, permanent indignation is not a healthy emotional state. We've become a little addicted to our own umbrage, addicted to that easy feeling of moral superiority, addicted to the easy affirmation bath we get when we repeat what we all believe. Trump-bashing has become a business model.
I guess the "we" there is Brooks and his readers? Brooks and his Times colleagues? Anyway, a good two paragraphs there.
NPR's Marketplace interviews Chinese exporters about the Trump China tariffs:
most manufacturers in China who export to the U.S. have said it is very difficult to find a substitute for the American market...Many Chinese manufacturers have said they like dealing with the U.S. because no one buys more than Americans. Plus, U.S. clients pay on time compared to Chinese firms.
Some Chinese businesses are willing to do a lot to keep selling to the U.S.
"If the American government doesn't decrease tariffs on our products, we might consider moving our factories outside of China," Claudio Zhou, sales manager for a metal and plastic parts manufacturer called Xmake.
Sounds like the U.S. has a pretty strong negotiating position here. If these factories do get moved out of China, it'll be interesting to see where they go, and if any of them come to the U.S.
Joe Biden's plagiarism scandal wasn't so much about stealing words as it was about faking his own background to make it seem more blue-collar than it was, I wrote in a recent column. Please check out the full column at the New Boston Post ("Biden Is a Phony") and New York Sun ("Biden Plagiarism Involved More than the Words"). The column also was picked up by the New York Post.
With Democrats from Bernie Sanders to Barack Obama to Elizabeth Warren out on the campaign trail for Joe Biden's campaign, one unanswered question is where is Bill Clinton? President Clinton made a brief video appearance at the Democratic National Convention, but aside from that he's been publicly invisible in the closing stretch of the 2020 presidential campaign.
There's got to be somewhere that Clinton could be helpful. Florida? North Carolina? Texas? Georgia? New Hampshire? Maybe Biden has asked and Clinton has declined for pandemic-related or other reasons. Or maybe the Biden camp is afraid that Clinton will usurp the spotlight somehow and derail a campaign that the Biden people think has been going pretty well.
Whatever the reason, the absence is glaring. If Biden winds up losing the electoral vote because of close defeats in some of the states listed above, not enlisting Bill Clinton to help close the deal is going to look in retrospect like Hillary not visiting Wisconsin in 2016. After such an election loss, Clinton himself would not be shy, I predict, about letting this be known.
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