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Two and a half weeks after Bernie Sanders slammed Michael Bloomberg for trying to “buy this election,” the former New York City mayor dropped out of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, having spent $570 million of his own money to win 61 delegates. Tom Steyer, the other billionaire in the race, did even worse, abandoning his campaign after spending more than $250 million and earning zero delegates.

Those spectacular failures should give pause to the politicians and activists who argue that money poses a grave threat to democracy—so grave that the Constitution must be amended to authorize limits on campaign spending. The Bloomberg and Steyer fiascoes show that no amount of money can buy victory for candidates who fail to persuade voters.

Bloomberg’s unprecedented ad blitz seemed to be effective at first, boosting his standing in national polls from around 3 percent in November to as high as 19 percent by early March. But when push came to shove on Super Tuesday last week, Democrats keen to replace President Donald Trump did not buy Bloomberg’s argument that he was the man to do it.

The arrogance embodied in Bloomberg’s strategy of skipping the early contests and debates, flooding the airwaves and internet with ads, and swooping in to rescue a party he joined less than two years ago goes a long way toward explaining why primary voters found him so unappealing. His disastrous performance during the first debate in which he participated surely didn’t help, and neither did his wooden demeanor or the generally uninspiring vibe of his TV spots, which one Democratic strategist described as “mediocre messaging at massive scale.”

Steyer, a hedge fund manager who had previously spent many millions of his personal fortune to support mostly losing Democratic candidates, saw almost no visible return on his investment in his own campaign. He was polling at 0 percent last July and by the time he dropped out in February had climbed all the way to 1 percent.

These meager to modest results are consistent with research on the role of money in congressional races. Although the candidate who spends the most generally wins, that pattern can be explained almost entirely by donors’ eagerness to back strong contenders.

For incumbents, who were reelected 91 percent of the time in the House and 84 percent of the time in the Senate last time around, it has proven remarkably difficult to show that spending more attracts more votes. Money matters most for challengers, which means that caps on spending are apt to help maintain the status quo rather than shake things up.

While “money isn’t speech,” as advocates of restrictions keep reminding us, money is necessary for speech to reach a wide audience, which is especially important for candidates who do not enjoy the manifold advantages of incumbency, including name recognition, constant visibility, good will earned through constituent service, and voters’ tendency to stick with the guy they know unless there is a compelling reason to take a chance on someone else. Restrictions on spending impair a candidate’s ability to get his message across, just as direct restrictions on the use of telephones, video equipment, computers, or the internet would, even though those technologies are not speech either.

Limiting access to the means of mass communication obviously would violate the First Amendment, and so does limiting their use by telling candidates how much money they can spend, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly held. Yet Democrats are so obsessed with the supposedly corrupting impact of money in politics that they are ready to authorize such restrictions by fundamentally rewriting the law of free speech, as a constitutional amendment backed by every Democrat in the Senate and more than nine out of 10 Democrats in the House would do.

Contrary to the fears underlying that illiberal initiative, voters are perfectly capable of rejecting even the most powerfully amplified messages. Just ask Bloomberg and Steyer.

© Copyright 2020 by Creators Syndicate Inc.

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Joe Biden delivered decisive Tuesday primary wins over Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), cementing the former vice president’s frontrunner status and dealing what might be a fatal blow to the democratic socialist’s campaign for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination.

Biden nabbed the crucial state of Michigan, which was a notable loss for Sanders, who managed a much-celebrated surprise victory in that state in the 2016 primary. Also among Biden’s haul are Mississippi and Missouri, the latter of which Sanders lost by a razor-thin margin—0.24 percent, to be exact—just four years ago.

It was not close this time. 

So clear was Biden’s lead that the Associated Press called both Missouri and Mississippi mere minutes after the polls closed. Michigan wasn’t far behind.

Sanders and his surrogates have spent a considerable amount of airtime arguing that the Vermont independent is the best candidate to expand the Democratic electorate. “Now is the time for us to really double down on coalition building, positivity expansion, and focusing on the vision that Senator Sanders has for this country,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D–N.Y.), one of his more high-profile supporters, said after his disappointing Super Tuesday showing. 

But with that coalition diminishing significantly when compared to Sanders’ 2016 showing, that expansion is not looking likely. The democratic socialist senator has historically depended heavily on youth turnout, which has been especially low this cycle.

Biden’s strong rebound last week, when he won 10 of 14 Super Tuesday states, can be at least partially attributed to endorsements from South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.), both of whom suspended their candidacies to throw their support behind the former vice president. Sanders blamed Biden’s success on “the establishment” bogeyman, arguing that the Democratic machine had conspired against him. But his loss might have more to do with a Democratic Party that is not yet ready to embrace Sanders’ brand of socialism.

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We plan to take advantage of our nearly 18 years’ experience with distance learning to make this as seamless a transition as possible for you, our valued clients.

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Former Vice President Joe Biden, the leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, today got into a heated argument with a Detroit autoworker who challenged his support for a new federal “assault weapon” ban. Even leaving aside Biden’s reference to an “AR-14” when he meant “AR-15,” the conversation revealed both the illogic of his proposal and the suspicions it understandably arouses among many gun owners.

Cellphone video of the encounter shows a bearded man in a hard hat accusing Biden of “actively trying to end our Second Amendment right and take away our guns.” Biden denied the charge. “You’re full of shit,” he said. “I support the Second Amendment. The Second Amendment, just like now, if you yelled fire, that’s not free speech…I have a shotgun. I have a 12-gauge, a 20-gauge. My sons hunt….I’m not taking your gun away at all.”

It is true that Biden’s proposal—like the 1994 federal “assault weapon” ban, which expired in 2004—does not include confiscation of guns Americans already own. Instead he would give owners of the targeted firearms a choice: They could sell their guns to the federal government, or they could register them under the National Firearms Act (NFA), following the same procedure, including a background check and a $200 tax, that applies to machine guns. Unlike former presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke, Biden is not threatening to “take your AR-15.”

But state requirements for registration of “assault weapons” have been honored mostly in the breach, and Biden’s plan is likely to be even less successful now that talk of confiscation is in the air. When the government does not know who owns the guns it decides to ban, it can neither force people to register them nor seize them. It is perfectly rational for gun owners to worry that the first step will eventually lead to the second.

During the exchange in Detroit, Biden himself muddied the legal impact of his proposal. “Are you able to own a machine gun?” he asked. “No, machine guns are illegal,” the autoworker replied. “That’s right,” Biden confirmed. “How are AR-15s legal?”

It’s not actually true that “machine guns are illegal.” While new production for civilian use has been banned since 1986, machine guns owned before then can be legally possessed and transferred as long as the NFA’s requirements are followed. On one hand, Biden wants to treat “assault weapons” the same way machine guns are treated, which he says shows he does not favor confiscation. On the other hand, he erroneously says no civilian is legally “able to own a machine gun,” which contradicts his first point.

Biden argues that machine guns “are rarely used in crimes” because of the restrictions imposed by the NFA. But even without those restrictions, “assault weapons” also are used in a very small share of gun homicides. In 2018, according to the FBI’s numbers, rifles in general—only a subset of which would qualify as “assault weapons”—accounted for 4 percent of guns used in firearm homicides where the type of weapon was specified. Handguns, by contrast, accounted for 93 percent of the weapons used in those cases. A tally by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D–Calif.), who sponsored the original “assault weapon” ban and has introduced a new, stricter version that is probably similar to what Biden favors, suggests that the firearms she considers intolerable were used in something like 0.5 percent of gun homicides from 2004 through 2011.

The argumentative autoworker raised that point with Biden, noting that handguns are much more commonly used in homicides than the firearms he wants to ban. “Why are you advocating for [a ban on] assault rifles?” he wondered. Biden did not answer.

There is a good reason for that. Biden has conceded that the 1994 “assault weapon” ban had no impact on the lethality of legal firearms, which remained “just as deadly.” He says he would fix that problem, but it is hard to see how, since “assault weapons” are an arbitrarily defined category of firearms distinguished by military-style features that make little or no difference in the hands of a murderer. No amount of tinkering with the list of forbidden characteristics can ban guns that are effective in mass shootings without also banning guns that are commonly used for self-defense and other legal purposes, which would clearly violate the Second Amendment.

Biden wants us to believe that owning an AR-15 is constitutionally analogous to “falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic,” which is “not free speech.” But he cannot explain why. The Supreme Court has said the Second Amendment guarantees the right to own firearms “in common use” for “lawful purposes,” a standard that so-called assault weapons easily satisfy, since they are among the most popular rifles sold in the United States.

Today Biden repeatedly asked his interlocutor whether anyone really needs a magazine that holds “100 rounds,” which is doubling misleading. First, the issue of ammunition capacity is distinct from the definition of “assault weapon,” since a gun could fall outside Feinstein’s criteria and still accept a 100-round magazine. Second, Biden’s proposal to ban “high-capacity magazines,” assuming it is similar to Feinstein’s, draws the line at 10 rounds, not 100. That rule would ban magazines commonly used for self-defense.

To show that he supports the Second Amendment, Biden noted that he owns shotguns and that “my sons hunt,” which is not exactly reassuring for anyone who values the right to armed self-defense. Biden also has said that if you must keep a firearm for home defense, a shotgun is the way to go—questionable advice that has been rejected by the millions of Americans who own handguns for that purpose, a choice the Supreme Court has recognized as constitutionally protected. Feinstein seems to share Biden’s affection for shotguns, hundreds of which are included in her bill’s gratuitous list of specifically exempted firearms.

Since even shotguns are more commonly used in homicides than “assault weapons” are, the constitutional or public safety distinction that Biden and Feinstein have in mind is rather mysterious. If Biden wants gun owners to believe him when he says he respects the Second Amendment, he will have to do a better job of explaining which rights he thinks it protects and why.

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It’s almost never a good idea to use a public health crisis to score points against your political opponents—and if you’re going to do it, you really ought to try to describe the situation accurately.

Actually, that second part applies even when there’s no public health crisis.

It has, however, become fashionable for certain elements of the Very Online Left to use the ongoing coronavirus outbreak as evidence that libertarians either don’t actually exist or that we quickly abandon our principles in the face of a pandemic. This recent outbreak of libertarian bashing—which makes only slightly more sense than the claims made by some on the right that libertarians are secretly running everything in Washington, D.C. and plotting to get your kids addicted to porn—seems to have started with a pithy tweet from Atlantic writer Derek Thompson on March 3. But it’s become a ubiquitous online “take” since Sunday afternoon, when Bloomberg opinion writer Noah Smith logged on.

Libertarians: Government sucks, let's hollow out the civil service

*Pandemic comes, hollowed-out civil service is unable to respond effectively*

Libertarians: See, told you government sucks

— Noah Smith ???? (@Noahpinion) March 8, 2020

The take may have achieved its final form—at least let’s hope so—with The Atlantic‘s publication on Tuesday of an 800-word piece from staff writer Peter Nicholas carrying the headline (sigh) “There Are No Libertarians in a Pandemic.”

Lazy? Yes. Inaccurate? Yes.

Nicholas’ article opens with a scene from CPAC—that’s the Conservative Political Action Conference, by the way—and proceeds to detail all the ways in which the Trump administration has botched the federal response to the new coronavirus, called COVID-19. You know, the same Trump administration that is just full to the brim with libertarians. The same administration that is raising barriers to free trade, making it more difficult for people to move to America, giving bail-outs to politically favored industries, considering more bailouts to more politically favored industries, trying to regulate free speech online, suing newspapers in an attempt to curb the First Amendment, and launching missiles into foreign countries without congressional authorization. That administration? That’s the libertarian one?

Nicholas tries to get away with this nonsense by setting up a false dichotomy. Trump is campaigning against socialism, you see, and libertarians also dislike socialism—so therefore the Trump administration must be libertarian. Right? Therefore, when Trump starts talking like a socialist himself—by promising coronavirus bailouts and the repurposing of disaster recovery funds to cover people who come down with COVID-19—it is proof positive that the libertarian world has abandoned its commitment to smaller government. Voila!

Perhaps The Atlantic‘s editorial staff has self-quarantined from its duties—how else to explain how an otherwise thoughtful publication could allow a headline that confuses libertarianism with anything that the Trump administration is doing? For that matter, maybe Smith and Thompson believe that an army of strawmen are an effective defense against COVID-19. I hope it works out for them.

As a libertarian in a pandemic, let me first assure you that we do in fact still exist.

And, in fact, it is the free market—and, to a lesser extent, its defenders—who will help you survive the new coronavirus. All those groceries you’re stocking up on in advance of the expected collapse of civilization? They didn’t end up on grocery store shelves because government officials ordered it to happen or because someone was feeling particularly generous today. That gallon jug of hand sanitizer delivered to your front door less than 48 hours after you ordered it online? It didn’t show up because Trump tweeted it into existence or because the surgeon general is driving a delivery truck around the country.

Bottled water? Face masks? They’re available because someone is turning a profit by making and selling them. The first latex gloves were invented in the 1880s but the disposable variety that are so useful right now have “only been available since 1964, as innovated by the private company Ansell, founded by Eric Ansell in Melbourne, Australia. Thank you international trade,” notes Jeffrey Tucker, editorial director of the American Institute for Economic Research.

Sure, one consequence of the success of private enterprise in reshaping the world is an interconnected planet that allows for something like COVID-19 to spread more rapidly than would have been possible in the past. But modern technology has also allowed doctors, private enterprises, and (yes) governments to respond more quickly than ever before.

It also means that you’ll have access to nearly every piece of film, television, and music ever recorded by human beings if you have to self-quarantine for a week or two. It means that humans have the ability to live far healthier lives than they did in 1918, when a global flu pandemic killed 50 million people. The people who live through the current coronavirus outbreak because of stronger immune systems made possible by steady diets won’t show up on any list of statistics after the coronavirus has passed, but capitalism is at least partially to thank for their survival.

In short, if you had to pick any time in human history to live through a global pandemic, you’d be incredibly foolish not to pick the current time. And the reason you’d pick this moment in history probably has less to do with who is running the White House, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or the World Health Organization, and more to do with the technological and medical advances made possible by free enterprise.

“What is the mighty contribution of government these days?” asks Tucker. “To order quarantines but not to tell you whether you can step outside, how you will get groceries, how long it will last, who you can invite in, and when it will all end. Don’t try to call the authorities. They have better and bigger things to worry about than your sorry plight that is causing you sleepless nights and endless worry. Thank goodness for digital technology that allows you to communicate with friends and family.”

Yeah, there are libertarians in a pandemic. We’re the ones willing to acknowledge how much more all of this would suck if the market didn’t exist.

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