It's tough to focus on politics right now, in the middle of a viral pandemic that is sweeping the country. But it's also necessary to step away from the coronavirus news from time to time, so I thought it might be useful to take a look today at where the race for control of the Senate stands.

The current makeup of the Senate is 53 Republicans, 45 Democrats, and two Independents who caucus with the Democrats. This means to wrest control away from the GOP, Democrats will have to pick up at least three seats if Democrats win the White House, or four if Trump wins a second term. Luckily for them, the map is a lot more friendly to Democratic chances than it was in the last cycle. Only a third of the Senate is up for re-election in any one election, but the makeup of that third is crucial -- and this time it will mostly be Republicans playing defense, not Democrats.

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It might sound like a strange question, coming from a Californian, but I do have to wonder why California seems to be doing so well in fighting off the coronavirus pandemic, compared to other states. If this is a real difference, it would behoove others to study why we've been so successful, but there is another possibility -- that we just haven't realized how hard we've been hit yet. Either way, the question of why we're doing so well would seem to be an important one to answer.

By the raw numbers, we're not doing all that wonderfully. California is the third-most-infected state, with 6,895 current cases. New York is by far the worst off, with 66,497 cases, followed by New Jersey with 16,636 cases. But then right after California come some states with a lot less population: Michigan (6,498), Massachusetts (5,752), and Florida (5,704). But the real difference is in the rate of change. Today (as of this writing), New York added 5,818 more new cases, New Jersey 3,250 cases, Michigan 1,102 cases, Massachusetts 797 cases, and 754 cases were added to Florida's total -- all while California only reported 691 new cases in the past 24 hours. At this rate, California could soon move down the national list to fourth, fifth, or even sixth place.

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[Program Note: I am pre-empting our normal column format today (as well as our use of the editorial "we") in order to make room for a straight-up rant. After finishing it, I don't think I've ever written such a lengthy one before, and after finishing I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface of the criminal incompetence and lies emanating from the White House in shameful fashion during the worst crisis of Donald Trump's presidency. Books will be written later about this monumental screwup, when we all have time to examine the many, many things that have gone wrong... and are still going wrong. But until then, I just felt the need to get this rant off my chest. You have been warned.]

We're number one! Well... number one hundred thousand and climbing, at any rate....

Yesterday, the United States of America took the lead on the world stage, but not in a good way. We're now the most-infected nation on the planet, and are now the number one epicenter of the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak. Today, the number of cases in this country surpassed 100,000 -- a grim milestone indeed. We still have a ways to go before we are the country with the most deaths from the disease, but at the rate we're going that won't be long either.

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For the second straight day, I'm going to write about numbers and their relation to the current reality on the ground. Yesterday, it was the case numbers for COVID-19, and today we've got new unemployment numbers to examine.

The Department of Labor just announced a rather staggering number -- almost 3.3 million new unemployment insurance claims nationwide in the past week alone. That sets a grim new record for this one-week statistic, far outpacing any previous spike (it's never even gone above one million before, ever). But this record is almost certain to be a huge undercount, which means that next week could be much worse. And by the time they get around to releasing the adjusted numbers (which usually takes a few months) which show the actual reality of the situation, we'll all have moved on.

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Tracking the spread of the coronavirus is tough to do on a real-time basis because of several inherent instabilities in the data, and also because of the built-in lag time. We'd all do well to remember this in the next few weeks, when considering when lifting all the social distancing restrictions. President Trump is already leading the charge to get the country back to normal, so this pressure is obviously only going to grow.

As of this writing, there are over 60,000 Americans who have tested positive for COVID-19. This is not the full picture, because of the massive delays that have happened in getting the test kits out to the states where they are needed. Everyone with the coronavirus has not been tested for it, to put it another way, even if they have asked to be tested. Tests are being rationed in several states, meaning there are sick people out there who do not show up in the official statistics. Testing regimes vary from state to state, as well -- some states are aggressively testing, others not so much. This also skews the numbers. This is part of the fallout from the federal government's lackadaisical response to the crisis, but this situation could improve over time. As more and more tests are sent out, hopefully they can be used more universally, rather than being rationed for those hospitalized and most at risk. But if the test shortage is eliminated over the next week or so, it will probably mean the numbers will continue to spike upwards, as more and more sick people actually get tested. This may not be a spike in the spread of the disease more than just the data collection efforts getting good enough to accurately track the spread, though.

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President Donald Trump is well known for flat-out lying to the American public. Indeed, he does it so often it has become a defining trait. But what hasn't gotten a lot of attention in the whole White House coronavirus crisis response fiasco is how much Mike Pence is also lying to us all, on the specific issue of the availability of coronavirus tests. We haven't even gotten close to the point where Pence promised us all we'd be at eleven days ago, in fact -- which shows the true magnitude of his lies. In fact, we're only a little over five percent of the way there (from numbers provided by Mike Pence himself, mind you).

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I am not a macroeconomist. In fact, I am not an economist of any type whatsoever. I begin with these admissions because what I'm about to write is probably wrong in some major way, and/or impossible to accomplish, and/or would have some sort of counterproductive effect that I just haven't thought about. In other words, any real economist could probably shoot this idea full of holes without even breaking a sweat. But I feel I have to at least toss it out there for the purposes of discussion.

The COVID-19 crisis is deepening by the day. America is fast approaching (if we haven't already gotten there today) the point where 10,000 new cases will be announced on a daily basis. And those numbers are now going to be suspect, from this point on, because officials are now saying they won't even test people they are all but certain have the coronavirus unless they are hospitalized with a major case -- which means thousands and thousands of sick people won't even get tested, and therefore will never show up on the official statistics. The problem is not only bad and getting worse, it is now so out of control that we're essentially abandoning hope that we'll even have accurate statistics to track its exponential growth.

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The big political news this week was that former Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter was sentenced to 11 months in federal prison for using money from his campaign to pay for all sorts of personal items. Oh, and also that one of the few remaining anti-abortion Democrats, Dan Lipinski of Illinois, was successfully primaried by a progressive candidate this week. Lipinski was also previously against both Obamacare and gay marriage, so this will be a real ideological changing of the guard.

We're kidding, of course. Neither of these stories -- which, in normal times would have been covered extensively by the media -- even caused a blip on the radar this week. Because the nation is gripped in the midst of a viral pandemic and we've got the Keystone Kops running the response. Which, admittedly, is a much bigger story to focus on.

A quick review of where we stand is in order. Less than a month ago, on February 24, President Trump tweeted: "The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA.... Stock market starting to look very good to me." Two days later, during a press conference, Trump exuded optimism once again: "And again, when you have 15 people [in the country infected with COVID-19], and the 15 within a couple of days is going to be down to close to zero, that's a pretty good job we've done." Got that? "Within a couple of days" the number of infected people would get "down close to zero." OK, less than a month later, let's check the numbers, shall we?

As of this writing, that number is -- surprise! -- nowhere near zero. In fact, it currently stands at 19,382. By the time you read this, it will be higher -- much higher (when we began writing this article, it stood at 18,755). And it's probably far from accurate, since not everyone who is sick and should be tested is currently being tested. The administration cannot now even predict the date when enough testing will be available to achieve this rather fundamental goal. Until then, those numbers should be seen as a mere fraction of the reality. And that number just climbed by 5,000 people in a single day, as more and more testing is being performed.

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It's time for Bernie to make an exit from the Democratic presidential nomination race. I don't say this lightly, as I'm actually a Bernie supporter myself. I voted for him this year and back in 2016 as well. I feel free to now say this because I never admit to my own preferences while I think the race is still up in the air -- my own way of attempting to limit my bias in my writing. But I do feel free to say it now, because the race is now essentially over.

Joe Biden is going to be the Democratic nominee this time around. At this point, barring any completely unexpected and drastic changes in circumstance, it is realistically impossible for Bernie Sanders to catch him in the delegate race. This was not true until the final weeks of the 2016 campaign, but it is true now. Which is why Bernie needs to concede this reality.

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The coronavirus outbreak is going to change the fabric of American life in many ways. "Social distancing" is just one of them; one which might last a lot longer than anyone now fully realizes. The coronavirus could be successfully fought this spring, and could be brought under some semblance of control by summer -- but then still come raging back next fall, even worse than before. That's precisely what happened with the Spanish Flu, one hundred years ago. Everyone thought it was over, but in fact the worst was yet to come. This is a very real danger, even though most people haven't even begun to focus on it yet.

Congress is currently taking drastic action to counteract the effects of the pandemic, and the Senate just passed the second coronavirus measure so far. President Trump is expected to quickly sign it, which will make sick pay available for millions of American workers who don't currently have it. This will help, but as the Trump administration fully admits, this is only "the second inning" of the legislative response efforts. The next coronavirus bailout bill is being drafted right now by Senate Republicans, who seem somewhat miffed that they were entirely left out of the process for the second bill (which was hammered out between Nancy Pelosi and Steve Mnuchin, while McConnell sat on his hands). But no matter if Mitch McConnell has finally woken up and spurred his Republicans to do something (for once), Democrats still hold a lot of power over the shaping of the next must-pass coronavirus bill. And they should use this power to insert a measure which might just turn out to be critical for the continuation of American democracy: mandatory universal voting by mail, in every state in the Union.

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