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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Conventional wisdom, when it comes to politics, is usually proven wrong. If you don't believe me, go look at anything anyone was saying about the Democratic primaries about a month or two ago. The primary season was going to be endless. It was going to go right down to the wire. A brokered convention was a real possibility, or perhaps even inevitable. There were so many candidates in the field that the vote would be impossibly split. The candidates were all so well-funded that they'd stay in the race for a very long time. Bernie was too strong and would sweep everything. Amy was surging. Pete was surging. The nomination would surely come down to the last primaries in June.

Well, here we are on St. Patrick's Day (which reminds me: Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig! everyone...) and the race may be over tonight. Joe Biden, once given up for dead, has all but secured the nomination, and the only real question remaining is when Bernie Sanders is going to drop out -- tonight, or perhaps later on? That's a stunning turnabout in political conventional wisdom in a very short period of time.

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The administration of President Donald Trump is showing us all, in real time, how not to tackle a widespread medical crisis. Because things are moving so quickly, though, it's tough to tell how much of their woefully inadequate response has been the fault of Donald Trump himself, Trump's scorn for experts of any type who know more things than he does (a category which includes many people, for obvious reasons), or Trump's advisors and aides who have been put in charge of a massive problem but whose main worry seems to be not ever contradicting Trump in public (no matter how wrong Trump gets things). It all adds up to making a bad situation much worse, which is precisely where we find ourselves now. Decisions are made for political reasons, or -- worse -- to avoid making Trump himself look bad in any way. This has shattered the confidence of the stock market, as evidenced by today's record-busting 3,000-point drop. The more time goes by, the more Trump's inadequacies are becoming impossible to ignore, even by his staunchest supporters. Donald Trump, quite obviously, does not have a clue what to do next, is instead out there blatantly lying about the situation on a daily basis, and we're all going to suffer as a direct result. No wonder the market's tanking.

Last Friday, the market seemed to recover somewhat, as Trump finally (finally!) managed to sound presidential for 10 or 15 minutes in a press conference. Of course, the market closed before he actually took questions, but his scripted remarks were precisely what they should have been -- calming and showing some confidence, backed up by private-sector business leaders who were eager to help. The only problem was, the two big things that Trump promised would happen very soon were soon proved to be nothing more than two gigantic lies, once again. Trump distinctly said the new website for people who were experiencing symptoms would be up and running by "Sunday night." He also implied that drive-through testing would be widely available within days. Neither is remotely true. The company working on the website hastily issued a statement saying the website would definitely not be ready when Trump said it would, would initially only work for people in the San Francisco Bay Area, and no timeline was even given as to when it would be ramped up nationwide. One drive-through testing center opened in New Rochelle, New York, but few others have been set up, three days later.

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In a surreal bit of coincidence this week, America saw a simultaneous broadcast of President Trump stumbling and lying his way through a primetime Oval Office address, while on another channel former Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin danced around in a frilly pink bear costume while rapping "Baby Got Back," which contains the memorable line: "I like big butts and I cannot lie...." Signs of the impending apocalypse? You be the judge. What flashed through our mind was the old quote from Hunter S. Thompson: "When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." Or, as we might put it (with a fake Sarah Palin accent): "How's that 'stable genius' stuff workin' out for ya now?"

Yes, that's the type of week it was. The stock market went completely crazy, with wild swings up and down that mostly added up to it sinking like a rock. Before this week, trading had only ever been halted by the "circuit breaker" now built in to it (which is only triggered if the market loses seven percent or more in a single day) once previously, back in the 1990s. This week, it happened again -- twice. The market dropped by more points in one day than it ever had before, and then a few days later it blew through that record and dropped over 2,300 points. That was immediately after Trump addressed the nation (and Palin gyrated on stage).

So, America, the question now is: can we take much more of this Trumpian "winning"? Donald Trump keeps flailing about in an effort to make the coronavirus go away, but the problem is that you can't just insult it on Twitter or make up lies about it and everyone's going to forget about it. That's not going to work, as we've already seen.

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Both Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders have taken a page from Michael Bloomberg's campaign playbook, and they really need to continue doing this right up until the election (no matter which one of them becomes the nominee). Because more than anything else, it clearly shows the difference between having a sane adult as president and what we've got now.

The tactic I speak of was made evident when Bloomberg bought three minutes of nationally-broadcast network primetime towards the end of his campaign, in a bid to boost his chances. While it didn't do him much good at the polling places, I still thought it was a brilliant piece of political theater. Because Bloomberg didn't even mention Trump once, instead he quite calmly and rationally spoke to America's citizenry and showed us all the difference between how presidents have normally behaved in office during dire times and, by unspoken contrast, how Donald Trump manages a crisis. At that difference was pretty stark, for all to see.

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The stock market is now officially in bear market territory. Thus endeth the longest bull market in history, which lasted for the 11 years from just after the Great Recession's end until now. For those unfamiliar with the terms, the "bear market" designation is defined as: "losing 20 percent from the market's peak." Less than a month ago, the Dow Jones Industrial Average topped 29,500. Today it closed right around 23,500 -- a loss of roughly 6,000 points. And we may not have hit bottom, although with the current volatility it's tough to tell.

There is no word as of yet on how Donald Trump is taking this news. But it wouldn't surprise me to hear he's throwing an epic tantrum right about now. Trump has always been rather obsessed with the stock market, and he has claimed all the credit for its rise under his presidency. Now that the market is tanking, it seriously undermines his entire campaign theme, which is that the American economy "has never been better," and that the only way to continue such good times is for the voters to re-elect him. That's a tough argument to make when the market goes through 1,000-point drops multiple times in a single week, obviously.

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Nobody, it seems, has come up with a name for today's round of primaries that is catchy enough so that everyone starts universally using it. Some call it Mini Tuesday, some call it Super Tuesday II, but no matter what you call it, the time has come once again to toss our darts at the wall in an effort to try to predict the outcome of the six races being run today in the 2020 Democratic primary race.

But, as always, before we look forward we must first look back. Heading in to Super Tuesday, my record was close to three right out of every four guesses (13 for 18). As it almost always does, Super Tuesday has humbled me once again. Last week, I called 16 races, however one of them has not finished yet (Democrats Abroad) and while today will be the cutoff for expatriate Democrats to cast their ballot, we still may not know the results of this far-flung primary contest for days, yet.

This leaves 15 races I did call. And my crystal ball had a big crack in it. Or, to be less poetic, I gave Bernie Sanders far more credit than he was due. Now, I hasten to point out that I certainly wasn't the only one to do so last week -- Bernie looked like the predominant candidate right up to the point when the returns started coming in. The only real argument the pundits were having back then was whether he would totally wrap up the nomination by winning an outright majority of the convention delegates, or whether he'd fall slightly short and we'd have a big convention fight.

What a difference a week makes, eh?

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Roman Emperor Nero didn't actually fiddle while Rome burned. It's a myth. Violins (or "fiddles") wouldn't exist for another 1,500 years or so, making the very concept impossible. That's not to say Nero might not have blatantly ignored a flaming crisis, of course, it's just quibbling about the literal meaning of the maxim. Now, American Emperor-With-No-Clothes Donald Trump didn't fiddle while the country was hit by a pandemic, either. Instead, he played golf. Twice. That's right -- in the midst of a huge crisis, Trump spent the entire weekend playing golf.

The stock market reacted Monday morning by dropping a further 2,000 points. This puts it down over 5,500 points from its all-time high less than a month ago. The reason I begin with this statistic is because it is one of two (the other being the unemployment rate) that we know Trump actually pays attention to. So I'm anticipating some wild flailing from the White House in the next 24 hours or so, because Trump dearly wants to run his entire re-election campaign on how great the economy is doing. If the coronavirus puts that at risk (as, indeed, it already has), then Trump will reluctantly have to make some sort of attempt to deal with the situation. Knowing Trump, it'll probably be the wrong thing to do; but to Trump the only thing that's important is whether Wall Street investors see him "doing something" and are calmed enough to stop the financial panic.

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The stock market is crashing daily, a pandemic is sweeping America, a tornado in Tennessee just killed two dozen people, so of course First Lady Melania Trump decided to reassure the public with a message designed to calm people in these perilous times. The message? Don't worry, everyone -- the construction of the new White House tennis pavilion was still on track. No, seriously -- you just can't make this stuff up. She even donned a hard hat (in order to look fabulous) while making this tone-deaf announcement.

The internet's reaction, as usual, was not kind. Many referenced Marie Antoinette, either directly or indirectly. Perhaps the best response: "Let them lob serves." Just another week in Trump's America, folks.

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I know, I know -- it's way too early for this.

Still, it's fun to speculate about, so we're going to push right ahead anyway and engage in some ridiculously-early ponderings of who should be chosen to round out the Democratic ticket this time around. If you are horrified of even the prospect of such meanderings, I'd advise you to do something else with the next 10 or 15 minutes of your time. There's always plenty of cat videos out there to watch, after all.

Ahem. Sorry, it's been a rather punch-drunk sort of week, as the Democratic nomination race enters an entirely new phase. We are now down to two candidates (well, plus Tulsi Gabbard, to be strictly accurate), which is certainly a big change from having to keep track of 29 of them. But while perusing a list of the also-rans today (after hearing the news that Elizabeth Warren had dropped out), we began wondering which one of them would make a good pick for each of the two remaining candidates with a chance to win the nomination. So we decided to share our musings. We'll take them one at a time (assuming for the sake of argument that they become the eventual nominee), and consider who would be a good veep pick for both of them.

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