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The sheriff's office believes the boy was wearing blue pajama bottoms, a red T-shirt and black tennis shoes, the post said. The boy has brown hair and blue eyes, weighs about 100 pounds and is about 4-foot-8.

Mitch Mortvedt, the assistant director of Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation, told CNN that the search for Xavior on Sunday in the Montezuma area drew more than 500 people -- 375 volunteers and 125 from law enforcement. The FBI also assisted in that search.

Xavior lives with his mother in a trailer home in Montezuma. The city has a population of about 1,300 people.

The Poweshiek County Sheriff's Office on Wednesday requested that people provide surveillance video in or near Montezuma so that it can be examined by investigators. Montezuma Mayor Jacki Bolen told CNN affiliate KCCI the city is suffering as it waits for the boy to be found.

Mortvedt told CNN on Thursday that Rix had reported Xavior missing. Rix told KCCI that she learned the boy was gone when she spoke with his mother on the phone. The mother and other family members are cooperating with authorities, Mortvedt said.

Some likely Iowa caucusgoers also consider themselves woke (39%), centrists (34%) or capitalists (33%). Centrist is on par with 2016 (at 32%) while the number who identify with capitalism has dropped since then (from 38%). Those who live in the suburbs (49%) and those who report an income of $100K or more a year (48%) are more likely to identify as "capitalist."

A little more than a quarter of likely Iowa caucusgoers (28%) identify as "angry at big tech companies" and 24% consider themselves cynical. But through all the complicated feelings surrounding the caucuses, a huge majority of likely Democratic attendees consider themselves optimistic (78%). Even though that's down 10 percentage points from the 2016 survey, majorities across all groups say they're an optimist.

what worries me even more is the change I see in ordinary Americans. I live in the heart of MAGA country, and Donald Trump is the single most culturally influential person here. It’s not close. He’s far more influential than any pastor, politician, coach or celebrity. He has changed people politically and also personally. It is common for those outside the Trump movement to describe their aunts or uncles or parents or grandparents as “lost.” They mean their relatives’ lives are utterly dominated by Trump, Trump’s media and Trump’s grievances.

never before have I seen extremism penetrate a vast American community so deeply, so completely and so comprehensively.

That percentage is far higher than the (still troubling) 22 percent of independents and 13 percent of Democrats who shared the same view.

In 2011, they were the American cohort least likely to agree that a politician could commit immoral acts in private yet “still behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.”

They went from least likely to most likely to excuse the immoral behavior of politicians.

An increasing percentage are now tempted to embrace political violence. Last October, a startling 33 percent of Republicans (and an even larger 41 percent of pro-Trump Americans) agreed with the statement that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

Polling data again and again backs up the reality that the right is abandoning decency, and doing so in the most alarming of ways. It began happening almost immediately with white evangelicals

As the Iowa caucuses approached, Trump escalated his language, going so far as to call his political opponents “vermin” and declaring that immigrants entering America illegally are “poisoning the blood of our country.” The statement was so indefensible and repugnant that many expected it to hurt Trump. Yet a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa Poll found that a 42 percent plurality of likely Iowa Republican caucusgoers said the statement would make them more likely to support Trump — a substantially greater percentage than the 28 percent who said it would make them less likely to support him.

While political violence is hardly exclusive to the right, the hostility and vitriol embedded in MAGA America is resulting in an escalating wave of threats and acts of intimidation.

The result is a religious movement steeped in fanaticism but stripped of virtue. The fruit of the spirit described in Galatians in the New Testament — “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control” — is absent from MAGA Christianity, replaced by the very “works of the flesh” the same passage warned against, including “hatreds, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions” and “factions.”

in the upside-down world of MAGA morality, vice is virtue and virtue is vice. My colleague Jane Coaston even coined a term, “vice signaling,” to describe how Trump’s core supporters convey their tribal allegiance. They’re often deliberately rude, transgressive or otherwise unpleasant, just to demonstrate how little they care about conventional moral norms.

For most of my life, conservative evangelicals (including me) have been fond of quoting John Adams’s 1798 letter to the Massachusetts Militia. It’s a critical founding document, one that forcefully argues that our Republic needs a virtuous citizenry to survive. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People,” he asserts. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

I’ve appreciated that quote because it recognizes the obligations of a free people in a constitutional republic to exercise their liberty toward virtuous purposes.

Absent public virtue, a republic can fall. And a Trump win in 2024 would absolutely convince countless Americans that virtue is for suckers, and vice is the key to victory.

if he wins again, the equation will change and history may record that he was not the culmination of a short-lived reactionary moment, but rather the harbinger of a greater darkness to come.

“Bernie’s still being given a bit of a free pass by the national media,” he says. “I do not believe that he would be a strong candidate for our party in the fall. And, except for three months out of every four years, he’s not even of our party.”

Here’s a guy who has been a kind of stalwart of the National Rifle Association, a man who said immigrants steal our jobs right up until he ran for president,

Of course, much of the energy that delivered such victories was determinedly progressive, akin to or directly supportive of Sanders and his transformative effect on the liberal cause. But O’Malley is as much a pillar of the party as Sanders is not.

e smiles. “Do you want me to speak more frankly?”

Some such stories, he says, feature in another manuscript, written with the guidance of the late Richard Ben Cramer, the author of What It Takes, “the definitive book about the 1988 presidential race” in which Hart flew so high then fell. Its title is Baltimore: A Memoir and a piece of it is out there on the web. Some want O’Malley to rewrite it, he says, to tie his own story more closely to the idea he was the model for the mayor of Charm City played by Aidan Gillen in The Wire, David Simon’s groundbreaking HBO series. He’s not keen.

Such focus seems timely: with the federal government in Trump’s sclerotic grip, cities in particular have begun to take a lead. On climate change, for example, some US mayors have reacted to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris deal by saying they will simply pursue its aims themselves.

The Gonzaga gathering, O’Malley says, is a friendly one, a chance for the old boys “to ask, ‘Hey, how are you doing? How’s your wife? How’s your kids? What are you up to?’

“We recognized each other from the Sunday shows and having served together. We shook hands … but it was not a moment for me to simply say, ‘Hey, how’s work?’ I know how work is with him.

om Perez, once the Maryland secretary of labor, ended up in the role but O’Malley supported a young mayor from the Republican heartlands: Pete Buttigieg, now a challenger in the presidential primary.

But in an echo of the frustrations of 2016, O’Malley criticises the way the DNC has run the primary, particularly the way debate qualifications based on polling data and donor numbers – changed this week – have kept the likes of the former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick (“a friend” to whom O’Malley has donated) and the Montana governor Steve Bullock firmly out of the spotlight.

I was out there rattling the tin cup, from county square to county square.”

“All of that’s part of the process. But at the end of the day, we have to nominate someone who can defeat him and who can bring our country together and govern.”

"Who do you want heading that ticket? Someone who can really win in the Midwest," Klobuchar told CNN in an interview aboard her chartered bus, emblazoned with the slogan "Amy for America" in giant letters. "I'm the only one with the track record of actually winning red congressional districts time and time again and suburban purple districts."

"She has a very refreshing, common sense way about her that is very appealing," said Andy McKean, a longtime Iowa state legislator who left the Republican Party earlier this year in disgust. Now a Democrat, he endorsed Klobuchar, saying: "She's very practical, but she's very progressive."

Betsy Pilkington, a retired teacher from North English, Iowa, said she was so impressed by Klobuchar's most recent debate performance that she went online and made a small contribution. It was the biggest fundraising boomlet of Klobuchar's campaign, aides said, raising more than $1 million in the first 24 hours after the debate. (By comparison, Klobuchar raised a total $4.8 million from July to September.)

Klobuchar and Warren, who are colleagues in the Senate and competitors on the campaign trail, illustrate the tensions coursing through the Democratic Party and the lingering uncertainty over what type of candidate is the most electable.

"How is college going to be free? How is health care going to be free? How are we going to close down all private health insurance?" said Susan Strodtbeck, a retired teacher who saw Klobuchar at a town hall meeting in Davenport. "I'm sorry. We can't do that."

When she asked Klobuchar about "all that free stuff," the senator's face came alive as she joked that the only free offerings her campaign had were the chocolate chip cookies at the back of the room.

"I'm not at all likening them to Donald Trump, who's plainly lying all the time," she said. "But I'm saying that I think this calls for a time when we build trust with people, not by promising everything for free. I know that's appealing. I would love to have everything for free. You'd love to have everything for free, but I think people know that's not going to happen."

"There are independents and moderate Republicans -- maybe they didn't vote last time, but they're watching," Klobuchar said. "So we better make sure that the message we're sending out there is one that brings them in as well."

"He's a Republican and says she does a great job for him up there, you know?" Rasmussen said. "I hope she can get stronger and pull ahead."

"I don't want to waste a whole lot of time on this because this is what Donald Trump and maybe some of the media want," Sanders said. "But anybody who knows me, knows that it's incomprehensible that I would think that a woman could not be president to the United States. Go to YouTube today. They have some video of me 30 years ago talking about how a woman could become president of the United States."

Tuesday night brought the most substantive foreign policy debate of the Democratic race to date, with tensions flaring in the Middle East bringing the issue to the forefront.

A short, but direct, debate between Warren and Buttigieg on health care highlighted not only their key differences in the race, but how the two candidates are likely to go after each other in the coming months.

Klobuchar needed a star turn in Tuesday's debate to catapult her out of fifth place in Iowa -- the state on which her hopes for the nomination swing.

The former vice president has arguably the single most important asset of any Democratic 2020 candidate: Deep, consistent support from black voters -- the constituency that will decide the South Carolina primary and tip a large share of the delegates on Super Tuesday.

Buttigieg was asked directly about his struggle to win over black voters and said that "the black voters that know me best are supporting me," pointing to backers in South Bend.

"The biggest mistake we can make is take black votes for granted. I never will," he said.

In Georgia, Mr. Biden’s lead with women essentially matched Mrs. Clinton’s final advantage in the 2016 race. But where Mr. Trump carried Georgia men by 23 points four years ago, he was ahead by about half that margin with men in the state in the Times poll.

Mr. Trump’s tenuous hold on some of the largest red states in the country has presented Mr. Biden with unexpected political opportunities and stirred debate among Democrats about how aggressively to contest states far outside the traditional presidential battleground.

The president’s approval rating is in positive territory in Texas, and voters are almost evenly split in Iowa and Georgia. That is markedly stronger than Mr. Trump’s standing in core swing states like Wisconsin and Arizona.

Mr. Biden still holds a sizable advantage on the issue in Iowa.

Mr. Secora, 63, an independent, said he had voted for Mr. Trump in 2016 but had grown fed up. He said he had reservations about Mr. Biden but preferred his “honesty and integrity” to the president’s character.

One of those voters is Casey Andre-Lindsay, 41, of Roswell, who said she planned to vote for Mr. Biden. Ms. Andre-Lindsay, who lost her job this year, said she saw Mr. Trump’s agenda as defined by turning back progress. Of Republicans, she said, “It doesn’t seem like they want it to be a democracy where people speak up anymore.”

A significant danger looming for Texas Republicans is that Mr. Trump’s hard-line immigration policies are increasingly out of step with where the state is today, and where it is heading.

Many of the plant's 2,800 employees are immigrants and refugees.

Black Hawk County Sheriff Tony Thompson visited the plant along with health officials in April. He told The New York Times that working conditions there — workers crowded elbow to elbow, not wearing face coverings — "shook me to the core."

The complaint says Tyson offered $500 "thank you bonuses" to employees who showed up for every scheduled shift for three months — a policy that the plaintiffs argue incentivized sick workers to keep working.

Tyson had employees move between a different Iowa plant where an outbreak was occurring and the Waterloo plant, and did not adequately test or quarantine them before they entered the Waterloo facility.

The lawsuit also alleges that supervisors outwardly denied there were cases of the virus at the Waterloo plant but began avoiding the plant floor because they were afraid of contracting the virus.

It was around this time, according to a complaint from the family of one employee who died, that the manager of the Waterloo facility organized a "cash buy-in, winner-take-all betting pool for supervisors and managers to wager how many employees would test positive for COVID-19."

"We're saddened by the loss of any Tyson team member and sympathize with their families. Our top priority is the health and safety of our workers, and we've implemented a host of protective measures at our facilities that meet or exceed CDC and OSHA guidance for preventing COVID-19," Mickelson said, pointing to investments the company has made in testing, temperature scanners, workspace dividers and other safety measures.

Tyson eventually announced on April 22 it would suspend operations at the plant. It reopened two weeks later.

Sunday night’s debate, hosted by NBC News and the Congressional Black Caucus, may give voters the purest look at the differences between the candidates thus far.

The two previous debates were overshadowed by late-breaking news that came in the day before candidates met onstage (the Paris terror attack in November and the Democratic data breach in December

Clinton has plenty of other fodder with which to attack Sanders on gun

Sanders has yet to release the details of a tax plan he needs to fund his proposed single-payer health care plan, and his campaign has given conflicting answers about when it would come.

Sanders worked to remove another piece of baggage the night before the debate, when his campaign announced he would support a bill to revoke the legal immunity granted to gun makers by a 2005 bill for which Sanders voted

Clinton would not give Sanders a pass on what he called a “debate-eve conversion.” Expect the words “flip flop” to come up a lot as Clinton tries to paint Sanders as typical politician. 

In the previous two weeks, the Clinton and Sanders campaigns have exchanged fire on Wall Street regulations, electability, guns, health care, and whether a new Sanders TV ad qualifies as negative.

On health care, Clinton and Sanders have a deep policy difference that reflect a philosophical as well as strategic divide. Sanders supports a single-payer system, while Clinton has defended Obamacare, saying she wants to improve the president’s sweeping healthcare law.  

Clinton and her staff made a series of claims about Sanders’ proposal that many found tendentious

And even many Clinton allies have privately expressed doubts about the wisdom of campaign’s strategy to accuse Sanders of violating his own pledge not to run negative TV ads

“I’m still very bullish on 2020. I think Trump’s going to have a very difficult time winning re-election,” said the former Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe.

Money money money!

Incumbency

“I don’t think it’s going to be hard to raise all the money you need but that early advantage is not inconsequential given that this is coming down to a few voters in a few states,” Emanuel said.

$20m on more than 218,000 Facebook ads. And Democrats have noticed.

“I think someone who’s not worried about the money is crazy. Trump’s sitting on $100m right now and we’re nowhere close to having a nominee and they will be able to raise money but we’re still so fractured,”

But Trump is a divisive figure, to put it mildly. Democrats point to their gains in suburban districts across the country and flipping seven governor’s mansions in the 2018 midterm elections. They see that as a herald of Democratic competitiveness in Republican-leaning parts of the country. Democratic strategists hope fatigue from seemingly daily national crises will see reluctant moderates and swing voters vote Trump out of office.

Emanuel said the deciding issues will be the key aspects of the economy versus a set of issues Democrats have run and won on in recent years.

The most persistent source of Democratic handwringing is a traditional aspect of any presidential cycle: the months-long primary where fellow candidates turn on each other. After months of relatively respectful campaigning, the knives are finally coming out just before the first vote in Iowa next week.

Running out of money – and a brokered convention?

Democrats worry a long, bloody primary could advantage Trump. It could also drain Democrats’ resources.

ppealing to swing voters A persistent fear throughout the Democratic primary has been picking a viable nominee. The 2020 Democratic primary has been full of ideological and policy debates over Medicare for All, immigration, a Green New Deal and whether a veteran or young charismatic leader can beat Trump.

“The thing that concerns me the absolute most right now is Bernie being the nominee,” a veteran Democratic strategist with ties to multiple candidates said.

The veteran Democratic strategist pointed to questions about where Warren stands on healthcare and Medicare for All. “I think Warren’s a problem. I think any candidate who would lose the healthcare debate to Trump is a problem. I think her stance is a problem. I think a lot of what’s ailing her is correctable. I think it’s not correctable with Bernie and he has no desire to correct it.”

Steyer hates the comparison

a 77-year-old who used to work at the sprawling dog food factory that greets visitors to Clinton, pumping out both steam and a vague smell of meat.

Nevertheless, there have been grumblings, about Steyer’s campaigning methods. By 13 January he had spent $123m on tv and digital advertising, according to NPR. Not including fellow Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, the former New York City mayor who is even wealthier than Steyer, that is more than all the other Democratic candidates combined.

ettner was open to voting for Steyer, potentially, but preferred the more progressive candidates, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Indeed, for all the goodwill Steyer received in Clinton, none of the people the Guardian spoke to actually planned to vote for him, and it was a similar story in Dubuque. You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it vote for you.

“There’s no way that anybody, including Mike Bloomberg, can buy an election, the only thing you can do is see if Americans respond to what you have to say, and who you are, and what you’ve done in the past.

On Monday, when Iowans go to the caucuses, we’ll find out if that is, actually, how Americans see it.

It is uncommon for journalists in the United States to be arrested while on the job, and rarer still for them to face criminal prosecution. In a Feb. 24 editorial, The Register denounced the charges against Ms. Sahouri as “a violation of free press rights and a miscarriage of justice.”

Luke Wilson, a Des Moines police officer, testified that he had arrested Ms. Sahouri because she did not leave the area of the protest, despite police orders. He added that she had tried to move her arm away from him during the arrest. He also said in court that his body camera had failed to record the interaction.

Ms. Sahouri testified on Tuesday that she had not heard police dispersal orders because she was focused on reporting what she considered a historic moment. She said she had retreated from the protest area when she was pepper-sprayed. She also testified that she had told the arresting officer that she was reporting on the event.

The case attracted the attention of press advocates. In a statement this week, Erika Guevara-Rosas, a director of Amnesty International, said the prosecution was “a clear violation of press freedom and fit a disturbing pattern of abuses against journalists by police in the U.S.A.”

April Ehrlich, a reporter for Jefferson Public Radio in Ashland, Ore., was arrested Sept. 22 while reporting on a police action to clear homeless people from a park in Medford, Ore. Ms. Ehrlich, who won an Edward R. Murrow award last year, was charged with trespassing and resisting arrest. A pretrial conference hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.

Another journalist who has been charged is Richard Cummings, a freelance photographer. He was arrested June 1 while covering a demonstration in Worcester, Mass. He had a court hearing on Monday, and his next court date is April 20.

The following month ended up being the second-most active April on record for tornadoes, behind only 2011 for total number. Every day in April but one -- April 5 -- saw at least a Marginal Risk (level 1 of 5) for severe storms somewhere across the contiguous US,

2020's second significant outbreak -- on April 12 and 13 -- produced more than 140 tornadoes. It was also the deadliest tornado outbreak in six years, with 32 fatalities

"Tornadoes are the same way. Some of the strongest tornadoes every year occur in rural parts of the country, so damage can be limited, but if a tornado, even a weaker one, strikes a major metro area, damage and fatalities can be extensive,"

There were 14 killer tornadoes in April 2020. Then, into May 2020, a shift in the weather pattern began to favor development of strong troughs in the eastern US.

Another potentially deadly weather phenomenon -- lightning strikes -- also saw tallies drop in 2020. There were about 170 million lightning events last year across the continental US, down about 52 million from 2019,

Unsurprisingly, Texas ranks No. 1 in total lightning strikes, due in part to its huge land area, Vaisala reports. By square kilometer, though, Florida tops the list, with Texas sixth. Iowa, Montana, New Mexico, and Wyoming all saw far fewer lightning strikes in 2020.

Sometimes a single event can account for a large number of lightning strikes. An example is the Midwestern derecho event last summer. It spawned 8% of all Iowa lightning strikes in 2020, with over 27,000 cloud-to-ground strikes. Despite this, Iowa -- which based off the average from 2010-2019 places 13th for most strikes -- actually dropped to the No. 22 spot last year.Other states saw big increases in lightning strikes in 2020. Georgia jumped four spots, cracking the Top 10 for only the third time. Ohio, Michigan and North Dakota also notched more lightning strikes last year, with over 2 million cloud-to-ground strikes each.

Preliminary numbers show lightning killed 17 people across the US in 2020, the second-lowest total since 2010, according to the National Weather Service.

Lightning in some Western states can be especially concerning in the summer months due to the potential for sparking wildfires. But not all lightning is created equal.

And lightning frequency isn't the only consideration for fire weather.

Oftentimes as thunderstorms develop out West, the surrounding air is so dry that any rain that falls actually gets evaporated before it reaches the ground, a phenomena called "virga." Lightning can still occur within these storms, which don't have the benefit of moisture to extinguish any fires a strike might set.

What happens next? Well, Sanders has the AOC endorsement as well as $30+ million in the bank -- two very good things with about 100 days left until Iowa. The question now becomes: Does he have another issue on the campaign trail related to his health or age? If not, Sanders' heart attack might seem like a million years ago by the time Iowa Democrats turn out to vote in the caucuses. But if Sanders has any sort of problem between now and then, it's likely the end of his campaign.

Hillary Clinton started one of the strangest news cycles in the 2020 race at the end of the last week when she seemed to suggest that the Russians were "grooming" Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to run as a third-party candidate. Gabbard, thrilled with the unexpected chance to battle with one of the biggest figures in the party, called Clinton the "queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long."

And yet, there are cracks. Over the weekend, former Ohio Gov. John Kasich announced that he supported the impeachment and removal of Trump. Florida Rep. Francis Rooney, a Republican, said he would consider impeaching Trump -- and then promptly announced his plan to retire from Congress in 2020.

1. The new Democratic front-runner ... now what?: There's a new top dog in the Democratic field: Elizabeth Warren. As Harry Enten and I noted in our brandnew rankings of the 10 Democrats most likely to wind up as the party's nominee, Warren has overtaken Biden not just in polling but also in money and organization. She also has the clearest path to be the nominee, with a polling and organizational edges in Iowa and a geographic connection in New Hampshire.

Warren's most obvious weakness -- from a policy perspective -- is on her ongoing unwillingness to state, clearly, whether or not middle-class families will see their taxes go up under her "Medicare for All" plan. The answer to that is almost certainly yes -- as Sanders, another "Medicare for All" proponent, acknowledged in the debate.  

“I can’t think of anyone more anathema to the seat of Sioux county, but a packed house there suggests there’s broad appeal, for whatever reason,” Best said.

Corrie Hayes, a 21-year-old senior at Northwestern College, said she was impressed particularly with his response to a question about abortion rights, when he said that in the Book of Genesis, life begins with breath. She wouldn’t get into her positions on policy – she said she was deeply religious and her faith guided her every day – but she said she could tell Buttigieg was sincere about his faith.

More people than ever before are reading and supporting our journalism, in more than 180 countries around the world. And this is only possible because we made a different choice: to keep our reporting open for all, regardless of where they live or what they can afford to pay.

None of this would have been attainable without our readers’ generosity – your financial support has meant we can keep investigating, disentangling and interrogating. It has protected our independence, which has never been so critical. We are so grateful.

Pete Buttigieg knew he was foraying into unfriendly confines when he was en route to Orange City, the seat of Iowa’s most conservative county.

the signs of a crisis that looks like the Great Depression are impossible to hide. In Anaheim, Calif., home to Disneyland, cars formed half-mile-long lines in two different directions, waiting to pick up free food. In San Antonio, 10,000 cars waited for hours to receive food from a food bank. Even still, Republicans balk at expanding access to food stamps while hunger is on the rise. Nearly one in five children 12 and younger don’t have enough to eat.

That “way of life” may also begin to look like mass homelessness. Through the first five days of April, 31 percent of tenants nationwide had failed to pay their rent

Forty-three million households rent in the U.S., but there is no public rental assistance for residents who lose the ability to afford their rent.

Many elected officials in the Republican Party have access to Covid-19 testing, quality health care and the ultimate cushion of wealth to protect them. Yet they suggest others take the “risk” of returning to work as an act of patriotism

While the recent stimulus bills doled out trillions of dollars to corporate America and the “financial sector,” the smallest allocations have provided cash, food, rent or health care for citizens. The gaps in the thin membrane of a safety net for ordinary Americans have made it impossible to do anything other than return to work.

This isn’t just malfeasance or incompetence. Part of the “American way of life” for at least some of these elected officials is keeping workers just poor enough to ensure that the “essential” work force stays shows up each day

Discipline in the U.S. has always included low and inconsistent unemployment and welfare combined with stark deprivation. Each has resulted in a hyper-productive work force with few benefits in comparison to America’s peer countries.

In the case of the meatpacking industry, there is not even a veil of choice, as those jobs are inexplicably labeled essential, as if life cannot go on without meat consumption

The largely immigrant and black meatpacking work force has been treated barely better than the carcasses they process. They are completely expendable. Thousands have tested positive, but the plants chug along, while employers offer the bare minimum by way of safety protections, according to workers. If there were any question about the conditions endured in meatpacking plants, consider that 145 meat inspectors have been diagnosed with Covid-19 and three have died.

In place of decent wages, hazard pay, robust distribution of personal protective equipment and the simplest guarantees of health and safety, these lawmakers use the threat of starvation and homelessness to keep the work force intact.

if the social distancing and closures were ever going to be successful, it would have meant providing all workers with the means to live in comfort at home while they waited out the disease. Instead, they have been offered the choice of hunger and homelessness or death and disease at work.

The governor of Iowa, Kim Reynolds, made this painfully clear when she announced that not only was Iowa reopening, but that furloughed workers in private or public employment who refused to work out of fear of being infected would lose current unemployment benefits. She described these workers’ choices as a “voluntary quit.”

This is exacerbated by the reluctance of the Trump administration to bail out state governments. That the U.S. government would funnel trillions to corporate America but balk at sending money to state governments also appears to be part of “the American way of life” that resembles the financial sector bailout in 2008.

These are also the bitter fruits of decades of public policies that have denigrated the need for a social safety net while gambling on growth to keep the heads of U.S. workers above water just enough to ward off any real complaints or protests.

During the long and uneven recovery from the Great Recession, the warped distribution of wealth led to protests and labor organizing. The crisis unfolding today is already deeper and much more catastrophic to a wider swath of workers than anything since the 1930s. The status quo is untenable.

At the same time, Mr. Obama declined to really spend time and capital explaining his initiatives in an effective way. He believed that positive changes on the ground, especially from economic policies and the Affordable Care Act, would succeed, vindicating his judgment and marginalizing his opponents.

When President Obama began focusing on those “left behind” by the recovery, he called for building “ladders of opportunity.” That communicated that the president believed the country’s main challenges were unrealized opportunity for a newly ascendant, multicultural America, rather than the continuing economic struggle experienced by a majority of Americans.

Mr. Obama also offered only tepid support to the most important political actor in progressive and Democratic politics: the labor movement.

In fact, he spent the last couple of years of his presidency pursuing the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a free trade law vociferously opposed by the labor movement. Under President Obama, union membership has declined to 11.1 percent from 12.3 percent.

Models, it appears, do not substitute for the hard work of organizing and engaging voters in nonpresidential years; models that apparently drove nearly every decision made by the Clinton campaign are no substitute for listening to voters.

On the eve of the 2016 election, the president used the refrain: “We’ve seen America turn recession into recovery” and 15.5 million new jobs. Pointedly, he said, “Incomes are rising. Poverty is falling.”

The public’s reaction was stark from the beginning. People did not believe his view on the economy, and his approval ratings fell in Maine, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin in 2010 and in Iowa, Michigan, North Carolina, Ohio and Pennsylvania in 2014 — the states that led the working-class move away from the Democrats.

Just as important, however, was the discontent brewing with the Democrats’ own base. Combined, the approximately 40 percent of minority, unmarried female and millennial voters disapproved of how President Obama was handling his job in 2010 and 2014, and many stayed home during the off-year elections. Mitt Romney carried white millennials by 7 percentage points in 2012.

The president will leave office with a rising approval rating near the same league of Ronald Reagan, an economy nearing full employment and real wages tipping up. Yet a majority of voters in the last election said the economy was the top issue in their vote.

We think voters were sending a clear message: They want more than a recovery. They want an economy and government that works for them, and that task is unfinished.

For Democrats, it is an unfair economy, shrinking their paychecks and aspirations.

“It’s striking,” Mr. Gergen said, “that the winner of the Republican side represents the far right and the moral winner for the Democrats comes from the far left. It’s a clear vote of no confidence in the economic order.”

a disappointed-looking Ms. Clinton raised her voice to a near yell as she tried to demonstrate her own conviction. But she offered oddly little direct assuagement to the unsettled working class that still craves her assurance.That task fell instead, as it has throughout the campaign, to Mr. Sanders, Mrs. Clinton’s ultraliberal rival, whose denunciations of greedy plutocrats and an unfair economy are at the center of his message. “Given the enormous crisis facing our country,” he said here after voting had concluded, “it is just too late for establishment politicians and establishment economics.”