High Speed Rail In Texas And Southern California Gets Real

A high speed rail project in Texas from Dallas to Houston will be the second true high speed rail lines in the U.S., rather than mere "medium speed rail" barely faster than interstate highway motor vehicle traffic. The Dallas to Houston line is scheduled to be finished by 2027 and is a rare Trump Administration initiatives that a Biden-Harris administration surely wouldn't roll back. The Texas line will be much faster than the properly described "medium" speed Acela line in the Northeast (which is at least upgrading to trains that can handle somewhat higher speeds but needs expensive infrastructure improvements). 

A similar Los Angeles to Las Vegas proposal is scheduled to be completed in 2023 that will make the trip in 85 minutes making it the first truly high speed rail line in the U.S. California has other high speed rail plans in place in the early stages with construction just starting and completion in phases from 2029 to 2033 planned.

Florida has "medium speed" rail from Miami to West Palm Beach similar to Acela service in place (but suspended due to Coronavirus), with construction continuing to Orlando underway scheduled for 2022 completion, and continuation on to Tampa at some indefinite time after that time.

Texas High Speed Rail

The high-speed train that promises to transport passengers between Dallas and Houston in 90 minutes has been approved by the Federal Railroad Administration, according to Texas Central Railroad, the company in charge of the project.

The U.S. Department of Transportation’s Federal Railroad Administration issued the two key rulings, which provide the regulatory framework and the environmental review for the high-speed train, that Texas officials were waiting on to move forward with the project, according to the company. The announcement was first reported by the Houston Chronicle.

Texas Central expects to start construction in the first half of 2021. The federal Surface Transportation Board still must approve the project before construction can begin. . . . 

The company estimates that the construction for the project will take up to six years, with a total cost of around $20 billion. The train will use the same technology as the Shinkansen bullet trains in Japan, which can reach speeds of more than 200 mph. . . . 

The project has seen resistance from property owners in rural areas of Central Texas, where the railroad would travel through. According to Texas Central Railroad, they already have control of over 600 parcels of land — approximately 40% of the parcels they need for the project — as well as sites for stations in Dallas, Houston and the Brazos Valley.

From The Texas Tribune (September 21, 2020) (image from here).

XpressWest, a passenger rail project between Las Vegas and greater Los Angeles, a distance of about 170 miles, received the rights two weeks ago to build on the Interstate 15 median. Brightline, the Miami company that runs the project, plans to break ground later this year, with $5 billion of private funding, $4.2 billion of which will come in the form of tax-exempt bonds. Trains will reach speeds of 200 mph. It's expected to be completed in late 2023.

A Texas project that will offer 90-minute-or-less trips between Houston and Dallas received an important environmental review in May after a six-year wait. It also won a state court case this spring that gives it eminent domain rights, which will simplify the process of acquiring land between the two cities, which lie 240 miles apart. . . 

Efforts began to speed up Northeast corridor train service in the 1990s, and the Acela launched in 2000. But the service isn't considered true high-speed rail without investment in the tracks and infrastructure, and Amtrak has struggled to find funding. High-speed rail interest re-emerged in 2008 when former President Obama pledged billions.

High-speed rail advocates say that 2020 may be a turning point for US high-speed rail development, which has long lagged other developed nations. Japan began building high-speed rail in the 1960s. Europe followed in the 1980s and 1990s. Africa's first high-speed rail train came in 2018. China surpassed everyone in the last 12 years, building the world's largest high-speed rail network, stretching thousands of miles, and moving passengers at speeds of up to 217 mph.

From CNN (July 8, 2020) (image from here).

Acela In The Northeast Corridor. 

The Acela (/əˈsɛlə/ ə-SEL-ə; until September 2019 Acela Express) is Amtrak's flagship high speed service along the Northeast Corridor (NEC) in the Northeastern United States between Washington, D.C. and Boston via 16 intermediate stops, including Providence, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City. The route contains segments of high-speed rail, and Acela trains are the fastest trainsets in the Americas; they attain 150 mph (240 km/h) on 33.9 mi (54.6 km) of the route.

Acela carried more than 3.4 million passengers in fiscal year 2016; second only to the slower and less expensive Northeast Regional, which had over 8 million passengers in FY 2016. Its 2016 revenue of US $585 million was 25% of Amtrak's total.

Acela operates along routes that are used by freight and slower regional passenger traffic, and reaches the maximum allowed speed of the tracks only along some sections, with the fastest peak speed along segments between Mansfield, Massachusetts and Richmond, Rhode Island. Acela trains use active tilting technology, which helps control lateral centrifugal force, allowing the train to travel at higher speeds on the sharply curved NEC without disturbing passengers. The high-speed operation occurs mostly along the 226 mi (364 km) route from Pennsylvania Station in New York City to Union Station in Washington, D.C., with a fastest scheduled time of 2 hours and 45 minutes and an average speed of 82.2 mph (132.3 km/h), including time spent at intermediate stops. Over this route, Acela and the Northeast Regional service captured a 75% share of air/train commuters between New York and Washington in 2011, up from 37% in 2000.

The Acela's speed is limited by traffic and infrastructure on the route's northern half. On the 231 mi (372 km) section from Boston's South Station to New York's Penn Station, the fastest scheduled time is 3 hours and 30 minutes, or an average speed of 66 mph (106 km/h). Along this section, Acela has still captured a 54% share of the combined train and air market. The entire 457 mi (735 km) route from Boston to Washington takes between 6 hours, 38 minutes and 6 hours, 50 minutes, at an average of around 70.3 mph (113.1 km/h).

The present Acela Express equipment will be replaced by new Avelia Liberty trainsets, beginning in 2021. The new trains will have greater passenger capacity and an enhanced active tilt system that will allow faster speed on the many curved sections of the route. Amtrak plans to retire all current Acela trains by the end of 2022. . . .

On August 26, 2016, Vice President Joe Biden announced a $2.45 billion federal loan package to pay for new equipment for the Acela Express service, as well as upgrades to the NEC. The loans will finance 28 trainsets, named the Avelia Liberty, that will be built by Alstom in Hornell and Rochester, New York and will replace the existing fleet of twenty trainsets.

The fleet expansion will allow for hourly New York-Boston service all day and half-hourly New York-Washington service at peak hours. The new trainsets will be longer, offering 30% greater seating capacity and will feature active tilt technology that would allow service to operate at 186 miles per hour (299 km/h) if infrastructure improvements were completed to allow the higher speeds.

The new trains will be phased in between 2021 and 2022, after which the current fleet is to be retired. Amtrak will pay off the loans from increased NEC passenger revenue.

From Wikipedia (references omitted).

Infrastructure upgrades to make Acela a true high speed rail line would cost about $151 billion (as of July 2012), and with the infrastructure upgrades: "A trip from New York to Washington, D.C., would take just 94 minutes instead of three hours. Boston to D.C. would take just three hours instead of seven." 

Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden is a long time Amtrak user who often commutes from Wilmington, Delaware (a suburb of Philadelphia across the state line from it) to Union Station in Washington D.C. for his work in Congress (a 79 minute trip on the high speed line and up to a 106 minute trip via the ordinary Northeast Regional line) at a cost of $23-$45 and you don't have to buy your ticket far in advance. His choice of Amtrak to make the trip isn't irrational.

The trip takes about 119 minutes and is 108 miles via I-95 by car, requires you to have parking at your destination and prevents you from doing anything else en route unless you have a driver - at a realistic 50 cents a mile "all in" cost of driving a personal car (i.e. not just gasoline, but car insurance, oil changes and maintenance, and the cost of the car itself), it costs about $54 to make that trip one way by car. 

A Greyhound bus also connects the two locations, takes 145 minutes and costs $18-$26 one way, but it makes trips only about as often as the Amtrak and is less comfortable in addition to being slower.

You basically can't buy a direct commercial airline flight on that route. Once you factor in the time needed to clear security and board the plane (realistically at least 45 minutes), time spent on the plane from gate to gate (about 44 minutes), time spent walking from the gate in the airport to ground transportation (at least 10 minutes) travel from one of the area airports (one of two in metro D.C. or one in Baltimore) to the Capitol (at least 9 minutes from Reagan airport, at least 37 minutes from Dulles with more time from the gate to ground transportation since its a larger airport, and at least 41 minutes from Baltimore), it realistically, it would take at least 108 minutes from the Wilmington, Delaware airpot to Union Station, which is longer than the longest Northwest Regional trip and would cost more than the most expensive Acela ticket. The closest price comparison where there actually are direct commercial flights, would be from the Philadelphia airport to Reagan (about the same distance and flight time) which would cost at least $265 one way plus $19 for transport from the airport for a combined cost of at least $284 one way.

From Reagan Washington Airport, it takes 9 minutes and $19-$60 to go by taxi, shuttle or town car to Union Station, or 22 minutes and $6 to go by subway. From the Washington Dulles Airport it takes 37 minutes and $40-$120 to go by taxi, shuttle or town car to Union Station, and 50 minutes and $4-$18 to go by bus. From the Baltimore Airport, it takes 41 minutes and $35-$140 to go by taxi, shuttle or town car to Union Station, and it takes 65 minutes and $22-$115 to go by Amtrak.

The Amtrak stop at the end of the line, Union Station, is easy walking distance from the capitol. When I worked as an intern in Congress, I took a commuter rail line from a Virginia suburb of D.C. where I was staying with extended family to Union Station and walked to the Congressional office building where I worked. 

Florida's Medium Speed Rail Projects

The orange line in Florida, construction of which is already underway with service between Miami and West Palm Beach having already commenced in 2018 until it was halted in March 2020 due to COVID, on a stretch connecting three stations in about an hour with peak speeds of 79 miles per hour on a roughly 72 mile route.

An expansion to Orlando, a three hour, 240 mile trip from Miami with peak speeds of 125 miles per hour to the North of West Palm Beach, due to completed in 2022. This compares to highway travel times of 3 hours 30 minutes to 3 hours 45 minutes between the same destinations. 

An Orlando to Tampa expansion similar to the West Palm Beach to Orlando portion of the route is planned with no firm timeline or financing. 

Thus, the lines are comparable to the Acela system in the Northeast Corridor and not truly "high speed" rail lines. The cost is about $3.5 billion from Miami to Orlando.

California High Speed Rail

A high speed rail line connecting San Francisco and Sacramento to Los Angeles has a decent chance of being built. 

Plans are in place and there is a government agency that is operating in California to build 380 miles of high speed rail from Los Angeles to San Francisco with a trip time of two hours and 40 minutes, an estimated price as of 2018 of $63-98 billion, and completion in phases from 2029 to 2033. The cost for Bakersfield to Merced would be $12.4 billion. 

But construction on high speed rail has not yet begun outside the Central Valley and the route to Las Vegas.

General Considerations In Future Rail Development

High speed rail works best on medium length routes with high population density. (See a previous post at this blog on the subject here). 

Some of the plans are more serious than others. It is hard to mobilize resources to build major infrastructure projects like high speed rail lines in places like the red lines in Rust Belt cities of the Midwest and in the Northeast, that are stagnant or in decline, while it is easier to generate enthusiasm to invest large sums of money in places that are experiencing relative economic growth.

Applying those criteria (and other criteria too) the study linked above proposed the following routes:

In reality, the orange lines have ended up getting built or upgraded, before the higher priority red lines, in part, because the cost is more manageable than building high speed rail lines through high density urban areas ($154 billion for the red Northeast Corridor upgrades in 2012 dollars v. $20 billion current dollars for the orange Texas line and $4.2 billion current dollars for a Palmdale to Las Vegas line). 

Lines that involve only one or two states appear to be easier to coordinate than more involved multi-state lines. 

Yellow and gray priority lines on the map above are too low down the priority list to be considered. 

Proposals Stuck In The Planning Stage

A number of high and medium speed rail proposals are in the planning stage. They are imminent, but are further along that other lines that are merely a twinkle in the eye of some very long range planner, so they might happen someday.

The planned upgrade of the Acela line in the Northeast Corridor, because it is such as high priority, because there is already a foundation and ridership in place, and because this corridor is stable than declining economically, might get upgraded to true high speed rail status at some point. But, while new trains are planning, infrastructure improvements are basically just conceptual at this point.

The lines connecting Los Angeles to San Diego and Phoenix, are in the conceptual planning stages. So is the orange line in the Pacific Northwest where only studies are underway at this time. But these have some plausible chance of being built at some point. 

The red and orange priority lines in the Midwest, and the orange priority lines from New York City to Albany, New York and from Atlanta to the District of Columbia, seem much less likely to be built with no real recent progress to date, and the unambitious plans made to date mostly involving modest increases in the speed of existing Amtrak service to "medium speed" rail.

Colorado High Speed Rail Proposals

For example, while Front Range high speed rail in Colorado and New Mexico might have a manageable price of about $11 billion (in 2020 dollars) for 90 to 180 mile per hour lines from Colorado Springs to Fort Collins, the Interstate Highway system there is quite adequate and fast considering the volume of traffic in this corridor. 

This is particularly true if you are considering only half measures, like an 80 miles per hour line from Pueblo to Fort Collins along an Interstate highway where speed limits on the adjacent highways are already 75 miles per hour in many places. 

But a cost of $18 billion or so (in 2020 dollars) from a high speed rail line from DIA to Eagle, Colorado (along I-70, more or less) while it would alleviate congestion, would have only about a quarter of the estimated traffic of the proposed Colorado Springs to Fort Collins line along the I-25 corridor, despite costing much more to build and really makes sense financially only to the extent it can alleviate the need to spend as much on expanding and/or maintaining I-70 in the mountains. According to a study from 2014:

Two studies from the Colorado Department of Transportation have estimated the cost of building high speed rail in Colorado. 

With travel speeds of 90 to 180 mph, the system could save considerable time, said CDOT. A trip from C-470 and Interstate 70 in Golden to Breckenridge would take just more than a half hour; travel to Vail would take 50 minutes. Meanwhile, a trip from Fort Collins to DIA would take less than 40 minutes, and Colorado Springs to DIA would take less than an hour.

CDOT also forecasts such a rapid system could serve 18 million to 19 million passengers a year in 2035.

But preliminary capital costs are insurmountable, said Mark Imhoff, director of CDOT's division of transit and rail. A transit system linking DIA to Eagle would cost $16.5 billion, while Fort Collins to Pueblo comes in at $13.6 billion. A maximum of $1 billion to $3 billion could be obtained in private financing, leaving a considerable shortfall, Imhoff said.

This is consistent with a previous report from November of last year, which also noted that the Fort Collins to Colorado Springs portion would cost about $9.8 billion and carry 13 million passengers a year. Extending light rail from Colorado Springs to Pueblo would add $2.8 billion to construction costs and only modestly improve ridership.

The DIA to Eagle route would add about 4-5.5 million passengers (after considering an estimated allowance for Colorado Springs to Pueblo traffic out of the total), with an additional cost of $16.5 billion of infrastructure costs. Thus, the cost per rider in the mountains would be about four to five times as expensive per passenger as the Fort Collins to Colorado Springs route to build.

UPDATE October 6, 2020.

This plan below isn't realistically going to happen any time in the next couple of decades, but is a dream plan that might have happened in the absence of an Interstate Highway system.

 

Sanders Out. Presidential Primary Season Over.

Bernie Sanders dropped out of the race to be the Democratic Party's Presidential nominee today. This leaves Joe Biden, former U.S. Senator from Delaware and former Vice President to President Obama as the Democratic Presidential nominee. All other candidates have dropped out and the remaining Presidential primaries and caucuses are now irrelevant.

“As I see the crisis gripping the nation,” Sanders told supporters in a live stream on Wednesday from his home in Burlington, Vt. “I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win and which would interfere in the important work required of all of us in this difficult hour.”

He will face Republican incumbent President Donald Trump in the general election on November 3, 2020.

In my personal opinion, Biden was one of the very weakest candidates of those who threw their hat in the ring. President Obama nominated him as Vice President because he was not expected to run for President, leaving the contest for a successor to President Obama for grass roots Democratic party voters.

In both 2016, when Hillary Clinton was the nominee, and this year, the Democratic nomination process selected a comparative moderate with little charisma and twinges of scandal boosted by name recognition and connections to a prior Democratic President, over other candidates including Bernie Sanders who has been the standard bearer for the progressive wing of the Democratic Party whom I supported personally in both the 2016 Democratic Presidential caucus in Colorado, and the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary in Colorado. Indeed, I was any "anybody but Biden" supporter early on an until Sanders' effort to win the nomination became futile.

Biden has a long history of campaigning poorly and was crushed in two previous Presidential bids. No one who has ever won the nomination started the process as weakly as Biden did. He came in fourth place in Iowa and fifth place in New Hampshire. As of the New Hampshire primary, he was in 4th place in individual contributions and 5th place in cash on hand. Biden came in a distant second place to Sanders in Nevada's third in the nation contest. He has made multiple inexplicable gaffes on the campaign trail with quaintly worded verbal assaults on seemingly undeserving ordinary citizens,  has been caught out for an exaggeration about events in a political visit he made to South Africa, and has mostly weak debate performances. He is generally a dull and uninspiring public speaker and not skilled in making "sound bites" and responding effective off the cuff or on short notice to emerging situations like the coronavirus outbreak during which he has rarely been in the public eye. He has fared best in the ballot box when he has stayed out of the public eye.

Biden is Roman Catholic white man whose church attendance has always been regular, born in Pennsylvania in 1942, who is 77 years old from Delaware, whose defining issue in his early political career as a member of the Southern wing of the Democratic party was opposing busing to desegregate public schools. His father was a middle class, reasonably successful used car salesman in a large family. He married in law school, but his wife and one year old daughter died six years later just after he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972. He has been married for 42 years to his second wife whom he married in 1977 with whom he had three children, two sons and a daughter, one of whom, Beau, a rising political star in Delaware, predeceased him at age 46 dying of a brain tumor. He has seven grandchildren, all of whom are children of his children with his wife Jill, although his wife Jill does not recognize her son Hunter's child who was born out of wedlock.

Biden's advanced age, and hints that he may have very early stages of geriatric dementia in his public speeches, deny Democrats a clear opportunity to campaign against Trump on the grounds that Trump, at age 73, is too old, or is himself prone to signs of early stages of geriatric dementia, although Biden is obviously a far more intelligent, honest, and reality informed man than Trump. Actuarially, and based upon his health in public appearances, Biden is unlikely to be a two term President if he is elected, he has nearly a 50% chance of death or disability should he attempt to serve for eight years, based upon standard actuarial tables.

Biden's weak early performance brought former Republican Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg into the race, but despite massive spending on mass media ads, his weak record as a Democrat and his pre-campaign racist and sexist comments, and his track record of racially discriminatory policies in New York City caused his campaign to fizzle on the first and last day he was an option for voters in the Democratic Presidential nomination race, on Super Tuesday.

But Biden won the South Carolina primary decisively, and then over performed expectations and was a front runner on Super Tuesday, largely on the strength of strong support from African-American in red states in the South, and from older voters. These voters tend to be more politically moderate on a liberal to conservative dimension, more troubled by the "socialism" label, and more impressed by Biden's strong ties to and healthy relationship with President Obama while he served as President Obama's Vice President. The Vice Presidency also gave Joe Biden automatic legitimacy and name recognition.

Younger voters, Hispanic and Asian American voters and white liberals preferred Sanders to Biden for the most part. Biden's big Super Tuesday win was also a consequence of other candidates to the right of Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren dropping out of the race. The continued attrition of other "moderate" candidates and the failure of Sanders to capture a large share of the support for the departing candidates then drove Biden's continued success in every week that primaries or caucuses were held thereafter, particularly in states in the Midwest that were critical to a path to victory for Biden. 

While his voting record is very closed to the middle of the road among Democrats serving in Congress, Joe Biden's DW-Nominate score when he left the U.S. Senate during the 2009-2011 session of Congress (the 111th) was -0.314, which was to the right of Warren and Sanders, and to the left of Gabbard and Klobuchar. 

Biden has a long history of supporting moderate or conservative stances until a liberal position reaches consensus status and he changes course. He started his career with opposition to public school desegregation through busing as his signature issue. He is a major architect of federal criminal justice policies that led to racially disparate mass incarceration and the drug war. He was against gay rights before he was for them. He has been one of the last and most reluctant supporters of marijuana decriminalization. Biden has a spotty record on abortion rights and a mediocre record on environmental issues.

In his current campaign, he has publicly rejected policies to reform how big business acts and efforts to broaden the social safety net significantly (e.g. with Medicare for All, or higher education funding reforms). Since he was no longer a sitting U.S. Senator, he was not required to cast on vote on President Trump's impeachment related to events involving Trump's efforts to defame his son. He has tried to put distance between the self-proclaimed Democrat Socialist and progressive stances of Bernie Sanders on policy issues and in rhetoric and himself, while having no real signature policies of his own. The Democratic National Committee, other national Democratic Party elites (many put in place as supporters of Hillary Clinton's Presidential bid), major media outlets, and ultimately many grass roots voters, convinced themselves that the association of Sanders with "socialism" and the "far left" insured that Sanders could not beat Donald Trump, even though the March 17 primaries, there was no significant differences between Sanders and Biden in head to head polling against Trump in either national polls or swing states.

Trump's efforts to get the government of the country of Ukraine to manufacture baseless scandal charges against Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden (his only living child from someone other than his wife, Jill, who does not even acknowledge Biden as one of her husband's son), was the primary basis fo the impeachment of Donald Trump, which failed to result in a conviction when the Senate voted not to convict on partisan lines after disregarding and suppressing evidence in the Senate trial of the impeachment. Baseless as it was (like the various accusations launched against Hillary Clinton), it nonetheless will be an electoral liability in the fall, impairing the ability of the Democratic candidate to assert that there is not merely no "fire" of corruption, but also no "smoke."

Biden's campaign is also burdened by allegations that he sexually assaulted a campaign staffer, Tara Reade, in 1993, although this was never adjudicated in a court, and by a long history into very recent times, of physically touching women and girls in a way that is not considered appropriate by contemporary standards in most blue states, at least. Biden's mishandling of the confirmation hearings for Justice Clarence Thomas made it possible for Thomas to be seated on the U.S. Supreme Court and smeared and ignored Anita Hill whom Thomas sexually harassed while serving in a managerial post in the federal government.

The question for the next six and a half months or so is whether Biden can defeat Trump in the general election. Trump is about as weak as it is possible for an incumbent President who presided over a strong economy for three of his four years in office, and who has been the President during a national crisis with all the exposure and aspiration that attach to that role entail, to be. If the election is a referendum on Trump's performance and reflects demographic change in the electorate which is less white, involved people who were born later on average, and are less likely to identify as Christian than in 2016, then Biden can win. He leads in national head to head polls and in swing state polls by margins great enough to win in 2020.

But, Biden faces challenges similar to those faced by Hillary Clinton, but worse. Sanders supporters and many other left leaning Democrats or Democrats who care about the personal character of their nominee, don't like him. His base within the party is similar to that of Hillary Clinton, but without people who supported her because they wanted to elect the first female President of the United States. Biden's base of support within the Democratic Party mirrors that of Trump within the electorate as a whole.

Democrats who always vote will hold their noses and vote for Biden whether they like him or not. But, his uninspiring campaign is unlikely to generate the enthusiastic support and turnout that President Obama's campaigns did. A significant, but indeterminate number of left leaning Democrats, while they will not vote for Trump, may vote third party or not cast a vote at all in the Presidential race. The DNC is counting on support from independent voters and never Trump wealth Republicans to push Biden over the top in a way that Sanders might not have with older voters. It isn't yet clear if this will work, and similar campaigns of qualified but uncharismatic and uninspiring centrists in the past have failed to secure an electoral vote majority: Al Gore, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton all come to mind.

A lack of enthusiastic support from a large swath of the Democratic Party, and anemic turnout, could be catastrophic, not just for the Presidential race, but also for down ticket races necessary, among other things, to swing control of the U.S. Senate to the Democrats, and in key state races that will determine how redistricting proceeds following the 2020 census. 

But, Biden and proxies supporting him, have been handed an opportunity with the COVID-19 pandemic that will give the U.S. the worst economy since the Great Depression and has been widely mismanaged by President Trump in provable ways. It isn't clear, however, if Biden has the political moxie to press this opportunity to its fullest. His efforts to do so thus far have been extremely disappointing relative to those of Bernie Sanders. A COVID-19 driven shift to mail in voting like we have in Colorado in one or more swing states could also be a saving grace for Democrats in November.

Also, with the nomination race decided four months early, campaign funds that would otherwise have had to have been spent on the primary race can now be redirected to the general election, and Biden has more time to develop a strategy to unify opposition to Trump behind him. Biden's best call would be to quickly assemble an all star shadow cabinet to unify the party and provide more competent campaigners to serve as his surrogates over the next six and a half months, although I am not optimistic that he will do so.

The 2020 election will be the last one dominated by the Biden and Trump's generation of politicians. I don't see how the 2024 election can't involve a passing of the torch to the younger politicians.

Delaware Temporarily Without Death Row Inmates Or Death Penalty

The Delaware's state Supreme Court earlier on declared its death penalty unconstitutional in a death penalty appeal for procedural reasons. Yesterday, it declared that its decision was retroactive causing the death sentences of the other 11 people on its death row to be converted to life imprisonment sentences. 

Delaware will not have a death penalty until the state legislature enacts a new, procedurally compliant statute, if it wishes to do so, and will not have anyone on death row until someone is convicted pursuant to that newly enacted statute.