In case of emergency, break glass and call Barack Obama.
| 'Virginia, you have a lot of responsibility this year'  In case of emergency, break glass and call Barack Obama.
The ex-President will be back on the trail this weekend on a rescue mission for Terry McAuliffe, the Democratic candidate for governor in Virginia — where Joe Biden won by 10 points a year ago.
Virginia and Obama have a special mutual magic. The 44th President became the first Democrat since 1964 to claim the once rock-solid conservative bastion. Since 2008, the ever-expanding, wealthy, socially liberal suburbs around Washington, DC, have made the commonwealth safe Democratic territory. But defeat for McAuliffe would trigger Democratic panic ahead of already unpromising midterm congressional elections next year.
Virginia picks its governor the year after a presidential election, so it always gets the attention of the pundits as a referendum on the new commander-in-chief. But this year, Democratic voters lack enthusiasm, worn down by the intra-party feuding over Biden's struggle to enact its agenda. The President's approval ratings tumbled in a grim summer marked by a Covid surge and chaos in Afghanistan.
This time, Republicans unearthed a skilled candidate who unlike ex-President Donald Trump doesn't alienate critical suburban voters every time he opens his mouth. But Glenn Youngkin, a former investment banker, is also adept at sending coded messages to the Trump crowd.
McAuliffe could use a hand. He served a successful term as governor between 2014 and 2018, but has run an oddly erratic campaign. Though he relentlessly brands Youngkin as a Trump clone, it doesn't seem to be sticking.
Other big liberal names have tried to prop up McAuliffe, including Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Georgia's rising star Stacey Abrams. But Obama is still easily the party's biggest draw. He's counted on to supercharge African American turnout around Richmond, the state capital that when combined with the DC suburbs and some Atlantic coast districts paves the way to a Democratic win.
"Virginia, you have a lot of responsibility this year," Obama said in a new ad for McAuliffe, beseeching his supporters to do him one more favor.  'I was a senator for 370 years' Joe Biden joked about his long experience in Washington during a CNN town hall in Baltimore on Thursday. His time as a senator -- actually 36 years -- has given him perspective about the challenge of putting together an agreement between progressive and moderate Democrats that has held up a bipartisan infrastructure bill and a larger spending program, he argued. "I do think I will get a deal," Biden added. The world and America A Haitian gang leader threatened to kill kidnapped US and Canadian missionaries after demanding $17 million in ransom.
And Texas and Missouri are suing the Biden administration to keep building that wall.  Sponsor Content by Noom  A Revolutionary Approach To Building A Healthier Lifestyle If you've been wanting to make some changes to be healthier, but didn't know where to begin, Noom is the answer you've been looking for. Their psychology-based program empowers you to make sustainable changes to your life.
Country roads  The bottleneck at America's ports has a lot to do with its highways.
As CNN's Chris Isidore writes, as of Tuesday morning there were 62 container ships anchored off the coast of southern California, where the country's two biggest ports are located. Each contained the equivalent of about 200,000 20-foot containers -- used to trundle imports like clothes, shoes, furniture, toys and everyday household goods across the world, as well as the parts and raw materials for US factories.
Surging demand since the pandemic began has created all types of imbalances and shortages in global ocean shipping networks, including shortages of shipping containers and space on ships — but in the US, there's also a massive shortage of workers needed to move it all.
The problem lies not at the ports, but with the lack of workers further down the supply chain: the truckers and the warehouse workers who are needed to handle freight cross-country. The American Trucking Associations estimates that there was a shortage of 61,500 truck drivers before the pandemic; that number stands at an 80,000-driver shortage today, a 30% increase.
Shortages have been exacerbated in part because older truckers are retiring during the pandemic and truck driving schools have temporarily closed. Tougher federal rules to weed out drivers who had failed drug tests also cut into their availability. But the main problem in hiring more drivers remains the nature and difficulty of the job.
The hours are long, and the work often takes drivers away from home for extended periods of time. Even when trucking companies raise pay, they often find that drivers will use the better pay to work less and spend more time at home, making the shortage worse.
Many of the truckers who move the containers away from the port are not long-haul truckers. Instead they are local drivers taking the containers to nearby warehouses and distribution centers -- drivers who are among the lowest paid in the industry. So there are shortages of those local drivers there as well.
All of this explains why, despite unprecedented shipping volume, an estimated 30% of the time slots available for trucks to pick up freight at the ports go unused, according to the Port of Los Angeles.
 Speaking at the CNN town hall, Biden described a number of compromises that have shrunk the offerings of his ambitious spending plan. A paid leave provision originally envisioned as 12 weeks has been whittled down to four weeks, he said, and it will now be a "reach" to include dental, vision and hearing coverage to Medicare, a key priority for progressives. Tuition-free community college is also unlikely to make it in the final bill, he acknowledged. Democrats have spent weeks sparring over what to include in the spending package, and he needs each one in the Senate to sign on to it. "When you have 50 Democrats, every one is the president," he said. Thanks for sticking with us through the week.
On Friday, NATO chiefs of defense meet in Brussels. Russian President Vladimir Putin hosts Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in Moscow.
Saturday is the deadline for troubled Chinese behemoth Evergrande to make good on interest payments to investors. Russian regional authorities will be able to impose "non-working" days to curb the spread of Covid-19. Serbia's pandemic "health pass" becomes mandatory in public venues.
And on Sunday, Chad votes in parliamentary elections. Fully vaccinated visitors from "low-risk" countries to England will no longer have to take expensive Covid-19 PCR tests. View in browser | All CNN Newsletters
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