Nobody here is wishing for an honest-to-goodness pandemic and/or recession. But the Democrats should hammer Trump and the GOP with extreme prejudice over their handling of this.
The fact that this is even up for discussion really points to one of the core weaknesses of the Democratic Party these days. Do you think the Republicans would hesitate for even a second to exploit this potential crisis for all it was worth if it were happening under a Democratic president’s watch? Fuck no.
Instead of always worrying about taking the high road, the Democrats need to learn how to play dirty, because that’s what it’s going to take to defeat Trump.
Such a pandemic would likely only carry political clout if most of the rest of the world were doing just fine and America had it bad. But if, a few months from now, Italy has many thousands ill, Germany has many thousands ill, Mexico has many thousands ill, Brazil has many thousands ill, etc., then for America to have many people ill is likely to be perceived as “The whole world’s having it and it’s impossible for America not to.”
I dunno… that’s a pretty logical way of looking at things. Probably not going to work. Isn’t trump supposed to be protecting us from Bad Foreign Things like Mexicans and other brown people (especially children), Mooslims, pregnant women, foreign PhDs who are here to steal jobs from qualified Americans. Foreign diseases are the baddest of foreign things – trump HATES germs! He’s supposed to throw a canopy of protection up over the USofA. Or maybe just throw…up.
The Trump administration did not create the virus, and its spread to the US was probably inevitable. Cutting funding to the CDC, false assurances, putting Pence in charge, and all other stupid decisions: not inevitable. But the notion that this disease will at least and at last break the populace out of its myopic haze and alert it to White House idiocy is unrealistic. Too many people have drunk too much of the Kool-Aid, and they’ll grasp any crackpot theory–The Dems are behind it!–rather than accept the painful reality they’ve been wrong. You can be sure Fox, Breitbart, et al will cast it that way. Furthermore, anyone trying to alert the masses will be accused of making political hay at a time when people are dying.
I’d love to be proven wrong. Please. Give it your best shot.
I don’t want a recession, nor do I want a pandemic. The definite human costs of those are worse than any hypothetical political gains.
But, if those things do happen (as seems increasingly likely), the Democrats absolutely should bring it up frequently. They should have been talking about Trump’s reckless cuts to the CDC anyway, but all the more so now that those chickens may be coming home to roost.
What’s more, Trump has made political hay for years touting economic gains for which he bore little responsibility. If he gets burned politically by an ill-timed recession, that’s squarely on him.
My hope is that this ends up being less than I expect, which is much less than some here appear to be thinking is going to be.
But if it does become what I expect, the equal of an extra flu season added on top of a regular one, maybe even an H1N1 year in terms of timing and morbidity/mortality (but NOT excessively hitting younger individuals), then it will play into election politics.
Such an outcome will stress the healthcare system and budget, even just as a consequence of the “worried well” demanding testing (which won’t be cheap) for every sore throat or sniffle. Lots of outpatient visits and a good amount of medical debt piling up on a good many Boomers. Insurers will take some costs and be quickly signaling that they will be passing that on in higher premiums.
Long and short of it is, and I say this as no fan of Sanders or MfA, it would be advantage to a Sanders campaign, not so much crowing about the incompetence of Trump, so much providing a sales pitch backdrop for MfA as opposed to the AHA under Trump with his proposed $1 trillion cuts of Medicaid and ACA premium subsidies and his half trillion cut to Medicare payments.
Biden would also be advantaged as the ACA would be covering people better if not for the kneecaps that Team Trump has imposed and inadequate coverage in the face of a moderately bad influenza season sized pandemic would allow an election focus to center more on healthcare, the ACA’s success, and building on it with a real public option.
Be prepared for Team Trump to make the argument that tariffs and the trade war with China encouraged many American manufacturers to move away from a dependency of Chinese suppliers and cushioned some of America’s economy from the worst of the economic impacts …
I’m not sure how to square the information in Fortune with that from the CDC, but if Trump’s defense is going to be “I TRIED to cut the CDC, but Congress wouldn’t let me”, that will be an…interesting political strategy. Good luck with that.
This. Any suggestions to the contrary strike me as desperate, whistling past the graveyard.
And this. (I liked bump’s “Baghdad Bob” crack too.)
Well said! Again, it was Axelrod who advised Democrats not to waste a crisis.
Not that it will work. The virus could easily feed a mood of fear feeding Trumpist psychology.
And COVID-19 might undercut Democratic arguments for universal coverage by the GOP plumping for some sort of virus-specific 2020-only deficit-funded free healthcare.
The wild evidence-free speculation of political benefits to mass death, from some other posters, makes zero sense to me.
Do you think it is a good decision to put a man of god in charge of such a possibly looming crisis? Do you think it was a good decision to leave 700 jobs at the CDC unfilled? Is the answer to these questions only knowable based on the outcome?
Do you think it is a good decision to put a man of god in charge of such a possibly looming crisis? Do you think it was a good decision to leave 700 jobs at the CDC unfilled? Is the answer to these questions only knowable based on the outcome?
In this thread I noticed many expecting the Republicans to use that OP sentiment against the Democrats. The Republicans are trying ('How dare you! You guys like a disaster to take place don’t you?).
But, it is harder for the Republicans to do when they exude the ignorance and incompetence like their fearless leader…