Electoral Politics After Coronavirus

The Democrats will blame the Republicans, and the Republicans will blame the Democrats. Trump will blame the Chinese and point out the Democrats objected when he wanted to ban them from coming to the US. The Democrats will quote early Trump statements saying this wasn’t a crisis. The Libertarians will say the economic collapse was not necessary since outside of a few cities, the virus appears to only kill sick and elderly, and that the focus should have been on isolating the vulnerable rather than crashing the economy.

No hiddushim should be expected.

Joseph:
Not sure where you’re getting your news from (although, I can probably guess) but Trump hasn’t “successfully prevented the coronavirus from becoming a worst case scenario” or “staved off an Italy or Spain like situation”
America has surpassed the death toll of Italy and Spain. And we are just barely reaching the peak. Hospitals are understaffed and not enough PPE is available. People will be denied ventilators , if hospitals haven’t started denying them already.
It’s great that we haven’t reached the predicted number of deaths, and I pray we never do, but the current death toll is too high to call the response from the US government a “success”.

Trump definitely benefits. But anything can happen between now and November, including the Democrats pulling a Lautenberg maneuver in late October, swapping out Biden for someone they think will do better. (And the replacement will not necessarily be Biden’s running mate.)

If we are back to some semblance of “normal” within a few weeks, than Trump will clearly be the winner and they might as well cancel the election. If this drags on to the Summer, Joe can start measuring the Oval Office for new draperies.

Media has it right an wrong. he was very slow to acknowledge the crisis but once the seriousness of the threat was finally internalized, he probably has done as well as any politician could have done to mobilize a dysfunctional federal government to respond. I wish he would suspend his constant need for adulation during the crisis (25 percent of the time at the daily Corona news conferences are wasted on useless statistics w/o any context and genuflection by his minions) but overall he media should stop looking backwards on what could have been done better. We are where we are, for better or worse.

No matter what happens at the election, Biden will not become president. He’s not physically capable of it.

Keep this in mind next time Gov Cuomo complains about lack of respirators and beds.
In 2015 he was informed that the State had only 2000 respirators on hand when the recommended level ( in the event if a pandemic) was 16000. Instead of buying them, he instead asked his Health Commissioner, Howard Zucker, to create a protocol to in effect determine who shall ( live ) get one and who shall ( die ) not get one.
At the same time he created the Medicaid Redesign Team. Its purpose included saving money by closing/reducing hospitals with too many empty beds ( i.e Long Beach Med Ctr, Long Island College Hospital, St Vincent’s). It’s hard to criticize this because it’s very expensive to staff empty beds because you might have a pandemic

Milhouse, you just choose not to believe it. In a 2015 NYS Dept of Health press release, it was called the NYS Taskforce on Life: Update on Ventilator Allocation Guidelines.
Its purpose was to ” to provide an ethical, clinical and legal framework to help healthcare providers” to make the difficult decisions in the event of a pandemic and there are insufficient ventilators to treat everyone who needs one.

The Democratic Convention is in July and it is doubtful that Covid19 epidemic will be over by then. Cuomo will be to busy fighting the epidemic to run a successful campaign. Besides he needs Federal aid which wouldn’t be provided if he angers President Trump/

As regards the number of deaths in the U.S., at the moment we’re #1 in number, and #9 in per capita deaths if we eliminate very small countries like San Marino and Andorra. The top ranked non-tiny countries in terms of deaths per million population are Belgium, Spain, Italy, France, UK, Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden, and then the USA. That’s assuming that every country is telling the truth (doubtful) and they’re all using the same standard as to what deaths are attributed to COVID-19 (even more doubtful). It’s interesting that we’ve all heard of the situation in Spain and Italy, but I’ve read nothing about Belgium.

abbas : after the partisan impeachment scam by the house, the republicans have a guarantee of winning back the house

Actually, Joseph, no country is counting accurately. Some, like Iran, are probably covering up deaths (weeks ago, there were stories about satellite images of a cemetery near Quds where long trenches were being dug). In the US, different states are following different standards. Probably people without COVID-19 are dying because they can’t access medical care or they’re afraid to go to the hospital. Very few countries have handled this pandemic well, but I don’t know of any country other than the US where it has been so politicized.

I finally came across an article about Belgium. They are assuming all nursing home deaths are from COVID-19, so their figures are skewed in the opposite direction.

Will the Pandemic be over by August or will the Democratic Convention be virtual and on the internet where it can be hacked. Likewise will the pandemic be over by November and if not will there be mail in ballots or will we have to vote at the voting booth like Wisconsin.