There is one small part of me that is at least somewhat sympathetic to the idea that the Trump administration would like win a second term in office. My general feeling is that they should recognize that they’re inept and that someone else should step in and stand as the candidate for the Republican Party, but I know that is a lot to ask. In any case, I know political considerations are unseemly (from either side) in the midst of a global pandemic, but I don’t expect people to abandon politics.
In reading through this Politico article, however, it’s hard not to be angry and it’s also hard not to question the administration’s political judgment. Another way of putting this is that Trump and his advisers are putting politics over public health, and that the politics of it isn’t even good. I suppose I could comfort myself that they’ll be punished at the polls for this, but somehow that it only makes it more infuriating.
Begin with the most basic thing. Will racing to reopen the economy result in good outcomes on any level?
We know with certainty that it will increase the infection rate, so without an effective treatment or a vaccine, it will increase the death toll. The virus attaches to cells in the lungs, which is the primary way it kills, but it also attacks cells in the heart and in men’s testes, so simple being infected can cause long term health problems even if it can be treated. This argues for keeping the infection rate low until a vaccine is available. If, however, treatments are found that vastly reduce the lethality of Covid-19, we might be able to get back to work without too many excess deaths. That would be a better bet if the treatments are found first, rather than operating on the hope that they will be found. On the whole, this is a gamble, and it’s a gamble with people’s lives and health.
The more likely scenario is that we’ll see an upsurge in infections all across the country, including in places like California and New York where strong social distancing policies seem to be working. This will overwhelm hospitals and cause measures that have been relaxed to be re-implemented. It will wipe away gains even in places that have maintained strong preventative policies. Politically, the problem with this is self-explanatory, but it will also destroy any hoped-for economic benefit. People aren’t going to give Trump a pass on mismanagement a second time, and they’re not going to go back to work or to concerts, restaurants and sporting events if it’s obviously unsafe.
It seems to me that Trump is setting himself up to get the worst of all possible outcomes. The public health crisis will worsen while his available excuses will vanish, and the economy won’t restart in the way that he hoped.
Normally, a crisis that confronts the entire country would be an opportunity to reduce partisan differences and tensions. We saw Trump’s poll numbers go up at the beginning of the outbreak precisely because people are looking for leadership and less willing to criticize the leaders they are depending on to keep them safe. But Trump thrives politically on conflict, and his base needs constant feedings of red-meat partisanship to maintain their engagement and enthusiasm. For this reason, and also because Trump simply isn’t capable of anything better, the Republican political advisers think the best bet is to politicize the outbreak.
President Donald Trump and his aides aren’t just weighing coronavirus infection rates as they push for a quick economic restart. They think it’s good politics, too…
…The issue also has become partisan. Those identifying as conservative largely side with Trump’s economic advisers worried about the ongoing harm to the country’s finances and favor a quicker economic restart, while those identifying as liberal largely side with public health officials and urge longer timelines.
“Trump, himself, feels pretty good about the polling in his direction,” said a Republican familiar with the White House’s deliberations. “It’s a winner for Trump if it becomes a partisan issue.”
Predictably, these folks are looking at polls to come to these conclusions, but these polls measure a particular snapshot in time. There seems to be no ability to anticipate how public opinion will change based on actual outcomes.
Hanging over the health data, however, is the politics of the situation. And many of Trump’s political allies and outside advisers believe they have the public increasingly on their side.
Conservative groups have noticed a change in polling in recent weeks when they ask respondents if they want to go back to work, even if they know the outbreak could continue to cause infections or deaths, and if they would be willing to wear protective gear, such as masks and gloves, in order to reopen the country. Some polls saw upticks as large as 20 percentage points of people willing to return to work, even with the caveats, according to said Brandon and others familiar with the polls. The FreedomWorks polling was conducted in suburban House districts in battleground states, including Florida, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan.
For one thing, Trump is shaping the shift in public opinion through his messaging. His supporters follow his lead, and he’s actively encouraging his base to protest the social distancing policies. He can move people to support his policies in real time, but if those policies backfire he’ll see more erosion in his support. He could have moved these folks to higher levels of patience, and the polling would reflect that sentiment instead. That would also inoculate him against a lot of criticism if things don’t dramatically improve, but he’s focused on shifting blame for what has already happened rather than shaping the political battlefield for what is likely to come.
Today’s polls mean very little, and there is no substitute for implementing the best available policies. The fatal political flaw here isn’t the idea that the only way to win reelection is to get the economy going, but rather that they can get the economy going simply through will-power rather than through patiently working through the solution. Agitating for poor public health policies isn’t going to add to public or market confidence.
The only thing that can bail out the economy in time for it to benefit Trump’s reelection is a vast reduction in the lethality of the virus. It’s unlikely that a vaccine can be discovered, approved, and distributed widely in time for November, but there’s more hope on the treatment front. The experimental Remdesivir drug has shown some tentative promise, for example, and there are a lot of other potential drugs that are being researched or are in trials. If people stop dying when they get infected, the public will be willing to risk infection. Until that time, the economy is going to be stuck.
I think people generally recognize that Trump did not cause the Covid-19 pandemic and many will forgive mistakes he made at the outset. They know that the economy was humming before the outbreak, and they’ll still give Trump some credit for that. But they’re going to be a lot more judgmental about everything he does from here on out. He’s taking the risk that things won’t go as the experts predict if we don’t keep things locked down. He believes that he can shift blame to governors if the economy is still in the crapper in November. He’s gambling that treatment will arrive to save the day, and that a recovery will be evident when people go to the polls. Mostly, I think he’s decided that keeping on the recommended path will lead to certain defeat because unemployment will be too high, too many commercial enterprises will go out of business, and he won’t get credit for keeping people alive.
So, he’s not going to attempt good governance. He’s going to keep to this incoherent strategy where he pretends to listen to the experts but at the same time encourages his base to reject their advice. He’s going to get a lot of people killed, and it’s not even going to benefit him politically because his path isn’t good for the economy.
Trump is an unnaturally lucky man, but he’s going to need a lot more of it now if he wants to get reelected.
Yes, he’s betting on pulling an inside straight. Could happen. That’s what got him elected. But chances are he’ll get slaughtered and take out a lot of his enablers too.
I do think the Administration could make it a lot safer to go out if they invested a ton of money in expanding our ability to test for Covid-19 and trace contacts. But they’re deferring all of that to the states and the states don’t have anything close to the resources to make that happen. I think they’re putting their reelection hopes on a combination of hope that the scientific community will come up with something and that the states will find a way to manage the crisis effectively without adequate resources. Trump is both stupid and lazy. We’ve seen no effort to ramp up testing or tracing at the federal level. Makes zero sense. They know only partisanship and extreme rhetorical conflict. They’re continuing to put all their eggs in that basket.
The other wild card is whether or not the virus contagion abates in warm weather as some do.
Unlikely given infection rates current in the Southern Hemisphere and at the equator, but also, November is not a warm month. Without herd immunity or a widely available vaccine, it would be part of second or third outbreak.
It’s still an open question in my mind–I’m keeping an eye on the Southern Hemisphere numbers.
This is what happens when scientifically illiterate people are in public office. Those fools are looking at the declining virus case numbers and ignoring the measures that caused the decline. The scientifically literate Democratic governors by and large are saying the restrictions and stay at home orders are working to curb the spread of the virus, so they are staying in place. This is like day 5 of a 10 day antibiotic course, where the medication needs to be continued to keep a reinfection at bay.
As that article noted, states he needs to win are several weeks away from seeing any peak in virus cases. And, those are only the ones we know about due to the pathetic testing being done. If the numbers are that bad with poor testing, those states are in for a world of hurt as virus cases seemingly pop out of the woodwork. That just might make his push to reopen by lifting restrictions seem very premature.
I don’t agree with this at all. He and his people are already desperately scrambling to re-write the history of the crucial first few weeks and months, and the press is starting to hammer him about it. Whoever is making Biden’s ads is doing a great job at hammering the point (even if Biden himself is doing the usual, reflective Democrat “Let’s focus on moving forward” routine — for whatever reasons Democrats are allergic to focusing on specific Republican missteps; like it’s “not done” or something). The more people are dealing with Grandma’s entire bridge club and church bowling group dying, the more angry they’ll be.
I’ve thought for a long time that it would need to get worse before it got better. The only way this country has any future is if the Republican Party is sent to the wilderness for 20 years or so. I certainly agree that “re-opening” the economy without tests and distancing will be a disaster. Frankly it is going to come down to the Governors.
Almost all of the people that I love and care about are in states that will probably will follow their health professionals guidance and advice. I have a few racing friends in the south and to them plus MikeInOhio: I’m sorry. I think your state is going to get what it deserves and I feel dreadful that you are stuck in it. Is there solace in knowing if it is as much of a carnage as the health officials predict, it will doom the Republicans on election day? (Well at least Trump will have fulfilled his 2016 vision of America)
Isn’t securing a future for our country worth the sacrifice of tens of thousands of Trump supporters defying science (yet again)? They’ve already shown that they’d gladly sacrifice us…
So I say yes if they want to open up their brain dead states, then by all means “Please proceed Governor.”
“20 years or so?”
Try “forever.”
It does indeed seem that is what Trump and advisors have decided to do, or not do. It is a gamble. I think it is a poor bet but who really knows? If they are wrong, many more will die or become infected. Simply being infected is no fun for anyone who has read about it like how Brooke Baldwin suffered with it. Anyone who becomes infected with it, or knows someone who did or who had a loved one die, is going to reflect on Trumps leadership, notwithstanding the state of the stock market. And, as you noted, this can leave people with long term health issues.So I believe they are indeed looking for an inside straight, as noted by someone else here. May they live to regret it and the fools out there demonstrating against the stay at home orders.
He’s been wrong about the virus since day one, and made one bad decision after another. He’s still playing games with testing. Why would he suddenly be right about this? Because of his gut? Yeah, right.
We’ve seen this over and over, because it’s what makes these guys tick: In a dangerous situation, most people try to be as prudent as possible. But Trump and people like him do not have a sense of prudence. They prefer the high-risk scenario, because they very rarely suffer any consequences themselves and they don’t care about the consequences for others. Part of prudence is having a sense of just how high the risks are. They don’t have that sense. So they are completely out of their depth, because the virus doesn’t care what they think or what they want.
As to the point that “…more likely … we’ll see an upsurge in infections all across the country, including in places like California and New York where strong social distancing policies seem to be working,” why would we see this in states like New York and California? Does Trump have “total power” then? No he doesn’t. The governors have police powers and the politics in those states are not favorable to Trump. But yeah, we’ll see it in the deep redneck areas … Trump’s base.
Since it appears Fauci is no longer going to make any more appearances, the entire focus of federal policy will be to politicize the pandemic, especially in Blue/Purple states with Dem governors.
One would think that a responsible opposition party would have a field day with this.