Yes. This is largely the problem. Unfortunately, I don't think it would have mattered whether it was a left or right president. The side not in office would have done the opposite. Everything is a political proxy war right now.
Remember, at the start of this crisis Trump did start holding regular Covid briefings, there were big actions taken, and his approval numbers went up quite a bit. But then he backed away from all that, and started actively undermining things. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ I'm honestly baffled by it because he doesn't even have to really succeed to get good approval numbers, he just has to look like he cares, but he can't manage even that.
Contrast this with Andrew Cuomo of New York, who by any objective measure totally screwed things up. It didn't matter though - he was decisive, held daily briefings, and at least looked like he was putting in effort to fix things. Now his popularity is up a ton. https://buffalonews.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/public-...
That's really the core of my entire thesis. The public doesn't expect perfection in the face of something like this - I don't. But I do expect the politician to give a damn, or at least put in the effort of looking like they giving a damn. A crisis like this is exactly the sort of thing you can rally the country around. There was a brief two week period in late March where it actually happened! It was a choice by Trump, which then filtered down into Trump leaning local politicians, to turn it into a proxy war.
Believe me, I'm cynical about politics too, but I think you're engaging in the worse kind of "both-sidesism" with this. Is your contention really that if Hilary was president, Republicans would have all locked down, and Democrats would not? I just don't see it. We only truly know about the timeline we are in right now, shrugging your shoulders and saying things wouldn't be better anyway in another timeline you don't know anything about isn't helpful.
I should have been more explicit on that.
> Contrast this with Andrew Cuomo of New York...
Exactly. I think this is part of the problem on the left. The desire to do something, anything, when sometimes doing nothing, or less, is the right thing. And then if it doesn't work out saying "yeah but we did something!".
Frankly, I think the outcome in NY was inevitable regardless of policy. So I don't blame Cuomo but I also don't think he's a hero. He just did his job and showed up. The way the data has shaped up against other jurisdictions around the country/globe I think they would have gotten about the same outcome regardless of the policy.
> It was a choice by Trump, which then filtered down into Trump leaning local politicians, to turn it into a proxy war
That's fair. He did "start it". He's a real problem for sure. Anything he touches or recommend almost can't be touched by the left for fear of keeping him in office.
But same for the right. There's no way the red states would have saddled up with Clinton.
I also agree that simply doing something, anything, isn't always the right approach. I'm an independent who hangs out with the left and there is a tendency to reach for the hammer of government a bit too often. The feds shouldn't have led the charge by any means, but once individual states had started to shut down, a coordinated federal response to get this fully under control would have been the best approach. I think the end game for this will be something like that.
Sure it would. Heck if a Republican that wasn't Trump was in office now, there wouldn't have been the White House bully pulpit being used against basic safety measures and White House emergency powers abused to block states from getting PPE and other emergency supplies. We'd probably have a state aid bill, too, though probably a less generous one than a Democratic Administration and Senate would have been on board for, but probably more than nothing. Which make it financially more viable to do lockdowns (states often can't, Constitutionally, borrow for no capital expenses, and procedurally have a difficult process to approve new debt and have a high cost of borrowing, the Feds have none of those problems). Leadership matters and there's a reason Trump's numbers are falling even among Republicans.
Obama never governed as a "unity" president either.
Bush immediately after 9/11 was probably the last time there was some semblance of political unity in this country.
The numbers just do not back this claim up. NY/NJ/CT all have the absolute worst outcomes so far. NY and Gov Cuomo couldn't be more adored by the media. Meanwhile the red south and others that never locked down are sitting at about 10% the deaths of the blue northeast.
You can say wait two weeks, but we've been waiting two weeks on AZ, FL, and GA, for about 6 weeks now. Cases have gone up but deaths have not. Current trends suggest they will tick up, but they will not go vertical.
So I'm not sure what the real problem is that you point to.
They were also hit early in this ongoing pandemic and had to fight hard to get it under control. That red states are now ticking up is a sad commentary on their governance, which is a mix of hubris, denialism, and willful ignorance.
> Cases have gone up but deaths have not.
The average age of the infected is lowering, and they tend to survive.
An illness that lasts two weeks and then goes away is a shitty two weeks.
We're sitting at what, a shitty five months now?
I guarantee there are a lot of people out there who would take a rough couple of weeks over what we've done to their livelihoods this year.
Two big assumptions. This is true for many, but between this and death we also have people sick for months or with possibly permanent health damage. We also have completely asymptomatic cases. It's a spectrum, not few specific outcomes.
> Cases have gone up but deaths have not.
You seem to have a severe misunderstanding of the virus. The reason why people say to wait two weeks is because there's a massive lag time. Not only is there a long incubation period but there's also a massive period of time between exhibiting symptoms and death. People who exhibit symptoms will die around two to eight weeks afterwards.
When you see cases go up, that means we can expect any deaths to follow within the next month or so. That's exactly what we're seeing in Texas right now with a huge spike in cases and many of our hospitals overwhelmed.
NY/NJ/CT have had the worst outcome so far because they got hit the hardest early on. They've already passed over the death hump assuming there isn't a second wave. For us in Texas though? Just wait and see. In fact I'm going to favorite your post and get back to you when it starts getting really bad.
BLM protests where, on the whole, at least masked. This is a huge contrast from the literal “we will not wear masks” protests that erupted from the radical right.
There’s a whole subreddit dedicated to capturing videos of such people refusing to wear masks or socially distance. Based on the non-negligible amount of (sometimes racist) right-wing talking points they often devolve into, I’d say many would be considered on the right.
In any case, weird attempt to distract against the current sitting president and radical-right legislative bodies of several states acting in direct conflict with scientific advice on how to reduce the rate of infection.