Posted on 05/01/2020 10:23:23 AM PDT by Kaslin
As of April 30, the coronavirus pandemic has killed 61,500 Americans in two months and induced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression.
And if history is our guide, the economic crisis, which has produced 30 million unemployed Americans in six weeks, may prove more enduring, ruinous and historic than the still-rising and tragic death toll.
The Spanish flu of 1918-1919, the deadliest pandemic in modern history, infected an estimated 500 million people worldwide, a third of the planet's population, and killed an estimated 20 million to 50 million victims, including 675,000 Americans.
"Adjusting for the difference in the size of the American population then and now," writes Chronicles columnist Roger McGrath, "that number will be equivalent to two million deaths today."
Yet, the Spanish flu did not shut America down.
As the Spanish flu hit and spread in 1918, the U.S. raised, trained and equipped an army of 4 million men, sent 2 million soldiers to France, broke Gen. Erich Ludendorff's army, and turned the tide in favor of the Allies.
By December 1918, Doughboys were arriving in New York harbor -- having sailed home from Europe's battlefields on flu-infested transports.
As the scourge continued to take its toll, Woodrow Wilson sailed to Europe, participated for months in the Paris Peace Conference, returned, went on a national train tour to sell his Paris treaty and League of Nations, and suffered a stroke.
In September 1919, Gen. Pershing led his victorious troops in victory parades in New York City and Washington. This writer's father, a teenager then, was in the D.C. crowd.
In the history books of the 1950s, World War I, Wilson and the Senate battle over the treaty he brought home and U.S. membership in the League of Nations loomed far larger than the Spanish flu that had killed as many U.S. soldiers as the Kaiser's armies.
But the Great Depression, to which our current crash is now being compared, did not last for just a year like the Spanish flu. The Depression lasted from the stock market crash in October 1929 to the eve of World War II.
Economically, it was devastating. Unemployment during the 1930s never fell below 14%. In 1937, it was back up to 17%.
At the bottom of the Depression, the stock market had lost 90% of its value, and the GDP had fallen 50%. Not until the end of FDR's second term, in 1940, when the U.S. began to gear up for the war, did America really begin to pull out of it.
FDR's New Deal, however, while it did not cure the Depression, was a historic political triumph for both the president and his party.
From 1930 through 1946, Democrats controlled both houses of the Congress every year, elected and reelected FDR four times and gave him a 46-state landslide in 1936, losing only Maine and Vermont.
What this suggests is that the economic devastation we have brought upon ourselves to battle the pandemic may prove more lasting and historic in its impact than the terrible losses of human life to COVID-19.
Politically, the Depression worked for the Democratic Party like no other event in history. After the Crash of 1929 under Herbert Hoover, the GOP held the House and Senate for only four of the next 50 years.
From 1932 to 1968, the GOP lost the presidency in seven of nine elections. Only Dwight Eisenhower's two terms in the 1950s interrupted a 36-year reign of the Democratic Party in the White House.
Richard Nixon broke the Democratic dominance and took back the White House for the Republicans in 1968. But it would still take another dozen years before the GOP won control of either house of Congress.
President Trump predicts a V-shaped recovery, the greatest boom in U.S. history. But it is well to recall what happened to the GOP when it failed to deliver in the last Depression.
Just as the Civil War was the defining event of the 19th century, giving us 13 Republican presidents from Lincoln to Hoover and only two Democrats -- Grover Cleveland and Wilson -- how and when we emerge from this new Depression may tell us which party not only wins 2020 but also dominates the new era.
And as one sees the growing divisions along political lines, with conservatives and populists calling for the country to be opened up, and liberals and Democrats calling for continued sheltering in place, both seem to realize the stakes.
Democrats may proclaim that they are eager to see the pandemic come to a swift and early end and the economy to return quickly to the robust state it was in last February.
But the cold political interests of the Democratic Party today are what they were in Hoover's time, to pray that the president fails, and fails badly, so that they inherit the estate.
Bkmk
That Death Star fully operational yet?
“...and your friends see you in the exact same way.”
LOL, my friends? You know my friends?
I believe you have verified all I have said about you is true.
Get some help.
“... the coronavirus pandemic has killed 61,500 Americans in two months and induced the worst economic collapse since the Great Depression....”
No it hasn’t induced anything. The Brain-dead shutdown has done that.
I’m talking to one of them on the phone right now and he says what I said about you is 100% dead on! Grow up punk!
Go watch another James Bond movie!
OTOH the Democrats were busy impeaching the president - completely tying up the Senate - when President Trump first acted against Covid vectors coming from China. Biden, for one, criticized him for that.And they will blame the economic downturn on Trump and his allegedly not properly dealing with the virus and fallout from the virus.
OTOH Trump, anticipating that, threw out the bait that he was going to control the reopening of the economy - and the governors all took the bait. President Trump then set the hook, and now it is the governor of each state who controls the reopening - and thus the economic carnage going forward. By November Trump’s involvement will be de minimus on that issue. It will be state by state - and the Democrat governors have, in many cases, demonstrated an enthusiasm for throttling the economy indefinitely. Democrats will talk about Trump’s role in the drop in the economy, Republicans will talk about Republican governors’ success in reopening the economies of the states they control.It appears that the Democrats, having no record of doing anything but oppose Mr. Trump when he did take action, are ill positioned to criticize either the closing or the opening of the economy. The one coherent, possibly correct, objection to Mr. Trump’s action is that he didn’t follow the Swedish model (which the WHO is now touting). The Swedish government jawboned the public to take caution, but shut down nothing. That presumably cost the lives of some elderly - and possibly a few non-elderly - Swedes. OTOH if herd immunity has set in in Sweden, the Swedes are or soon will be better off than they would have been going all Gretchen Whitmer on themselves.
But the Democrats have no history of advocating that then, and cannot use it as a critique of Trump now.
I think that by now President Trump is somebody - and you can’t beat somebody with nobody. Time will show.
And the dead folk, who no longer care about the economy, ALWAYS vote Democrat!
“Will Depression II Dictate Trump’s Fate?”
Anyone who thinks that is too out-of-touch to rate an answer
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Is Buchanan taking voter enthusiasm into account?
Your friend said you are an immature jerk of the the 1st degree and your posts are only proof positive of our criticisms of you.
A lot like when the democrats pushed the narrative that Hillary was the most qualified for the White House.
Remember how they mocked Senator Joe in the 50’s?
Turns out he was right.
“Your friend said you are an immature jerk...”
Don’t be silly Darthy. Us “immature jerks” have no friends.
But you have friends...right? Very special friends who speak to you at night and only in code....right Darthy?
PT is going to pound Biden on his life long record of Globalism, and being a chi com stooge.
I have a great career, great social life and many friends and am a very well respected activist in my community. I bet you live in a relatives basement and barely make a living. Desperate losers like you always project.
“Unemployment during the 1930s never fell below 14%.”
I was always taught it was 25%.
I think it is a bit early to start extrapolating today’s events as they are now and projecting them six months into the future.
Of course the democrats will try to hang the virus around Trump’s neck. That doesn’t mean they will be successful at it.
They don’t get it. President Trump has already locked in the best economic numbers ever. He will shortly have won the war against the invisible enemy and he will be well on the way to bringing back the economy again. He did it once he can do it again. The dems (Obama/Biden) never did it.
The dems chase on mirage after another.
+1000!!
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