Posted on 03/16/2020 7:29:17 AM PDT by Kaslin
Until the coronavirus outbreak, most conservatives were pretty confident President Donald Trump would get reelected. The economy was doing great, which is a good sign an incumbent president will win reelection. But the coronavirus may change things. We may end up in a recession.
Although only 58 people in the U.S. have died from it so far, the country is taking drastic action to reduce the spread of it. The flu kills about 12,000 people in the U.S. each year, but the coronavirus is 10 times more deadly than the flu.
As a result, the extreme measures are hurting the economy and jobs. People are staying at home and avoiding travel and entertainment. Schools are shutting down. Retirees are losing their investments in stocks. Everyone has been affected to some extent. People panicking and overloading on supplies from grocery stores are making life difficult for others who can’t get the essentials like toilet paper.
And there’s no end in sight. Some experts predict two months, but they could be overly optimistic. Two months is a long time regardless for misery.
Trump didn’t cause the coronavirus. But he is being blamed for everything in regards to handling it. He’s done an excellent job despite the naysaying from Democrats and the mainstream media. He’s taking drastic action.
Cutting off travel from China was the right thing to do. But Trump was accused of being racist. Then after he did it, they criticized him for not doing it fast enough. But Barack Obama moved far slower than Trump dealing with the swine flu.
And then when Europe became a hotbed for the virus, as new cases in China dwindled, Trump cut off travel from there. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says 70% of the new cases of the virus are coming from Europe.
Newt Gingrich, who is currently living in Italy, observed, “When you realize that the current 1,016 deaths in Italy with a population of 60 million would be the equivalent of 5,400 deaths in the United States instead of the 41 deaths we have had so far, you can see what milder, slower and less aggressive responses might have cost in lives.”
Conservative columnist Rachel Marsden described the aggressive steps Russia has taken, which are working there. The country put up “barriers, closing its border with coronavirus hotbed China in late January, banning high-risk flights, maintaining strict screening at border checkpoints and placing Russian expats evacuated from the Chinese city of Wuhan in quarantine for three weeks — in Siberia.” As a result, there have been only 17 reported cases of coronavirus, despite 51,000 reported tests.
Joe Biden attacked Trump’s handling of the crisis, then turned around and plagiarized Trump’s plan. This comes as no surprise, since Biden has a history of plagiarism. Tim Murtaugh, the communications director for the Trump campaign, said Biden raised the “vile conspiracy theory that the President purposely allowed the coronavirus to spread.” This is dishonest considering how aggressively Trump has moved to prevent that.
Same with falsely accusing Trump of calling the crisis a hoax and not treating it seriously. What he actually said was a criticism of the “politicizing” of the coronavirus by Democrats as “their new hoax.”
Trump’s critics fault him no matter what action he takes. Jon Gabriel, the conservative editor of Ricochet, points out how the left criticized Trump for not getting tested for coronavirus right away. But after he got the test, they complained about why he was able to access the test before other people.
Trump’s speeches are criticized for either being too ominous or not worried enough, no matter how carefully he tries to walk that fine line between the two approaches.
Mike Huckabee observed, “So … how has the other side responded? You know, the people with such high standards of ‘character’ for others? Thus far, they have relentlessly attacked, mocked, criticized, second-guessed and undermined everything Trump has tried to do.”
If the crisis is averted after a couple of months, they’ll say Trump didn’t stop it fast enough. No matter how many people die, even if a small number, they will say it could have been smaller. Trump can’t win. When it’s all over, the Democrats will claim everything Trump did was wrong.
These vicious attacks are in contrast to previous outbreaks. The actor James Woods observed, “I remember the H1N1 and SARS epidemics. Everyone supported our president then. There was no hysteria and the doomsayers kept their mouths shut. Thousands of people died and yet the press supported the astonishingly tepid response by the leaders of the time. Why the hysteria now?”
What’s sad is liberal networks like CNN and MSNBC are so focused on nitpicking Trump that they are squandering time that could be spent giving people important information about the outbreak.
All the people significantly affected by this crisis — especially those losing working hours — may hold it against Trump. The Democrats will of course say the job interruptions could have been avoided. And if Trump had started to contain the virus faster, we wouldn’t have had to avoid public places and businesses.
What it’s going to come down to is will Americans believe the Democrats and mainstream media and fault Trump for much of the epidemic, or will they see through the lies and realize he did an excellent job addressing it? It’s going to be an uphill battle as the Democrats and media act as an echo chamber for each other. Trump is going to be in the fight of his life.
‘Only those with IQs less than room temperature would hold DT responsible for the current mess.’
Yea but today that’s half the country...and many of them have just been recently’ educated’...so to speak!
If it does, many here will be responsible for contributing to the panic.
Since the Democrats’ plan seems to be to nominate a senile candidate and throw the borders open as wide as possible, I’d say it’s a no.
While I think you are too optimistic about the number dead I agree with you.
i hope not but who wants Biden??? the more he speaks the worse he looks
Trump is not responsible for the virus, but the messaging of this response has been gawd-awful. Calm briefings about testing minutia and how only the sick and elderly are at risk, followed by repeated mega-bombs about drastically changing our daily lives.
Yesterday’s briefing: “The CDC will be issuing new guidelines”. Yeah, the new guidelines are to shut-down everything with more than 50 people in it.
They would have been much better off just spitting that out in the first place.
It is causing a whole lot of people to think they’re hiding something.
The American people will vote for the individual they have the most confident in. Right now that is President Trump.
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Yes, and by that standard, either Biden or the Commie will lose in a landslide.
There will be an election, but as you note, we are currently at the mercy of the "Ughknown".
Re: markets - The markets are being driven in part by a sentiment of fear. When that changes, the markets will start to recover.
Fear is coming from many angles. Some elected leaders at the state and local level look fearful and I believe a lot of that is due to their temperament - when everything is humming along - no problem. When a big problem comes along, well, there's a problem. Re: Main Street - when businesses can open again and run in a semi-normal fashion.
Somewhat related, saw a post on HA that is being attributed to being made at Ace of Spades:
"When this is all over and the smoke clears, we will have plenty of time to find those who not only caused the panic, but took advantage of us and our fellow citizens when they were most in need. At that point we can raise the black flag and start slitting throats."
This is the kind of thing that can have a major impact on an incumbent re-election chances.
Re: 68 - President Trump’s re-election will ride in large part on how we addresses and handles this crisis. Many eyes are on him.
I wish him success, as should we all.
Presidents are often held accountable four things that weren’t their fault. The great depression wasn’t Herbert Hoover’s fault.
I implore all to cover this good man in DAILY prayer.
"When this is all over and the smoke clears, we will have plenty of time to find those who not only caused the panic, but took advantage of us and our fellow citizens when they were most in need. At that point we can raise the black flag and start slitting throats."
Time for a music break!
I sure hope you're right. I believe the general assessment to date is for the most part, no one could've seen this coming or could've done anything to prevent it.
How Trump manages it, will be the measure of his Presidency--if people perceive his actions as appropriate, effective, and normalcy returns in an appropriate amount of time, he will be re-elected.
Of course we all know, the media will do everything they can to hang this from Trump's neck as "his Katrina." They are salivating with the prospect of making him look as bad as possible, even if that means taking the entire economy and country to its knees.
I've seen this claim, too. I think the data set is much more limited with COVID-19, so I'm not sure they can fully extrapolate that magnitude.
No
The great depression was all around the world, and it cost President Hoover his job.
You’re expecting the majority of folks to ask themselves logical questions? Expect to be disappointed.
There’s a very clear cause and effect relationship here unlike normal economic downturns in which the president can be semi-plausibly blamed for the problem.
Exactly. Since he took a not great economy when he was elected to a booming one, there’s no one more competent to do so again as needed after all this mess ends.
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