Thursday, April 2, 2020

Trump's Covid-19 reelection strategy

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/04/01/opinions/trump-covid-19-response-reelection-strategy-lockhart/index.html

All of this confirms that while the president was slow off the mark to respond to the pandemic, he was always working off a political plan that had his reelection as the top priority.
In January and February his administration didn't see a political benefit in getting out ahead of this. In late March as the cases grew, that changed. But judging from his actions, it's still politics and reelection that are largely driving his response.

 

3 comments :

  1. “Trump's Covid-19 reelection strategy”
    No.
    See https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-weak-election-strategy-11585780418?mod=opinion_lead_pos8
    “Mr. Biden can’t count on a poor coronavirus economy to give him the win. Chances are voters will blame the virus, not the president. And just as the economy declined rapidly, it could rise rapidly afterward. Mr. Trump is also likely to have plenty of his own good recovery ideas. Dominating the airwaves, surrounded by health experts and daily projecting forward movement, Mr. Trump has the upper hand. If Mr. Biden maintains his strategy of mollifying the left and grousing during this crisis, he’ll only strengthen the president’s standing.”
    Allow me to quote here from Churchill WW2 vol. 4 page 54. Seems the press wanted someone else to run the war, not Churchill. Churchill made mistakes: versus Rommel early 1942 and versus Japan early 1942. Fortresses fell and so many died. Churchill’s firing up to attack Rommel and Japan could gain only short delay of a few weeks at high cost in men and equipment. I like leaders of Australia arguing with Churchill 1942.
    “The Press was full of suggestions [January 1942] that I should remain Prime Minister and make the speeches but cede the actual control of the war to someone else. I resolved to yield nothing to any quarter, to take the prime and direct personal responsibility upon myself, and to demand a Vote of Confidence from the House of Commons....There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away. The British people can face peril or misfortune with fortitude and buoyancy, but they bitterly resent being deceived or finding that those responsible for their affairs are themselves dwelling in a fool’s paradise. I felt it vital, not only, to my own position but to the whole conduct of the war, to discount future calamities by describing the immediate outlook in the darkest terms.”
    Wow the first day of Passover, April 8, 2020 is the day China frees up Wuhan, removes the lockdown in Wuhan!

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  2. This should not surprise anyone. All politicians base their decisions on how those will affect their chance of re-election. Let's say there was a way to end coronovirus safely in 4 weeks and then re-open the US but it would cost the politician who implemented it his chances in the next election. NO politician would do it. It's just that Trump is in that position right now but if it was Hillary or Demented Joe, it would be the same. Again, it's the rotten system, not the person in the office running the rotten system, that's the problem.

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  3. No politician will commit political suicide, no matter how great the cost.

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