I am gobsmacked. As I interact on social media, I am still coming across an alarming number of people that think this is no big deal, a political ploy to attack the President who is trying so hard to make sure everyone is ok. In a week or two we’ll all be back to work and laughing about how freaked out we all were.
This past week, applications for unemployment insurance increased tenfold from the week before. Many are waiters and busboys immediately affected by restaurant closings. It’s a fair bet to imagine those folks do not have abundant savings accounts. They will need money immediately just to survive.
They are the tip of the iceberg. That was week one.
To the GOP defenders that may have mistakenly found their way here, let me ask you a question. Why do you thiink the Senate, YOUR Senate, is working overtime to craft the largest bailout of the American economy in the history of this country? Greater than 2008, greater than 1929. It stalled today, but it will get passed and be fatter than what just stalled. Bank on it. Why would they do that? For a stubbed toe? A bad cold?
I encourage people to share that with these folks. It seems to quiet them fairly quickly. They don’t know why their cruelty advisors are now turning into snowflakes, seemingly overnight. Very quickly it will be obvious why.
Fake news was true. It always was. He’s been lying the whole time, and the Democrats and the media were actually trying to help. They were telling the truth. He was gaslighting the base all along and Fox was enabling him to the detriment of every single citizen in the country.
In a week, two at the most, this will be undeniable. Our lives are about to change dramatically and they will never go back to what they were. Our survival will be dependent, not on the free market or big business, but on government. Fed, state and local. It will be the only shot, and that will be a long one.
This is an FDR moment. We have Trump.
No matter how good the response becomes from now on, it will be worse than it should have been because of one single man. More will fall ill, more will die and the fix will cost way more, all because of one guy. It will be a natural tendency to be appreciative if the support of the people actually happens to wiggle past the Senate, the relief so acute that the “all is forgiven” knee-jerk reaction will surely kick in.
He figured that out in the last two days.
He was obsequious in today”s presser, lavishing praise on the American people, playing the humble pie role, but if you kept watching, he wasn’t able to maintain the ruse. He pathologically needs to be seen as the hero and quickly pivoted to directing attenton to what he has done, what he understood, how humane he was. But he had opened with his new tactic and we will see him try to craft that freshly minted persona over the next week or two. He will try to refine it and polish it, so if we turn the corner he will be able to convince a percentage of the public that he turned it, he made it all better. If 50% of the people buy what he’s selling, we will have four more years.
It wll be up to Joe Biden to reveal the truth of what happened. Right now, the President is surrounded by either sychophants or captives, none of which are likely to reveal the unconscionable neglect and incompetence that has been the hallmark of this entire presidency, most obvious and tragic in this state of emergency.
Once he got over his humble-pie performance, he responded to a question of the use of the new power he has been granted by Congress to invoke the Defense Production Act that enables him to direct a company to produce a product deemed necessary for national defense. He compared that to Venezuela taking over the oil fields and said he really doesn’t want to use it, it would be bad for the United States to do that, just not American. Maybe we’ll have to, a little bit, but not if he can help it.
This will kill more people. We won’t have companies tomorrow tooling up to make ventilators and respirators that we need desperately as we are already using all we have to near capacity. Next week we will have to start making decisions of who gets to use them. Unfortunately, you will not get to decide if you need one. No company will be instructed to make masks that we need in the tens of millions, which Trump said in yesterday’s presser he didn’t understand those numbers.
There is just so much he doesn’t understand. So much he could have done. So many opportunities squandered.
So many will die.
But just like Joe Biden turned the Democratic primaries on their head, Trump will convince millions that he is a saviour, the one that delivered the American public to the promised land that lies just beyond the novel coronavirus, and in American politics, absolutely nothing matters but perception. It won’t hurt to push the Senators for a bailout they would otherwise never consider to ease the pain of the fall. If he can make it big enough so that it actually has a palliative effect for a wide range of people, he just might get away with it.
A day or two ago, I watched a reporter in the daily rally ask if the President felt like he was on a wartime footing. I watched Trump’s eyes nearly pop out of the back of his head as he recognized the opportunity of a lifetime. He immediately agreed, and said that actually he was a war time president. He hadn’t thought of this, but he knew that it opened up all kinds of opportunities. He could ride this horse a very long way. It re-emerged in today’s press conference, and I assure you it is something you are going to hear a lot of. It will certainly lead to a requirement for wartime powers. What’s a wartime President without them?
Joe will need to turn the Saviour back into the Carnival Barker.
A vote is a poll, a momentary snapshot of a given populations attitude at a given time. Both candidates are very aware of this. This will be a chess match about timing, about who can be seen as credible on one day in November.
The American voter is fickle, and the pendulum is in motion. Timing is everything.
Where she stops…