Political Roundtable Part XXVIII

[dobrojim]

The thing about the newspaper endorsements was the number of previously
consistently conservative newspapers that would not endorse him.

But what do experts know?

[dobrojim]

The part that caught my eye:

The rejection of Trump is even more lopsided than the 1972 presidential contest, when the vast majority of papers backed Richard Nixon's reelection bid. Only 7 percent of papers that endorsed that year picked George McGovern, the Democratic nominee. This year, only 3 percent of papers are backing Trump.

That caught my eye as well. Of course there was little inkling of Watergate at that point in time.
Arguably there should have been more but few would have believed it .

[verbal8]

If Trump hadn't screwed the pooch on the tests and gone out and really aggressively identified covid cases and quarantined them we wouldn't need to be taking the drastic steps we're taking now. This is all 1000% on Trump.

That people in general die from COVID19 in general, isn't on Trump. However a good portion of the death toll and need for extreme measures is entirely due to Trump's lack of leadership.

[Wizardspride]

Read on Twitter

?s=19

[Pointgod]

Read on Twitter

?s=19

It’s over. Bernie needs to drop out.

[I_Like_Dirt]

It’s over. Bernie needs to drop out.

He should have dropped out already. This is totally needless and reckless at this point. People are really supposed to believe he's for everyone's wellbeing like he says he is when he pulls stuff like this? He's somehow going to be different in office because he says so? His complete inability to actually play the politics game with other players involved has been shining increasingly brightly for this entire campaign. Bernie has basically been his own worst enemy.

Having written this, he's probably going to drop out within minutes, but I'll still believe it when I see it.

[Zonkerbl]

If Trump hadn't screwed the pooch on the tests and gone out and really aggressively identified covid cases and quarantined them we wouldn't need to be taking the drastic steps we're taking now. This is all 1000% on Trump.

That people in general die from COVID19 in general, isn't on Trump. However a god portion of the death toll and need for extreme measures is entirely due to Trump's lack of leadership.

To be precise, the need for widespread shutdowns of the services sector right now because of the need for general social distancing is 100% on Trump. If the US had more aggressively fixed the testing problem, and taken the issue seriously in general instead of calling it a hoax, we would have a much more precise map of where the virus is concentrated, knowing which parts of the country need to be shut down, and we would have identified at least *some* asymptomatic carriers of the virus and been able to quarantine them.

This is all 1000% Trump's fault, and the country is going to suffer extreme economic consequences because of his incompetence.

I don't think all that many people will die because state and local governments are in fact competent and will take the necessary steps to prevent the spread of the virus. But the largescale lockdown of the economy that's causing the stock market to crash could have been much less drastic if Trump had not been such a huge douche about it.

[I_Like_Dirt]

To be precise, the need for widespread shutdowns of the services sector right now because of the need for general social distancing is 100% on Trump. If the US had more aggressively fixed the testing problem, and taken the issue seriously in general instead of calling it a hoax, we would have a much more precise map of where the virus is concentrated, knowing which parts of the country need to be shut down, and we would have identified at least *some* asymptomatic carriers of the virus and been able to quarantine them.

This is all 1000% Trump's fault, and the country is going to suffer extreme economic consequences because of his incompetence.

I don't think all that many people will die because state and local governments are in fact competent and will take the necessary steps to prevent the spread of the virus. But the largescale lockdown of the economy that's causing the stock market to crash could have been much less drastic if Trump had not been such a huge douche about it.

I actually think a lot of these measures would have been necessary regardless. This is something that was coming no matter what anyone did. Nobody has been able to prevent it anywhere. The levels of unpreparedness, lack of effectiveness of the response and some of the surrounding chaos is definitely on Trump, though, and I sort of get the impression that most of the consequences of his actions are things we actually haven't seen yet. Constantly turning situations into times when you need to pick sides invariably sets things up so that there will be someone somebody thinks shouldn't be helped and instead should "pay" somehow.

We see it already with China being blamed and the reparations talk (as though the US paid reparations for the "Spanish" flu). This is something that you either help everyone or you're not actually helping anyone as well as you otherwise might. You can't pick teams or make this a zero sum game and that's where there is the potential for some serious consequences that will be on largely on Trump. I hope that potential future doesn't come to pass.

[Zonkerbl]

To be precise, the need for widespread shutdowns of the services sector right now because of the need for general social distancing is 100% on Trump. If the US had more aggressively fixed the testing problem, and taken the issue seriously in general instead of calling it a hoax, we would have a much more precise map of where the virus is concentrated, knowing which parts of the country need to be shut down, and we would have identified at least *some* asymptomatic carriers of the virus and been able to quarantine them.

This is all 1000% Trump's fault, and the country is going to suffer extreme economic consequences because of his incompetence.

I don't think all that many people will die because state and local governments are in fact competent and will take the necessary steps to prevent the spread of the virus. But the largescale lockdown of the economy that's causing the stock market to crash could have been much less drastic if Trump had not been such a huge douche about it.

I actually think a lot of these measures would have been necessary regardless. This is something that was coming no matter what anyone did. Nobody has been able to prevent it anywhere. The levels of unpreparedness, lack of effectiveness of the response and some of the surrounding chaos is definitely on Trump, though, and I sort of get the impression that most of the consequences of his actions are things we actually haven't seen yet. Constantly turning situations into times when you need to pick sides invariably sets things up so that there will be someone somebody thinks shouldn't be helped and instead should "pay" somehow.

We see it already with China being blamed and the reparations talk (as though the US paid reparations for the "Spanish" flu). This is something that you either help everyone or you're not actually helping anyone as well as you otherwise might. You can't pick teams or make this a zero sum game and that's where there is the potential for some serious consequences that will be on largely on Trump. I hope that potential future doesn't come to pass.

I don't think a lot of these measures are necessary. I mean they're necessary *now* because we have no information and have to take a lot of drastic precautionary steps because we don't know what's going on. We have COVID cases that have no traceable connection to an infected person, meaning the virus is floating around in the population and we have no idea who is infected or where. Well, that would still be the case even if we did have testing because the test fails to detect infection about half the time anyway. But we still would have a much more precise map of where the problem areas are if we hadn't screwed the testing pooch.

Well, and I only know what's going on in DC. For all I know all the flyover red states are going to be smoking holes in the ground by the time this is over and we'll be sad we didn't declare a state of national emergency and have the national guard out enforcing social distancing. But that's still on Trump.

[I_Like_Dirt]

I think the only chance of getting out in front of something like this is to take absolutely drastic measures that seem totally disproportionate at the time and then add a few more drastic measures on top of it. I'm not totally sure that the measures we're seeing now are enough, either. It wouldn't surprise me if we don't see even more drastic measures taken at some point, though that may come in the form of simply expanding and prolonging current measures. It definitely would have helped a lot to contain things early on but I'm not convinced there was any preventing these kinds of measures.

The only time there was any chance of preventing these kinds of measures was way back in November or December. And even then, it may or may not have been possible and any chance would have hinged on extremely close coordination with China at a time when relations weren't necessarily at their best, though some of that is definitely on Trump, too, but I'm not sure that even without Trump relations would have been strong enough for the kinds of actions that would have been needed.

[DCZards]

It’s over. Bernie needs to drop out.

He should have dropped out already. This is totally needless and reckless at this point. People are really supposed to believe he's for everyone's wellbeing like he says he is when he pulls stuff like this? He's somehow going to be different in office because he says so? His complete inability to actually play the politics game with other players involved has been shining increasingly brightly for this entire campaign. Bernie has basically been his own worst enemy.

Having written this, he's probably going to drop out within minutes, but I'll still believe it when I see it.

Bernie should drop out while he still has the leverage to impact the Democratic platform. If Bernie insists on continuing a fruitless primary race--especially in the midst of a national crisis--he's going to piss off a lot of people and risks losing some of the influence he currently has within the Dem party.

Given the outcome of the recent state primary races, I think even Bernie's supporters are sending him the message that he needs to get out of the race so that the party can begin to unify behind Joe--and the country can focus on the Coronavirus crisis.

[Zonkerbl]

I think more information is better than less and it is inconceivable to me that we would not be better off *right now* if Trump had not started off this whole fiasco by calling it a Dem hoax and being intentionally negligent with testing protocols. It's *crazy* to think otherwise. Would we be a little better off or a lot? I don't know. My feeling is if Obama were still President we'd be hugely better off right now.

[pancakes3]

@Zonk

Read on Twitter

[I_Like_Dirt]

I think more information is better than less and it is inconceivable to me that we would not be better off *right now* if Trump had not started off this whole fiasco by calling it a Dem hoax and being intentionally negligent with testing protocols. It's *crazy* to think otherwise. Would we be a little better off or a lot? I don't know. My feeling is if Obama were still President we'd be hugely better off right now.

I absolutely agree we would be better off were Trump not president. A lot better off? I'm not sure. That term is so subjective that it's tough to nail down what it actually means in this case. I think the virus would still be spreading like wildfire and we'd be locking down cities and taking a lot of the same measures we're seeing now. We probably would have seen it start a little bit sooner and that has the potential to save a fair amount of lives in the end which would have been amazing. We'd still be talking about potentially millions dying regardless.

[pancakes3]

words fail to describe how incredibly awful this is

Read on Twitter

[Zonkerbl]

Aggressive testing helps Italian town cut new coronavirus cases to zero

https://www.ft.com/content/0dba7ea8-6713-11ea-800d-da70cff6e4d3?fbclid=IwAR02cpXTNJUGVXpt7wTi4zrMvuWh2f8xV36AKDc9lL7O2TvVpd3smze6wVE

[Zonkerbl]

@Zonk

Read on Twitter

:swears quietly to self:

[Zonkerbl]

words fail to describe how incredibly awful this is

Read on Twitter

A bunch of problems with this. Primarily, how long is it going to take to identify people who qualify based on need? Are you going to base this off of tax returns? Because not every household affected is an income earner who pays taxes, and the most vulnerable people are most likely to not file taxes.

Kinda the same problem as voter suppression. Who are you going to allow to vote? People who pay taxes? Not everyone pays taxes. Everyone who has a driver's license? Not everyone has a driver's license.

I think you have to 1) send a check to everyone with a driver's license and then 2) set up a website where you ask for a check, and it has to be set up so that if they sent you a check already they catch it and don't send you another one.

Just beefing up unemployment insurance would be a huge mistake. A lot of people affected are not officially laid off. If you give money to businesses to pay their employees, how do you make sure that actually happens? Expansion of medicare might be a good strategy at least.

[pancakes3]

means-testing is always a clusterf*ck. the added layer of idiocy is that means-testing is usually the concession that dems make when republicans stonewall it. this time, R's are on board and Dems seemingly are insisting on means-testing as a pavlovian response. You have the green light - just enact it. if you're worried about the 1% getting money that they don't need... it's only 1%.

[Ruzious]

If Trump hadn't screwed the pooch on the tests and gone out and really aggressively identified covid cases and quarantined them we wouldn't need to be taking the drastic steps we're taking now. This is all 1000% on Trump.

That people in general die from COVID19 in general, isn't on Trump. However a god portion of the death toll and need for extreme measures is entirely due to Trump's lack of leadership.

To be precise, the need for widespread shutdowns of the services sector right now because of the need for general social distancing is 100% on Trump. If the US had more aggressively fixed the testing problem, and taken the issue seriously in general instead of calling it a hoax, we would have a much more precise map of where the virus is concentrated, knowing which parts of the country need to be shut down, and we would have identified at least *some* asymptomatic carriers of the virus and been able to quarantine them.

This is all 1000% Trump's fault, and the country is going to suffer extreme economic consequences because of his incompetence.

I don't think all that many people will die because state and local governments are in fact competent and will take the necessary steps to prevent the spread of the virus. But the largescale lockdown of the economy that's causing the stock market to crash could have been much less drastic if Trump had not been such a huge douche about it.

Speaking of competent state and local governments, Governor Hogan from Maryland and chair of the National Governors Association has been stepping up his game - more and more in the national spotlight - not playing politics at all - which is why he's the Governor of MD while being a Republican - no small feet. It's obvious he's focused on doing the right things instead of playing games. It's hard to find anyone who doesn't respect him, and he's a very likable guy. 2024 might be his year.