I'm not so certain. There is extreme political polarization, yes, but I don't think we can honestly look at the situation at hand and not see the giant Trump shaped elephant in the room. He hasn't ever governed as a "unity" president. That has worked for him when things were generally humming along but it fails catastrophically in times of crisis. Lots of people (myself included) simply don't believe he can put aside partisanship and his own ambition to do what is in the best interest of the country. I feel like my mistrust has been proven correct.
Remember, at the start of this crisis Trump did start holding regular Covid briefings, there were big actions taken, and his approval numbers went up quite a bit. But then he backed away from all that, and started actively undermining things. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/
I'm honestly baffled by it because he doesn't even have to really succeed to get good approval numbers, he just has to look like he cares, but he can't manage even that.
Contrast this with Andrew Cuomo of New York, who by any objective measure totally screwed things up. It didn't matter though - he was decisive, held daily briefings, and at least looked like he was putting in effort to fix things. Now his popularity is up a ton.
https://buffalonews.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/public-...
That's really the core of my entire thesis. The public doesn't expect perfection in the face of something like this - I don't. But I do expect the politician to give a damn, or at least put in the effort of looking like they giving a damn.
A crisis like this is exactly the sort of thing you can rally the country around. There was a brief two week period in late March where it actually happened! It was a choice by Trump, which then filtered down into Trump leaning local politicians, to turn it into a proxy war.
Believe me, I'm cynical about politics too, but I think you're engaging in the worse kind of "both-sidesism" with this. Is your contention really that if Hilary was president, Republicans would have all locked down, and Democrats would not? I just don't see it. We only truly know about the timeline we are in right now, shrugging your shoulders and saying things wouldn't be better anyway in another timeline you don't know anything about isn't helpful.
What I'm saying is that if Sec. Clinton were in office the red states would be doing exactly what they're doing now. It wouldn't have made a lick of difference.
I should have been more explicit on that.
> Contrast this with Andrew Cuomo of New York...
Exactly. I think this is part of the problem on the left. The desire to do something, anything, when sometimes doing nothing, or less, is the right thing. And then if it doesn't work out saying "yeah but we did something!".
Frankly, I think the outcome in NY was inevitable regardless of policy. So I don't blame Cuomo but I also don't think he's a hero. He just did his job and showed up. The way the data has shaped up against other jurisdictions around the country/globe I think they would have gotten about the same outcome regardless of the policy.
> It was a choice by Trump, which then filtered down into Trump leaning local politicians, to turn it into a proxy war
That's fair. He did "start it". He's a real problem for sure. Anything he touches or recommend almost can't be touched by the left for fear of keeping him in office.
But same for the right. There's no way the red states would have saddled up with Clinton.
> What I'm saying is that if Sec. Clinton were in office the red states would be doing exactly what they're doing now. It wouldn't have made a lick of difference.
Sure it would. Heck if a Republican that wasn't Trump was in office now, there wouldn't have been the White House bully pulpit being used against basic safety measures and White House emergency powers abused to block states from getting PPE and other emergency supplies. We'd probably have a state aid bill, too, though probably a less generous one than a Democratic Administration and Senate would have been on board for, but probably more than nothing. Which make it financially more viable to do lockdowns (states often can't, Constitutionally, borrow for no capital expenses, and procedurally have a difficult process to approve new debt and have a high cost of borrowing, the Feds have none of those problems). Leadership matters and there's a reason Trump's numbers are falling even among Republicans.
Thanks for the clarification. I thought you meant a complete reversal. If Hillary were president I think red states would have resisted but its hard for me to imagine they would be doing it at the same level. Maybe i'm being too Pollyanna there.
I also agree that simply doing something, anything, isn't always the right approach. I'm an independent who hangs out with the left and there is a tendency to reach for the hammer of government a bit too often. The feds shouldn't have led the charge by any means, but once individual states had started to shut down, a coordinated federal response to get this fully under control would have been the best approach. I think the end game for this will be something like that.
Here’s the thing, you can be as ideological about this as you want but if you look around the world at what has worked, empirically, national level intervention with a large testing and tracing effort at that level is what works. The best approach is what keeps people from overwhelming hospitals, not what meets some platonic ideal of overlapping spheres of influence.
Remember, at the start of this crisis Trump did start holding regular Covid briefings, there were big actions taken, and his approval numbers went up quite a bit. But then he backed away from all that, and started actively undermining things. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ I'm honestly baffled by it because he doesn't even have to really succeed to get good approval numbers, he just has to look like he cares, but he can't manage even that.
Contrast this with Andrew Cuomo of New York, who by any objective measure totally screwed things up. It didn't matter though - he was decisive, held daily briefings, and at least looked like he was putting in effort to fix things. Now his popularity is up a ton. https://buffalonews.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/public-...
That's really the core of my entire thesis. The public doesn't expect perfection in the face of something like this - I don't. But I do expect the politician to give a damn, or at least put in the effort of looking like they giving a damn. A crisis like this is exactly the sort of thing you can rally the country around. There was a brief two week period in late March where it actually happened! It was a choice by Trump, which then filtered down into Trump leaning local politicians, to turn it into a proxy war.
Believe me, I'm cynical about politics too, but I think you're engaging in the worse kind of "both-sidesism" with this. Is your contention really that if Hilary was president, Republicans would have all locked down, and Democrats would not? I just don't see it. We only truly know about the timeline we are in right now, shrugging your shoulders and saying things wouldn't be better anyway in another timeline you don't know anything about isn't helpful.