With at least 4 victories out of possible 6 tonight including the all important one in Michigan, Biden is on the verge of becoming the Democratic nominee. I think if Biden wins in Ohio next week, there will be no chance for Sanders to make a comeback.
The hard part now is to beat Trump. With the coronavirus crisis and the falling of the stock market, it would seem that Trump is in trouble. So far Trump has not inspire any confidence in the American people that the country will be safe from the pandemic. He told people that everyone wants to get tested for the virus can have it. In reality the number of tests available is far short of what is needed. He also said that the tests are perfect, almost as perfect as his Ukraine phone call transcript. If the test kits are worse than the transcript, it is basically worthless!
Trump also said that he understands science because he has an uncle who is a MIT professor! (Longer tenure ever, according to Trump!) I am a great cook because my father is a great chef. Those who know me would not want to eat my cooking. That is how absurd Trump's statement is. Even in times of crisis, Trump just wants to promote himself.
Given that several Congressmen who had contact with Trump has self quarantined, you would think it is time for Trump to get tested. This is true especially since he continues to greet people and have rallies. Since he has no symptoms, most likely he is not infected. But given the large number of people he comes into contact with and his position, it would be wise for him to be tested since one can be a carrier without symptoms. Unless he has no confidence in the "perfect" test.
If the virus is controlled and the stock market rebounds, it is possible that Trump will actually get a boost for his reelection. For this to happen, Trump is going to have to listen to the experts and follow their advice. Following his own hunch, like declaring that the virus will disappear soon, will not do it.
Tuesday, March 10, 2020
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Trump is kind of lucky in that by fall, the virus will be old news and the market will have corrected. So people will not remember much of what happened in early 2020. Heck the impeachment hearings is a distant memory. No one brings up Ukraine anymore.
ReplyDeleteThis whole virus spreading is interesting. You are seeing schools either go online or suspending classes. Campaign rallies are being cancelled and it looks like some NCAA games will be played in near-empty arenas.
I read somewhere that air travel is lighter due to people not wanting to fly to certain destinations. I should look into booking something because the airports probably aren't as crowded and flights might be cheaper!
It'll be interesting to see what Sanders ends up doing. My advice to him a couple of weeks ago was to head a little more towards the middle, but he didn't do that, so we are now seeing the moderates unite under Biden. Now, if Joe wins the nomination, maybe he should adopt some progressive ideas to bring some of Sanders' supporters. I am not convinced that they'll vote for Biden unless Sanders is adamant about supporting Biden.
Do you think Biden offers Warren the VP job or do you think it'll go to Harris or someone else? I actually thought that Warren as Education Secretary would be a good move on his part.
-LBOAYM
I agree that Trump may get lucky and the market and the virus will have both settled down by the fall. But it is not a sure thing. The swine flu in 2009 lasted well into 2010. The market was due for a correction anyway before this happen and now is in free fall. It will recover some but the question is how much. IF the Dow is still well below 29,000 then it is hard for Trump to make the case the economy grew more under him than Obama. (Although he will make that claim anyway).
ReplyDeleteI always say the president gets too much blame or too much credit. While I believe that Obama's policies during the recession were both reasonable and necessary, the situation was so bad when he took over that things were bound to go up. I don't think the Obama administration did a very good job with the swine flu epidemic. But everyone was so focused on the economy, that got overlooked. Plus it started here and there was not so much scrutiny back then. Most people just assumed that the U.S. will have everything under control. But this time, it started in China and things looked so bad that when it spread here, people are more scared. So Obama was lucky back in 2009.
Certainly we can't blame the Covid-19 on Trump. He was unlucky. But of course, by cutting out the pandemic response team and cutting funding to CDC, talking nonsense on media and twitter, he compounds the problems. Just like you can't blame a stock market correction on Trump, he shouldn't get credit for riding the wave of confidence before this past two weeks. But any reasonable people can tell you that starting trade war with China and pulling out of the Transpacific trade agreement and running a big deficit were unforced errors.
My wife tells me that airline prices have not been reduced much so far. I think they believe that if the virus situation gets worse, people are not going to travel no matter how low the prices. So they will cut flights rather than pick up a few bargain hunters but still have half filled planes.
If Sanders doesn't turn it around next week, it will be over. Maybe he is counting on Biden saying something really stupid in the next debate to turn the momentum. I think both Sanders and warren will hold out for more promises from Biden to adopt some progressive ideas before endorsing him, at least with some passion.
It would seem to me that Warren will want a position more important than Sec. of Education. She may want the Sec. of Treasury job in order to leave the senate. This will put her in position to fight Wall Street, something that got her famous in the first place. Harris, Booker, Klobuchar, Warren are all senators and if the Democrats want to take the senate, they can't afford to lose any of their seats. Although these seat are in Democratic states, you never are 100% sure they can be retained if someone else has to replace the incumbent. And can anyone of these help Biden in toss-up states?
A dark horse for me would be Andrew Gillum, who ran for governor of Florida in 2018 and lost by only a few thousands of votes. He is on CNN sometimes and is well-spoken. He was only a mayor before and is very young. But someone younger and also was a mayor ran for president. So certainly Gillum cam be a vp candidate if Biden decides he can help in battleground Florida and also bring out the black votes. I know it is a long shot and maybe not worth the risk for Biden, but I can't think of anyone who is a sure bet right now.
Update: Things changed so fast that by the time I write this, something drastic will probably have happened. Two days ago, people were worried that big games will be played in empty stadiums and arenas, then last night the NBA and others suspended games, then today just about everything including March Madness have been cancelled.
ReplyDeleteWhen this started in China, the western media was all over China for its slow response. They also said that the numbers China was reporting was probably inaccurate and that China was not transparent at all. After having a chance to learn from China, how accurate are we and how transparent are we? I thought the low numbers of infections reported last month in the U.S. indicated things are not bad here. Now I learn that we were not doing hardly any tests, so there are maybe 10 times more infections out there or worse than we know today. Pence said that we will have one million test kits by end of this week. But we have only 75,000 today. Trump's speech last night was terrible and today he still said that the testing we are doing is great. Anthony Fauci, the top epidemiologist finally came out and said that we are doing terrible. At this point, I have no trust in the federal government's ability to handle the pandemic.
So it is up to the people. The sports federations are doing the right thing by cancelling. At least they are listening to the scientists and medical people instead of the federal government. Interestingly, a Congressman who had to quarantine himself because he had dinner with someone tested positive was not able to get a test done on himself from the House clinic. But the Utah Jazz got 58 tests done on the same day that Rudy Goubert was tested positive. It turned out Donovan Mitchell was also positive. So if test more, we would find out more. But even a Congressman cannot get tested and there are many Americans still waiting for the test. So it seems to me that certain people are more privileged than others when it comes to medical care in this country.
Some countries with national healthcare seems to have responded better. South Korea, Germany and Singapore are examples. So Bernie Sanders maybe right. But Italy also has national health and they are in big trouble. Italy may have a higher percentage of elderly population but it is unclear why they are doing so poorly. They are forced to shut down the whole country as China did with Hubei province. Interestingly when China did it, the NYT said that it did so with the high price of human freedom. When Italy did so, the NYT said that it did so heroically despite the hit on its economy. Do you not see the hypocrisy of this? Whatever, I would say that China's response has been successful. It is now sending ventilators and other medical equipment to Italy. China learned its lessons from SARS. I don't think we have learned our lessons from SWine flu of 2009.