The Coronavitus Will Cause a Political Pandemic

As a column in the Washington Post notes, so far Donald Trump's handling of the coronavirus has been less than a study in building public confidence.   Indeed, Trump and his sycophants continue to suggest that the entire health care scare is a hoax and his regime is trying to censor statements by medical experts.  Trump's main concern is not public health and citizens dying but instead the stock market level.  Having a malignant narcissist in the White House during a potential pandemic is decidedly not a good thing. Here are column excerpts:

Political interference with that process will almost certainly backfire by corroding public confidence and abetting confusion. Some of Trump’s public comments have not been helpful because they suggest that the president is not entirely in agreement with some of his medical advisers.

No doubt [Trump] the president is unhappy with the dramatic decline in the stock market. He has clearly indicated that he expected to make the market’s spectacular gains a major theme in his bid for reelection.

This will be harder now, maybe impossible. But if Trump responds by searching for scapegoats or blaming his economic and health advisers, he will make a bad situation worse — for him, the country and (possibly) the world.

A piece in Vanity Fair looks at the potential political consequences of a spread of the virus in America may mean in the context of the presidential election.  Here are highlights: 

If trends hold, the coronavirus will soon upend daily life here in the United States. Schools in some cities will close for a while; supply chains will be disrupted; people will stay at home; and the economy will suffer a blow. Even now, stock prices have continued to fall, and surgical masks have been sold out for weeks. Yesterday, we could read about the first case of so-called community transmission, after a patient in northern California tested positive for coronavirus despite having no obvious link to anyone else with it. Despite assurances from Donald Trump this week that “we’ve had tremendous success” in containing the coronavirus outbreak, Americans are unconvinced.

Coronavirus is going to be everybody’s running mate in 2020, and the question is who will fare worst as a result. In what’s normally a zero-sum game, whatever hurts one candidate helps the other. But coronavirus won’t be so clear-cut. A lot depends on how bad things get and who is running against whom.

On the Republican side, we know we’re getting Trump, and early signs of his approach to the virus are unpromising. An engaged president would be on the phone daily with CDC officials, members of Congress, military leaders, cabinet officials, medical experts, and even companies like 3M, which produces the masks on which people will be relying. Trump instead sounded like someone who got a few scattered briefings. Asked about why the CDC—which, as feared, has been stumbling out of the gate—has tested only about 500 people, versus the thousands of tests being conducted in other countries, Trump couldn’t hide that he was winging it, . . . before going into a recitative about washing hands. Trump hasn’t been sounding much of an alarm, for fear of setting off panic and seeing stock prices fall further, so life has continued as normal. He has no evident master plan, and yesterday he was trafficking in the-flu-is-worse clichés that were last in fashion weeks ago. He’d be better off as the border fanatic that people believe him to be.

If we get through the next couple of months without a big outbreak, then Trump will be in okay shape. While he might not get a lot of credit for preventing disaster (because people rarely do), he won’t suffer for it, and he’ll be able to boast of aggressive measures taken, regardless of what we did. If things get very bad, however, then Trump will have a tough time hanging onto office. We can see he knows this is a possibility, because he has appointed Mike Pence to oversee the federal response. This is a lot like China’s leader Xi Jinping assigning a similar task to Premier Li Keqiang. If things get bad, you can blame it on the bumbling lieutenant.

Meanwhile, among Democrats, coronavirus has a quite different effect. Trump’s loss is their gain, in the big picture, but they are also running against one another. In the most mundane realm, self-quarantining means that people don’t leave their homes. They don’t vote, don’t caucus, and don’t show up for rallies. This limits the ability of candidates to mobilize people, and it favors those who get a lot of attention even without campaigning on the ground. It’s okay for Mike Bloomberg, who has ads running all day on television, but it’s less ideal for the others. Bernie Sanders fires up his supporters with enormous rallies, as Donald Trump and Barack Obama did before him. Those would have to cease for a while.

Coronavirus will have people looking for plausible managers. Bloomberg, of course, has been mentioned in that regard, and it will help him. Elizabeth Warren, who claims to have plans for most things, might also get a lift. Blandness will become a virtue, as well, so Amy Klobuchar will look stronger. On the other hand, Joe Biden would not be likely to gain much ground. He has no real reputation for management, and he also lacks the vigor characteristic of effective leaders in crisis.

Bernie Sanders is less of a manager, but he would have a different and important advantage in the middle of an epidemic, which is commitment to “Medicare for all.” It sounds too drastic for many Americans when things are normal. It doesn’t sound so drastic during a pandemic, when infected people will be avoiding doctor’s appointments for fear of bankruptcy. As things stand, it’s all too plausible that, within a few weeks, people will be safer in Shanghai than in New York, because in China people are vigilant, and cases are finally on the wane, while here things are looser, and just getting started. The coronavirus will shuffle the political deck for everyone, the more so the longer it continues. But no matter who profits or loses politically with this epidemic, sane people can only hope that it comes and goes fast. The less effect it has on our politics, or anything else, the happier we’ll be. Even Mike Bloomberg would agree.