#Misleadership needs to be the official Democratic hashtag and epithet for Trump in the coming campaign!  I have gotten to the point where I often can’t even stand to watch and listen to him during his daily afternoon WH propaganda sessions, which he is obviously using as a substitute for campaign rallies and in which he is now going all out to rewrite recent history, denying all of his disastrous inaction, public denials and bad decisions regarding the pandemic in January and February, which as I described in my previous blog (and was even acknowledged by Dr. Fauci in a CNN interview) have unquestionably resulted in increased infections and deaths. And then there is the expected incessant self congratulation and now frantic blame deflection, in addition to the usual and even increased ranting at reporters and the media in general, particularly when they ask about or point out his lies and mistakes. In the face of the ongoing incompetence and leadership vacuum from Trump and his administration, governors and big city mayors realize that they need to take responsibility for the next phase in their own states and cities, so fortunately governors in the west coast and the northeast states are banding together to come up with actual realistic regional strategies and plans for going forward and relaxing restrictions. So Trump, who refused to push for a nationwide economic shutdown and left things up to individual governors (because he loves the constitution!!) and who has been frequently touting how soon He will reopen His great economy (recently even incredibly claiming that some areas will open up later this month), is realizing that he is becoming increasingly irrelevant in that process. As a result, like a playground bully who is being excluded from the ball game but needs to be the center of attention, he recently absurdly and pathetically claimed king-like total power over reopening the economy! Even after realizing (or being convinced) how baseless that claim was, he “backed down” by saying that he would “authorize” governors to make the decisions themselves! It is clear that he is feeling the heat and is envious of the televised daily displays of true leadership by NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo in his own news conferences, probably explaining his criticism of and Twitter rants against Cuomo and other Democratic governors, while always praising Republican governors. I’m sure his cult supporters will swallow whole everything that comes out of his mouth, including how many lives he claims he saved by his porous travel restrictions; just witness his still relatively high (for him) approval ratings, which is of course all he really cares about. 

As far as the blame game goes, the scapegoater-in-chief is now announcing he will stop US funding for the WHO because of all of their mistakes early in the pandemic, particularly their unskeptical treatment of the obviously fake statistics announced by the Chinese government and their criticism of his Chinese travel restrictions. That is so rich, given Trump’s own repeated praising of the Chinese, including their transparency, at the same time in January and February! Defunding a global health organization in the middle of a global pandemic not only makes us look really bad as a nation (and makes Trump individually look even worse), it is blatantly counterproductive and self-defeating, since the WHO is involved in vaccine trials and helping to limit viral spread elsewhere in the world, including in developing nations, which could ultimately help us reduce future waves here. But Trump certainly will not let logic get in the way of his PR blame strategy. It will also be interesting to see how things play out in the obvious struggle between Trump and his business buddies on one side who want to open the economy up very soon, and Dr. Fauci and other medical and public health experts on the other, who are acutely aware that we are simply unprepared to do that. Trump is obviously trying to tell everyone what they want to hear daily.  Fauci’s high popularity compared to Trump’s is probably the main thing keeping him in his job, particularly after Fauci admitted on CNN that earlier mitigation would have saved lives! That prompted the Trump zombies to go berserk and go after him, with Trump deliberately retweeting an anti-Fauci tweet, probably to placate them, and then publicly assuring everyone that Fauci had his support. Trump is smart enough to realize that firing Fauci would cause a firestorm and make him look terrible except to his own cult followers. 

Despite Trump’s persistent lies to the contrary, the reality is that testing in general, specifically for the virus, and now for antibodies, has been from the very beginning and remains a staggering disaster, with still less than 1% of the population tested, blinding us to the real situation and so far preventing adequate intelligent planning for and implementing of reopening the economy. Rapid testing both for the virus and antibodies must become widely available AND reliable in order for anything to work well going forward, and it seems that that situation is nowhere in sight! The FDA is reportedly approving antibody tests without even checking their accuracy!! REALLY??! Since Trump will never be able to admit this failure, and seems unwilling or unable to provide federal leadership to accomplish that goal, I do not see how he will ever be able to come up with a reopening plan that will be supported by his own medical team. I suspect most sane people will take the doctors’ advice over Trump’s, setting up another prolonged public conflict and more uncertainty, which will not benefit the public or the economy. Trump is obviously torn between the political imperative of getting the economy back in gear and the risk of a second wave before the November election which might necessitate shutting things down again, which would be easy to blame on him.

Less than five months into this pandemic we have learned a tremendous amount, but there are still a lot of unknowns, keeping a veil of uncertainty over literally everything, which itself makes everything that much worse. We have no idea what percentage of the population has been exposed, which may vary widely geographically but which will still probably be low, as has been the case in Europe. We also don’t know how long infected people are still contagious (it now looks like some are virus positive for at least a month) and whether, to what extent and for how long antibodies are protective from reinfection. We also have no idea whether and when effective therapies will be discovered and when an effective vaccine will be widely available, although the latter certainly not in less than a year in the best case scenario. So unfortunately the old normal will not be returning anytime soon!

The next big political milestone will be Biden’s choice of a VP candidate, which could still be months away. Elizabeth Warren would be an interesting choice in terms of energizing the progressive wing, although an all white, all northeastern ticket would be less than ideal. Kamala Harris is the other logical choice, but Amy Klobuchar is probably also in the running. It remains to be seen whether the conventions will even be possible in August. In any case, even though we are all in this together, don’t expect the pandemic to bring more than a transient break from the hyperpartisanship, if that!

It doesn’t seem possible that this mess is going to end well anytime soon, with the notable exception of hopefully dumping Trump in November!

#MISLEADERSHIP!!