Politico is channeling a big fear of liberals concerning the coronavirus outbreak. Is this a fear that the deadly virus could spread exponentially? Perhaps. However, what really disturbs them is the possibility that President Donald Trump will get credit for keeping the number of cases relatively low which would make his reelection more likely.
Political correspondent David Siders somehow assumes that recently the Democrats had an effective plan to "take down Trump." The headline is "How coronavirus blew up the plan to take down Trump."
The subtitle reveals the anxiety: "Donald Trump’s reelection is likely to rise or fall on his handling of the pandemic. And there isn’t much Democrats can do about it."
We now join Siders as he reveals why the Democrats are feeling coronavirus angst:
For many Democrats, it’s the election of a lifetime. Yet the question preoccupying the party for several days this month was whether their presumptive presidential nominee, Joe Biden, could get the webcast working in his rec room.
It was a telling obsession, one that revealed the extent of the party’s anxiety as it comes to a nail-biting conclusion: Despite all the arguments Democrats have crafted and all the evidence they have amassed against Donald Trump, his reelection is likely to rise or fall on his handling of the coronavirus crisis and its fallout alone.
So basically what is being expressed here is that the Democrats need to fear Trump's success in keeping the number of coronavirus cases low.
“It’s the most dramatic example I can think of in my lifetime about how you cannot control the agenda,” said Les Francis, a Democratic strategist and former deputy White House chief of staff in the Carter administration.
“If life were fair,” he said, Trump would already be paying a price for his chaotic handling of the pandemic. Instead, the president’s approval rating has not taken a hit, and the dominant images are of him “at the podium in the White House, quote, in charge,” Francis said. “If those stick and they’re not countered effectively, he could get reelected."
Perhaps Francis should be more worried about combating the pandemic rather than obsessing over how Trump effectively keeping the number of cases low could help his reelection.
The public’s unbreakable focus on the virus is narrowing the range of issues on which Democrats can effectively draw contrasts with Trump — temporarily sidelining a broader agenda involving once-pressing issues such as climate change and gun control.
Newsflash, David! Most of the public is not really worried about computer model climate change and they are concerned about gun control primarily as pertains to maintaining Second Amendment rights. However, it is interesting to see what really worries the Democrats now... That Trump will prove to be successful in fighting the pandemic. Thank you for that unsurprising revelation, David.
