On Friday's PBS NewsHour, the Week in Review pundits agreed as usual. In this case, they claimed that fighting COVID isn't ideological at all, which enables Republicans to vote for Biden since apparently only he is serious about fighting COVID.
DAVID BROOKS: In Yamiche's report, the Republicans thought the disease, the pandemic is not that serious. The Democrats thought it's very serious.
So, it's an objective, scientific, medical thing. It's not a matter of opinion. And yet your — one's opinion about it apparently is largely shaped by which party you follow.
I do think — and this is reflected in the shift in the polls in the last two weeks — is that now that COVID is overwhelmingly the dominant issue of the election, it's weirdly made the election and the campaign less ideological.
We're used to campaigns where there's a conservative philosophy against a progressive philosophy. This is about COVID. It's not particularly ideological. It's about getting rid of a pandemic.
And I think, for that reason, it's a lot easier for some former Trump voters to switch over and support Biden, because they don't have to say, I'm renouncing my philosophy. They just say, I need a guy, somebody who will fix this COVID thing.
So, to summarize, to support Trump now is opposing "an objective, scientific, medical thing." Liberal journalists wildly overreact to anyone suggesting that COVID doesn't kill everyone. Trump saying "Don't be afraid" is treated as criminal behavior. If you're a Republican, you're some kind of COVID Flat Earther.
Mark Shields doubled down on this:
MARK SHIELDS: I just want to endorse what David — the point David made. There is no ideology in putting out a fire. There's no ideology in rescuing a child from a burning building. This is not a question of philosophical — this is — Americans are very pragmatic. And I think that's their approach to coronavirus right now. And I think that's why the president is playing very much on defense.
This issue is "objective" and "scientific," and yet these liberal networks are politicizing the snot out of it because they believe it's a winning issue -- THE winning issue -- for Biden.
They don't ask: so what if the virus subsides if Biden's president, and people feel they didn't vote for all of the socialist craziness in the Democratic platform Biden hammered out with Bernie Sanders, they voted for "somebody who will fix this COVID thing." Will it seem short-sighted that the media encouraged single-issue voting?
