In the annals of make-or-break political moments for a president, life and death situations often loom largest. The Iran Hostage Crisis of 1979 and Hurricane Katrina come to mind immediately for helping to sink the approvals of a president who never quite recovered and indeed helped doom his party in the upcoming election. Katrina, for instance, shook America's confidence in the competence of the George W. Bush White House, helping Democrats notch massive wins the following year during the midterms that flipped control of both the House and the Senate. By the time Barack Obama was elected in 2008, he had the benefit of historic Democratic majorities to help him usher in a major change to America’s health system.
Now Senate Republicans hoping to hang on to their seats in November are fretting as they watch Donald Trump's bungled coronavirus response. After holding a sham impeachment trial and acquitting Trump of any wrongdoing, Republicans have now cosigned every disastrous mistake Trump makes. Among the things Republicans have gifted to America in this moment are Trump’s stunning incapacity for human empathy and total inability to understand even the most basic public health concerns. According to the Washington Post, Trump's GOP allies on the Hill have become "unsettled" and "on edge" as they watch Trump's overwhelming incompetence in the face of a life-threatening crisis.
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“It’s really bad for those who have kind of hitched their wagon to the president ahead of this year’s election and are relying on him and his base,” former senator Jeff Flake told the Post, in an admission more candid than any sitting GOP senators would be willing to make.
Democrats, however, are plenty eager to state the obvious.
“I don’t think we can ignore how disastrous their performance has been,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said of Trump and his administration. “In many ways this was the moment we feared: a true security threat to the nation and a president who can’t tell the truth, who can’t organize a consistent response, and doesn’t have enough experienced people on the job.”
Meanwhile, Trump's been openly mocking the media's coronavirus hysteria to his campaign donors. “It’s not that big of a deal,” Trump said at one event. Presumably that was before Monday, when the stock market suffered its worst drop in over a decade. Trump sure rushed to the cameras Monday evening to reassure the markets and congratulate himself on how great his administration has been handling the crisis.
Speaking of which—congratulations to all the congressional Republicans who helped make Trump's stellar response possible. See you in November.