Donald Trump could have—should have—been the very last person in the country to contract COVID-19. He had access to the most up-to-date science, limitless rapid testing, the best of modern medicine, a personal physician round-the-clock, and a miniature army devoted to nothing else but ensuring his safety.
Yet he got the disease anyway, and it’s entirely his fault, for reasons both small and monumental. On the individual level, Trump ignored, overruled, and distorted the scientific findings his own administration produced, most notoriously in his mockery of masks and his refusal to wear one. He has, of course, also engaged in multiple high-risk behaviors, like holding the indoor rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that likely killed Herman Cain, one of Trump’s own campaign chairs, as well as frequent travel with a large entourage, including a jaunt to his New Jersey golf club for a fundraiser Thursday evening after learning that his own aide, Hope Hicks, was sick with the coronavirus.
But much more broadly, Trump’s failure to combat the pandemic has left the virus rampaging throughout the country. With a national mask mandate, smart lockdowns, a universal testing strategy, and regular stimulus checks for idled workers and shuttered businesses, the U.S. could be in the far healthier and freer situation today enjoyed by Australia or South Korea or Vietnam or our neighbor Canada. Ordinary civilians and top government officials alike would be vastly less likely to come down with COVID. Yet here we are.
The most important lesson in all this is that it’s not just Trump’s fault: Our alarming state can be laid at the feet of the entire Republican Party. Ask yourself this: When have GOP leaders ever criticized Trump’s response? When have Republicans in Congress ever sought to pass legislation over his veto threats? When have they simply stood up and said, “Wear a g-ddamn mask, for f-ck’s sake!”?
Sure, a few isolated Republican governors who don’t have a personal death wish have, often belatedly, taken some steps to halt the pandemic’s spread. But the party as a whole has, as ever, gone along with the menace who leads it. Republicans have always known Trump was a danger, never more literally so than now. But when GOP senators had the chance to remove him from office, they declined, even though they would have would up with a less embarrassing and even more conservative president instead.
This, then, is all on the GOP—everything from the mess we’re in today to Trump’s own sickness. There is only one cure: Vote them out. Vote them all out.
I’m going to propose we rip them out by the very root. Republicans have devoted decades to developing their farm system in the states by winning elections for legislatures that have produced battalions of drones who’ve zealously carried out the Trumpist agenda. That’s where Lindsey Graham got his start. Thom Tillis, Joni Ernst, and Cory Gardner, too.
Daily Kos has endorsed several dozen stalwart Democrats seeking to flip Republican seats across the country. We can not only take back a whole bunch of GOP-held chambers, we can terminate the careers of the next generation of Republican apparatchiks before they can even start. If we want to cut out the rot that’s infected this great nation, this is where we begin.
Please donate $1 to each of these Democrats running to save America from Trump’s misrule!