Sometimes doing the right thing also happens to be the politically smart thing. Republicans don't really have the luxury of knowing what that's like anymore, but Democrats do. And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer know the right thing to do is to honor the tens of thousands of Americans who have lost their lives to the devastating plague sweeping the country.
Pelosi and Schumer formally requested Thursday that American flags at public buildings be flown at half staff when the nation reaches the grim milestone of losing 100,000 people to coronavirus. At the time of this writing Thursday morning, total U.S. deaths sit at a little over 95,000.
In a letter to Trump, Pelosi and Schumer noted that even as Memorial Day honors those who gave their lives for our freedom, "sadly, our country mourns the deaths of nearly 100,000 Americans from COVID-19." Flying flags at half staff, they said, would "serve as a national expression of grief so needed by everyone in our country."
They are right—Americans are suffering on so many levels. Having a national opportunity to grieve the losses could help serve as a healing moment for many. In fact, it's possible that the nation will reach that grim marker on Memorial Day itself.
But Trump and congressional Republicans are in denial about the nation's suffering as they put on the full-court press to reopen for business. Trump, in particular, has been tossing around death toll numbers like he's throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. The very basic concept that those numbers actually translate to deep personal pain for hundreds of thousands of Americans who have lost loved ones is clearly beyond the reaches of Trump's exceedingly limited emotional capacity. More than anything, he wishes people would just forget those losses amid his rush to try to jumpstart the economy to boost his reelection bid. And even if Trump isn't capable of understanding that he's uniquely responsible for so many of those deaths, many congressional Republicans, particularly in the Senate, are well aware of the role they have all played in that massive death count as Trump's enablers.
Will be interesting to see if Republicans are capable of doing what is so obviously the right thing here—provide an outlet for the enormous toll the pandemic has taken on our country already.