Although he’d like his nightly rallies — I mean briefings — to suggest otherwise, Donald Trump is failing this critical leadership test, and it’s costing lives. There is no plan to deal with outbreaks across the country, and, as Catherine Rampell at The Washington Post, there’s no plan to get out economy back on track either:
To be sure, the paths of the pandemic and the economy are rife with uncertainty. But data-driven models from professionals inside the administration and outside experts suggest that the twin crises could be deep and prolonged. [...]
You’d never know this from the ways that Trump or his senior aides have repeatedly played down public health and economic risks. [...] Even now, Trump pledges that crowded public events will be back“sooner rather than later.” Asked Saturday about the contingency plan for the Republican National Convention scheduled for August, he responded: “We have no contingency plan.”
This might as well be the slogan for his entire presidency.
[...] [R]ather than setting arbitrary deadlines for when the economy will “reopen” or making definitive predictions about unproven treatments, explain what benchmarks for success would look like. Tell voters and state and local officials what kinds of conditions would lead to economic normalization, and how to judge various health interventions.
Finally: Start developing — and communicating — some damn contingency plans.
Ryan Cooper at The Week points out there’s no post-pandemic plan either:
We're beginning to see a glimmering of what it will take to be able to restore some semblance of normal life. Countries will need to keep a "test and track" apparatus going, and they will need to be ready to reimpose lockdown measures on a moment's notice. Unfortunately, there is no sign whatsoever that the U.S. government is even thinking about what will be required, much less actually preparing to make it happen.
Indeed, it appears the only plan is retribution and political pettiness. The Washington Post takes on Trump’s vindictive and unjust firing of Michael Atkinson, the intelligence community’s inspector general:
Unlike Joseph Maguire, the acting intelligence director whom Mr. Trump previously fired, or Gordon Sondland, the dismissed ambassador to the European Union, or Army Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman, the ousted National Security Council director for Ukraine, Mr. Atkinson’s job was not to implement Trump administration policies. Rather, like inspectors general across the government, his job, as he put it in a statement he released Sunday, was to act “as an independent and impartial” auditor. “It is hard not to think that the president’s loss of confidence in me derives from my having faithfully discharged my legal obligations,” Mr. Atkinson wrote.
Meanwhile, here’s
Ed Kilgore’s analysis of the Wisconsin primary, the SCOTUS decision, and GOP voter suppression:
The GOP legislature’s mad determination to move ahead with an in-person election, while cutting off the safer avenue of voting by mail, is designed to restrict the franchise, and in that sense, will be deemed a success tainted by partisan malice.
And on a final note, here’s more analysis from Jelani Cobb at The New Yorker:
Last week, Gallup noted a twenty-seven-point difference between Republicans and Democrats who were “somewhat or very worried” about being exposed to the virus. In theory, at least, that might translate into a Republican electorate that is less wary of showing up to polling places. The G.O.P.’s approach to matters of voting can be broadly described as efforts to curate the electorate in its favor. In Wisconsin, the pandemic may facilitate and amplify those efforts. All this is given added weight by the fact that retaining Wisconsin is key to Trump’s reëlection bid. Both the G.O.P. and the Democrats have been playing close attention to a state Supreme Court race there in which a Dane County Circuit Court judge, Jill Karofsky, is challenging the conservative Justice Daniel Kelly for a seat on a court that will likely hear an ongoing case regarding the legality of an attempt to purge more than two hundred thousand voters from the Wisconsin rolls ahead of November.