Prior to it I would have said Trump was a dead cert to be re-elected but it has affected the economy, prevents him campaigning with the mass rallies he's so good at and allowed Joe Biden to stay out of the limelight and avoid the gaffes he's famous for. It could be the deciding factor.
In spite of all the right wing blather, the tide has turned against Trump. Up until January, the only way for Trump to win re-election was with independents, but now because of the virus, independents are dropping his chances like a lead weight. The Republicans just don't have the numbers, they never did.
I didn't want to vote "neither here nor there", but by November I honestly feel that the virus will simply fall into Republican perceptions, and, Democrat perceptions -- and not be a major 'decision-maker' in itself. Consider: there will not (NOT) be a vaccine to protect Americans against the COVID-19 virus before the election this year. Please understand that! For one thing, no vaccine could possibly be considered to be safe for mass distribution by then, and, the virus itself has undergone more than two dozen significant mutations already, throughout the world.... How in hell could we have 'immunization' against this 'novel' virus when we haven't even been able to come up with a yearly flu vaccine that's been worth a crap for many decades?! No, the close connection is, of course, through the effect on the ECONOMY! And there the political axe-fight is along purely partisan lines. The Democrats will say it's all Trump's fault... Trump will say that Democrat insistence on keeping the states all closed-up has crippled the economy... and EVERYBODY will go on ignoring the fact that this virus was an engineered BIO-WEAPON from laboratories in China, and ostensibly, the responsibility of neither Republicans nor Democrats in the United States! So, both factions will try to 'leverage' the virus, but ultimately, neither will be successful. So, I had to vote, "neither here nor there", even though it will be very important... but nobody can do anything about it besides BITCHING about it....
Pretty close.... I imagine Biden making a political promise kind of like this.... He would win the election in a landslide! . "Put everybody on welfare, close the whole country, and forget about it! SNAP!"
The DP/CCP Wuhan Corona Virus Pandemic has made it fare easier for Trump to defeat Beijing Biden this November when Biden and the Pandemic both just fade away.
The Democrats will steal the US election on the false premise that the virus caused the depression and that Republicans caused the Floyd death. But the Democrats will suffer in the midterms due to splintering from AOC and Omar supporters. Also Biden will seek to raise taxes prolonging the economic quagmire and disincentivizing investment and people will grow fatigued of unemployment. It will be Jimmy Carter era stagflation all over again!
I agree generally, and I welcome you to the Forum. I hope you post a lot, and often. We need more people who "think things through"....
Even before COVID-19 and the resulting rise in unemployment, Trump was the only president who never had majority support. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/ That has already made him a poor bet for reelection.
As of now the death toll in the United States from COVID-19 is 141,677. I am confident that if the economy had not locked down the death toll would be much higher. How many more deaths do you think would be acceptable to keep the economy open? During the administration of Jimmy Carter the top tax rate remained constant at 70%. Tax increases cannot be blamed for the stagflation that began in 1974, and got worse during the Carter administration. What caused the stagflation of the 1970's were first the OPEC Oil Boycott of 1973, and then the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Carter was not responsible for the Iranian Revolution of 1979. We can discuss this in another comment, preferably in another thread, if you want to. The following chart demonstrates the effect the OPEC Oil Boycott and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 had on the world price of petroleum. https://inflationdata.com/articles/inflation-adjusted-prices/historical-crude-oil-prices-table Republicans blamed Keynesian economic policy for the stagflation of the late 1970's. They never liked Keynsenianism because it shifted wealth, power, and prestige from the business community to the government. Also, Keynesian economic policy was designed to counter a decline in demand, not a decline in a natural resource essential to the economy. Moreover, the problem during the Great Depression was deflation, not inflation. Furthermore, Republicans did not want to admit that American dependence on petroleum is a national problem. Finally, they did not want to admit that foreigners they disliked had considerable control over the U.S. economy.
As we can’t even agree on who has actually contracted and died from this virus (as both presumed cases and deaths unrelated to the virus are conflated into it) how can we possibly make a determination on how many WOULD have died without the lockdowns? It seems logical to assume that there should be a quite direct correlation between the level of lockdown and case rates and deaths but that is clearly not the case. So to blame any politician for not going into lock down panic is at the very least, unfounded. All I can tell you is that my IRA was stagnant through W and Obama and increased 50 percent under Trump until markets saw millions of jobs disappear because too many companies could not withstand prolonged shut down. Market analysts are already predicting continued market losses under Biden who will almost certainly increase taxes on businesses during his administration. People think that a good economy can be created at will and through legislation. That’s not how it works. Investors Lives Matter!
The United States has spent about 7 trillion dollars in the fight against this virus and claims about 150,000 deaths. Assuming that all could have been saved with the money spent it works out to over 46 million dollars per life and that is assuming that these were actual c-19 deaths. Was it worth it? Now extrapolate this to the entire world.
