Martin Sieff
What does the pandemic mean for the U.S. election in November?
If the U.S. can ride through the crisis with a mortality rate of less than 1 percent or so, a strong economic recovery may still happen in the short term: Then President Donald Trump will likely be reelected. That is especially the case if the Democratic candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden maintains his Invisible Man profile of the past few weeks.
Indeed, the Democrats in the United States appear to be totally swamped by a Freudian death wish - entirely understandable and deserved in the party that relentlessly champions unlimited abortion on demand and now even abandoning surviving botched abortions who are deliberately left to die.
Last week, we saw the Democrats in the Senate delay the vital and enormous financial support package unnecessarily for a full five days during which time millions more Americans lost their jobs.
Bernie Sanders shredded what was left of his credibility by demanding his Green New Deal wish list - which is childish absurd economics and climate science combined - to be imposed when the Republicans - actually right on this subject - pointed out that the prime focus for American survival - let alone recovery - was containing and exterminating the virus.
Sanders no longer needs the U.S. Mainstream Media or the Democratic Party establishment to discredit himself. He has been doing a vastly superior job of that on his own: And he has only himself to thank for it. The Democrats can still certainly win in November. But it is now certain they cannot win with Bernie Sanders.
Then, 2016 party presidential candidate Hillary Clinton could not restrain herself from tweeting a repulsive message congratulating Trump on making the United States Number One and global leader in COVID-19 deaths.
A charitable explanation was that she was drunk as usual at the time.
Far more likely, however, she was stone cold sober when she tweeted. Psychopaths do have a sense of humor: Their problem is that no one else finds it funny.
However, already the number of plague cases in the United States has surpassed those in China. Predictably, the Usual Suspects in the American media and politics are saying it really is far worse in China and the Chinese are just lying and underreporting their cases.
This of course leaves open the question how much U.S. authorities have or will under-report their cases. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention figures, for example, are routine reported significantly less than Johns Hopkins University Coronavirus Resource Center ones, which appear more reliable in real time.
It is clear that the epidemic is raging wildly out of control in Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York City - Sanctuary Cities all. The Liberal Elites and governments in those cities will take no responsibility for the catastrophe at all: Liberal Elites never do. Right now they are screaming for massive federal aid. No more proud talk for once of defying the democratically elected federal government in the name of protecting illegal immigrants.
But this will pass. Rob Reiner, a competent movie director and repulsive human being is already trying to scapegoat Trump for the entire plague. At least it makes a change from blaming Russia.
Every year, around 50,000 people die of the winter flu, and larger numbers from cancer or heart disease and then there is the U.S. pandemic of death by gun violence. For all these things no one loses any sleep in our Great Republic.
But if the coronavirus death toll tilts well above one percent, let alone up to three or four percent, expect even Joe Biden to beat Trump in November.
It may yet happen that a delayed Democratic convention could nominate a "hero governor" who can be credibly presented as having done a good job handling his state's pandemic as an alternative presidential candidate.
However, forget the silly talk about Andrew Cuomo: He showed no indication whatsoever that he was at any time able to prevent New York City from becoming the global epicenter of the pandemic.
Also, note the pace of economic recovery after the pandemic. If it is slow, non-existent or too sluggish with a total population traumatized by the extent of the human loss, then even a sleepwalking Joe Biden can beat Donald Trump.
Even if Trump wins in November, there are profound longer term changes coming. The Ronald Reagan pseudo-conservative/neocon/libertarian zeitgeist that has dominated U.S. politics and public thought for the past 40 years will finally crack if the death toll is high.
Libertarianism and the demonization of government was always filled with empty hot air, bluff and fraud anyway. Once lives were seen to be clearly at stake, all the absurd, obsolete quarter of a millennia old destructive fairy tales of Adam Smith and David Ricardo, Patrick Henry and all the foes of federal power in the 1780s and 1790s were certain to be dumped into the trash can of history. They are going to be dead as dodos.
Therefore, if the death toll in the U.S. is relatively high and recovery is sluggish, expect the Democrats back, with out of control inflation and a Wall Street collapse to rapidly follow.
Finally, the precedent of the political reaction to the terrible pandemic of 1918-20 should be factored in as well. Americans flocked to the least energetic, most reassuring most passive candidate available, Senator Warren Harding of Ohio. They rejected the incumbent party of Woodrow Wilson by record-breaking margins.
In November, if the mortality toll of the pandemic is high, expect Trump and Biden to outrace each other in presenting paternal, grandfatherly reassuring images to the public. Populations do not have wild, ambitious dreams of Making America Great Again or of Green New Deals after any pandemic. They just want to heal slowly and mourn their dead.