Bizarre hypothetical: Has Covid saved the Republic?

[Pantagruel]

Simply put, absent Trump's mis-handling of CV-19, would Trump have gotten a 2nd term and completed his attempted coup?
Not such a crazy idea given the closeness of the EC battlegrounds.

[demtenjeep]

1. yes

I think so

[Earthshine2]

2. +1

With a little effort and some stage management, he could have been seen as the hero of the pandemic.

[Cirque du So-What]

25. He just couldn't muster any interest in leading a response

Unless it made him look good or opened an opportunity for gritting, he wasn’t interested.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Not bizarre

No COVID, no Biden presidency. The proof for me is how poorly we performed down-ballot; Dems are not ready for prime-time on basic messaging. Yes, enough people were desperate to get rid of Trump, but the numbers wouldn’t have been as strong as they were without the pandemic and (forget the popular vote) the race was still extremely close.

[Mme. Defarge]

4. The Lord works

in mysterious ways.

[tinrobot]

36. It truly is biblical in scope.

The 10 plagues of Egypt come to mind. The Israelites were enslaved, so god helps them out with wave after wave of plagues and destruction.

Still, I doubt modern-day Christians would see the connection between electing the worst person on the planet and a global pandemic.

[Arkansas Granny]

5. If Trump had done even a half-assed job of handling the pandemic, he would have been re-elected.

There is no doubt in my mind. Even at that, he got over 74M votes. It's hard to believe that there are so many ignorant people.

[Irish_Dem]

6. Absolutely yes. He would have won easily if he had just pretended to take some action and act like

he cared somewhat about the American people.

[Cirque du So-What]

26. That's asking too much of him

He knows that he can’t even fake sympathy, so he avoids situations where he’s expected to act like he GAF about anyone else.

[Irish_Dem]

27. He must have figured cheating would win the election for him. So he didn't have to bother with

pretending to do anything about Covid.

[BainsBane]

7. No, it's killing hundreds of thousands

It hasn't saved us.

[doc03]

16. But what if we didn't have it and Trump had been

re-elected it could have resulted in many more deaths. We still aren't safe until the SOB leaves the White house.

[BainsBane]

19. Maybe

Maybe not. He's have proven himself utterly incompetent regardless. It's who he is.

[calimary]

8. It also eased the climate crisis a little.

Economic shutdown cut back on carbon emissions and other industrial pollutants - AND car/commuter pollution, too.

Hopefully the “new normal” of work-at-home and order-for-pickup/delivery options will prevail, once this nightmare (hopefully) finally runs its course.

We’ve GOT TO do many things differently if we’re going to have a planet not on the critical list.

[Pantagruel]

9. I'm waiting for justice

Thomas Jefferson once said that "the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."

If the victims of CV-19 provided the "blood of patriots" just when shall the "tyrants" shed theirs?

[doc03]

10. Yes I believe it has for now and if Trump

would have followed science I think he would have
been re-elected. I have my opinion of why we have COVID
but I would be called crazy.

[jalan48]

11. Likewise, the economic collapse in 2008 probably handed the Presidency to Obama.

[Pantagruel]

15. '08 crisis

was GOP induced , failure to regulate banks properly. For proof, look to Canada's minor exposure since their mortgage market was tightly regulated.
CV-19 has been blamed on Trump's failure to follow Obama's outlined response formulas to pandemics.
So, it not just luck, stupidity has consequences.

[jalan48]

20. Not sure how many more Republican catastrophes we can take in order to get a Democrat elected

President.

[Pantagruel]

32. Two disastrous elections

same result. Gore and HRC , both follow successful Dem presidencies, both incredibly well qualified running against MUCH less qualified GOP jokers, both win popular vote and consigned to the junk bin of history by the quirks of the Electoral College. Worse, Bush and Trump both deliver disastrous results with negative implications looking out decades.

[Blue Owl]

12. It has ripped open and exposed every Republican weakness

Only those who truly refuse to see now know that the GOP only cares about the 1%, and the rest of y'all can go fuck yourselves as far as they're concerned...

[demtenjeep]

14. sane people know that

it is the idiots that continuously vote against their own needs that need to learn this

[brewens]

13. I posted this on 12/02. Saying the extra unnecessary deaths might be worth it.

https://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=14653558

[JI7]

17. No, I think he would have lost without it. Democrats would not have been

restricted in their campaigning and holding campaign events and other gotv efforts would have helped us.

Trump ended up getting a lot if support from people worried about lockdowns .

[Pantagruel]

21. Good point

but un-measurable I suppose. I do think the fears engendered by CV-19 spurred many to vote rather than just throw up their hands in disgust at all the noise.

[CaptainTruth]

18. As soon as I saw Trump's reaction to COVID I said it would be what brought him down.

Trump's normal playbook is to create a fake "crisis" (like caravans at the border) & then magically solve it, fooling his base into thinking he was the hero who saved them from some horrible fate.

COVID was the first, & only, crisis of his presidency that wasn't a fake crisis he created. It was real, & no matter how much he tried to lie his way out of it (15 cases that will soon be down to 0) he couldn't. People could see it was real, all around them. I'm convinced it caused him to lose enough support that he lost the election because of it.

[W_HAMILTON]

22. The pandemic ended up helping him.

It kept Democrats from GOTV like we normally would, registering new voters like we normally would, and the precautions taken to prevent virus spread was used like a cudgel against us for political purposes during the elections.

Any normal, run-of-the-mill election, his ass would have been booted out and we would have probably already taken back the Senate and boosted our majority in the House.

[LymphocyteLover]

38. yes, that is my counter-intuitive take as well

I think the greater vote-by-mail helped the GOP a lot. Just thank god we got rid of the big dump.

[Hav]

23. I have almost no doubt that Trump would have won

He likely would have won either without Covid (and without the massive voting by mail by Dems) or with Covid but a barely competent handling of the crisis. Maybe the advantage of being the incumbent was a bit underestimated.
While Biden had a clear popular vote advantage, I think only tens of thousands of votes in the other direction in a few states would have changed the outcome.

[bamagal62]

24. Yes.

[Nay]

28. I truly believe that if there hadn't been this COVID nightmare, T would have

won a second term. In fact, if Trump had even managed to act like someone who gave a shit that hundreds of thousands of Americans were dead, and if he had had a coherent response of any kind, he would have won a second term.

[LymphocyteLover]

39. I think it's more complicated-- see response 22

[anamnua]

29. God works in strange ways. NT.

[roamer65]

30. No. It granted it a reprieve.

We will see after November 2024 if it survives. Another 2016 like result will be the end of it.

The 2020’s are going to be a lot like the 1850’s.

[kentuck]

31. Interesting.

Very possible.

[Crunchy Frog]

33. I'm not at all sure the Republic is saved. It may have delayed its demise a little.

[ucrdem]

34. After super Tuesday it was Biden's race to lose.

He didn't screw up and he won. It probably would have been closer without Covid, and a lot closer if Trump hadn't utterly mishandled it with all-but-obvious malice aforethought, but he was never going to win without a miracle, and he knew it.

[radius777]

35. Trump would've lost anyway IMO,

we would've just focused more on all the other terrible things he did. His poll numbers were not much different before/after Covid which suggests that public opinion of him was already baked in. Without a pandemic he would've had bigger rallies, but we also would've been able to organize much better on the ground. Lack of GOTV hurts Dems more I think.

[David__77]

37. I don't think so.

If anything, I think Democrats might have done better without it. I think that Democrats were target of the ire of numerous people (including for instance small proprietors) upset about health-related restrictions. I think that Democrats did not have a good field operation which they might have otherwise had. The Republicans did poorly in 2018 and I think it's possible that they would have done at least as poorly in 2020 absent COVID.