Here’s a prediction for the November election: if Joe Biden wins, the coronavirus pandemic will all but disappear overnight.
I know, it sounds crazy. To hear Biden tell it, the pandemic is getting worse all the time, not better, and Americans are increasingly consumed with fear and despair that they and their loved ones will die from the disease or lose their jobs or otherwise have their lives ruined, all because of Trump’s mishandling of the coronavirus.
In a campaign speech last week, Biden declared that “all pain and suffering” stems from Trump’s inability to lead and his “botched” response to the pandemic. Millions of Americans, he said, “are worried about getting sick and dying as schools and businesses try to reopen.”
Listening to Biden, you’d never know that new COVID-19 cases, deaths, and hospitalizations have all been dropping for weeks now. That’s not to say the crisis is over, only that the country is in much better shape now than we were in April and May when the daily death toll was regularly exceeding 2,000 people.
But it’s easy to see why Biden is painting such a dire picture. The worse the pandemic, the longer it lasts, the more pain and suffering it causes, the stronger his case that Trump’s response has been a “failure” and that the president “doesn’t care” about the lives and livelihoods lost on his watch.
If Biden wins, expect all this doom and gloom to dissipate, even if the disease’s trends don’t change all that much. Expect, too, that Democratic governors and mayors will be far more inclined to relax lockdown orders and business closures. Why? Because keeping the country locked down in the name of the pandemic is a way for them to hurt Trump, which is the only thing they really care about. Once he’s gone, the rationale for lockdowns, mask mandates, and doom and gloom rhetoric is gone, too.
Democratic Leaders: Do As We Say, Not As We Do
If this sounds too cynical, consider that Democratic leaders don’t seem particularly concerned about the dangers of “getting sick and dying” from COVID-19. How else can one explain Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mask-less visit to a shut-down hair salon in San Francisco last week, openly flouting the lockdown rules she so often insists the rest of us follow?
It was a too-familiar glimpse into what Democrats, especially the ones most gung-ho about lockdowns, really think about the pandemic: it’s useful for wielding power, and as a political cudgel to bash President Trump, but in reality it’s not all that dangerous.
Pelosi isn’t the only Democrat leader whose personal actions don’t reflect the fear-mongering rhetoric of mass lockdowns and strict social distancing. Examples abound.
Back in May, Michigan Gov.Gretchen Whitmer, whose lockdown orders over the spring and summer were among the strictest in the country, made headlines when the owner of a Northern Michigan dock company said Gretchen’s husband wanted his boat put in the water for Memorial Day weekend, even as the governor was publicly urging people not to rush into the region for the holiday weekend.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been caught on camera multiple times in public without a mask. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio decided to hit the gym in March a day after ordering all schools, bars, and restaurants in the city to close. Philadelphia Mayor Jim Kenney, whose city remains closed for indoor dining, was spotted in a restaurant in Maryland recently and forced to issue a half-hearted apology. And on and on.
If the coronavirus is so dangerous that we have to shut down vast swaths of the economy for months on end, shutter schools indefinitely, and wear masks every time we step outside our homes, then why do so many Democrat leaders have such a cavalier attitude about it? Why the double standard?
Either they’re just really predisposed, as a group, to forget their own rules, or they don’t really think the virus is as serious as they say it is, and have some ulterior motive for the rules they promulgate. It’s just a hunch, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see a lot of those rules, especially the ones that are keeping businesses closed right now, evaporate quickly if Biden wins the White House. I wouldn’t be surprised to see schools suddenly open back up.
The games Democrats and the media are playing with the pandemic are a version of the implicit threat Biden himself leveled recently, that the violence and rioting will continue unless we all vote Democrat.
Does anyone believe there will be less violence in America if Donald Trump is reelected?
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) August 31, 2020
Biden might as well ask whether anyone thinks the pandemic will go away if Trump is reelected. If Democrats and the media have anything to say about it, of course, it won’t. It will be the worst thing ever, the thing that inspires fear and dread in all Americans, the thing that Trump can’t — or won’t — get under control.
But if Biden wins, don’t be surprised if you see him dining out — without a mask — after November 3.