The Coronavirus thread

Quote: DRich

Have you studied all of the presidents or are you just comparing to the ones that you remember? He definitely acted like a buffoon, but to me none of that should be included in his record.

I was being flippant
but now that I think about this
The number 1 job of the President is to defend the constitution
Weakest support for the constitution ever
He did everything to try to bypass the Constitution to get that 2nd term.
Jan 6 is going in the history books and it aint gonna be pretty.
He directed his people to try to stop a constitutional process. He's supposed to be protecting and defending the Constitution and its processes
Shame on Trump

Quote: DRich

Have you studied all of the presidents or are you just comparing to the ones that you remember? He definitely acted like a buffoon, but to me none of that should be included in his record.

Based on people who have (historical ranking groups) he is consistently near the bottom (bottom 3 in all that I have seen).

It seems Buchanan is the only President that he can consistency beat... (Who is famous for being the last President to strongly support slavery).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_rankings_of_presidents_of_the_United_States

Quote: JimRockford

This is often repeated and it is simply not true. Here is what he said in context on March 8


At the time the extent of asymptomatic spread was not yet known. Nor was it known that spread of the virus from surface contact is rare. At that time there was a serious shortage of masks for health care professionals and Dr. Fauci made that perfectly clear in the interview. It was his judgement based on the facts available at the time. To call it an admitted lie is absolutely wrong.

FAUCI: "The masks are important for someone who's infected to prevent them from infecting someone else. Now, when you see people and look at the films in China and South Korea, whatever, and everybody's wearing a mask. Right now in the United States, people should not be walking around with masks."

We’ covered this before.

He knew this deadly virus spreads through water droplets, like the common cold, yet he told America there was no need to wear a mask ‘right now’.

He made that statement on March 8, 2020, when Europe already had 47,000 known cases, and Italy alone had 388 deaths.

He later admitted, he recommended against wearing masks in order to preserve the supply for health care workers.

Whether or not there was a mask shortage, he did not have the right to deliberately provide, misleading, possibly deadly advice to millions of people.

Especially considering what he knew was happening in Europe.

We will never know how many people died after following his advice.

Turns out, there never was a mask shortage.

“Two things happened. It became clear we had enough and there was no shortage, and that cloth coverings that you didn’t have to buy and could make for yourself, were adequate.”

In January he said on the ‘Today’ show,

“If you have a physical covering with one layer, you put another layer on, it just makes common sense that it likely would be more effective.

Here he is one week later admitting “There is no data that indicates that that is going to make a difference, and that is why the CDC has not changed the recommendation”

Quote: Gandler

Based on people who have (historical ranking groups) he is consistently near the bottom (bottom 3 in all that I have seen).

Maybe you should get sources outside CNN, MSNBC, and CBS. No intelligent person would rank a POTUS before they are out of office at least 20 years.

Quote: AZDuffman

Maybe you should get sources outside CNN, MSNBC, and CBS. No intelligent person would rank a POTUS before they are out of office at least 20 years.

Nah, plenty of intelligent people do exactly that all the time: they’re called historians.

Quote: AZDuffman

He won because of 9/11 hangover. His dad lost because he did the same thing, just ignored it as he lost credibility. Little use being "concerned" over what I cannot effect. Have to do the best with what I have. It does make chances of expat retirement higher, though.

I disagree. I think his dad had a Perot problem. Just looking at popular vote, he lost to Clinton by 5.5% and Perot took almost 19% of the popular vote. If you go back to 1988, Bush slaughtered Dukakis and took over 53% of the popular vote.

If we look at the Perot vote, a near tie would be for it to get split something like 12.5%-6.5% which would give Bush a small win. In other words, I basically have to be assuming that something like 2/3 Perot voters (who would have went for either Bush or Clinton, not who would have voted for neither in any case) would have instead voted for Bush. I think that's a fairly safe assumption.

I'll also admit you have to start looking at individual states, see what we can find (if anything) on second choice statistics...etc...but it at least would have been close.

Another thing about Bush is you look at his approval ratings---roller coaster ride! He hit the bottom at the worst possible time, but as I understand it, his average for that term was about 61% and, despite being only in the high-20's (!!!) leading up to the election, he still finished his term a little over 50%.

Quote:

But by 2006 it was effectively over for him. He did not have any support to be able to do anything. Because of the daily attacks he just ignored. What happened is his supporters took the stand of if he will not fight for himself why should they? Trump stood up for himself, and that kind of behavior gets respect.

Doesn't matter. He won reelection, Trump lost. Perhaps Bush didn't have support to do anything, but having support to do something only matters if you're actually in office---which Trump isn't.

Granted, W. finished with an approval rating in the toilet...a crash course with a recession tends to do that...even if it wasn't his fault. Still, in order to have a Presidential approval rating at all; you must be the President.

Quote:

It was a smart gamble. In the 2000s we had multiple scares of this kind of thing. Remember SARS in about 2002? Or ebola or whatever it was from Africa a few years ago? All were EOTWAWKI scares. None turned out to be much of anything. He was right that you downplay a threat. Because the USA today is a bunch of scared child-people. How many millions of tons of grapes were thrown away in 1989 because we found THREE GRAPES with a problem? Same era and the Alar scare some woman actually called the state and asked if she had to Hazmat some apple juice.

Then consider in an emergency you usually cannot do much. In WWII it was 11 months before we could do any serious actions. (The Dolittle attack was not serious.) The short attention span Americans would be asking daily why it is not fixed.

It might have been a gamble with a positive expected value, but I don't know that it was smart. I think it was an unnecessary gamble and an unforced error.

Trump had the incumbency advantage and I didn't consider any of his potential opponents particularly strong against him. I want to say that (and you can go back and check if you want) I thought Joe Biden was the best option to beat him. Here are the problems I see with the others:

Sacajawea---Too liberal. Makes Trump look like a moderate.

Sanders---See Pocahontas. Also, he'd probably tick the moderate left off more than Warren would. The dude's a straight up Socialist, but runs for the Democratic POTUS nomination---twice---because that's his only realistic chance at the Presidency and then whines that the Dems' system is rigged against him!? To start, he's not even a Democrat. Secondly, that system is the only chance that he has.

Seriously. If I ran that show, in order to even run for the nomination, one requirement would be that you have to have been a Democrat for longer than five minutes.

Bloomberg---Haha.

Buttigieg---I think this would have worked, except I'll say it---he's gay. Because he's gay, he doesn't win Georgia. Because I stipulate he doesn't win Georgia, I must extend that to there are votes he doesn't get elsewhere and states such as Pennsylvania were really close. He almost certainly doesn't win Arizona, either. That's 27. One other state flips, probably either PA or Wisconsin, if not both, game over---Trump wins. To be clear, I'm not saying I wouldn't have considered voting for him---I'm just pointing out that he almost certainly doesn't win Georgia or even any remotely socially conservative state.

When it comes to African-American votes, I think the percentages would still be very lopsided in Buttigieg's favor, but I don't think he gets the turnout Biden got.

Klobuchar---Hillary Clinton already lost to Trump. This is just Hillary with a different hair color.

Gabbard---Was never going to happen. She's only kind of a Democrat.

Point being, he gambled when he didn't have to. I really think that not only the pandemic---but also the way he responded to it (and probably, to some degree, BLM and the protests and riots and such) was the perfect storm that led to him losing. I tend to believe that if you switch just one thing about any of that, he wins...so I guess it's technically not 100% his fault. I bet he's really hoping Chauvin gets found guilty.

Quote: Mission146

I disagree. I think his dad had a Perot problem. Just looking at popular vote, he lost to Clinton by 5.5% and Perot took almost 19% of the popular vote. If you go back to 1988, Bush slaughtered Dukakis and took over 53% of the popular vote.

If we look at the Perot vote, a near tie would be for it to get split something like 12.5%-6.5% which would give Bush a small win. In other words, I basically have to be assuming that something like 2/3 Perot voters (who would have went for either Bush or Clinton, not who would have voted for neither in any case) would have instead voted for Bush. I think that's a fairly safe assumption.

I'll also admit you have to start looking at individual states, see what we can find (if anything) on second choice statistics...etc...but it at least would have been close.

He had a Perot problem because he caved to the Democrats and raised taxes the first time they demanded he do it. If not for the Gulf War it would not have been as close as it was. Then after his Gulf War approval high he just played prevent defense hoping to coast on that. Like his low energy son Jeb he thought it would just be given to him by divine right.

Quote: Mission146

It might have been a gamble with a positive expected value, but I don't know that it was smart. I think it was an unnecessary gamble and an unforced error.

Trump had the incumbency advantage and I didn't consider any of his potential opponents particularly strong against him. I want to say that (and you can go back and check if you want) I thought Joe Biden was the best option to beat him. Here are the problems I see with the others:

Sacajawea---Too liberal. Makes Trump look like a moderate.

Sanders---See Pocahontas. Also, he'd probably tick the moderate left off more than Warren would. The dude's a straight up Socialist, but runs for the Democratic POTUS nomination---twice---because that's his only realistic chance at the Presidency and then whines that the Dems' system is rigged against him!? To start, he's not even a Democrat. Secondly, that system is the only chance that he has.

Seriously. If I ran that show, in order to even run for the nomination, one requirement would be that you have to have been a Democrat for longer than five minutes.

Bloomberg---Haha.

Buttigieg---I think this would have worked, except I'll say it---he's gay. Because he's gay, he doesn't win Georgia. Because I stipulate he doesn't win Georgia, I must extend that to there are votes he doesn't get elsewhere and states such as Pennsylvania were really close. He almost certainly doesn't win Arizona, either. That's 27. One other state flips, probably either PA or Wisconsin, if not both, game over---Trump wins. To be clear, I'm not saying I wouldn't have considered voting for him---I'm just pointing out that he almost certainly doesn't win Georgia or even any remotely socially conservative state.

When it comes to African-American votes, I think the percentages would still be very lopsided in Buttigieg's favor, but I don't think he gets the turnout Biden got.

Klobuchar---Hillary Clinton already lost to Trump. This is just Hillary with a different hair color.

Gabbard---Was never going to happen. She's only kind of a Democrat.

Point being, he gambled when he didn't have to. I really think that not only the pandemic---but also the way he responded to it (and probably, to some degree, BLM and the protests and riots and such) was the perfect storm that led to him losing. I tend to believe that if you switch just one thing about any of that, he wins...so I guess it's technically not 100% his fault. I bet he's really hoping Chauvin gets found guilty.

Biden is absolutely the only one of the 2020 Dem candidates who could have beaten Donny.

Even George W. Bush agrees: https://www.businessinsider.com/george-w-bush-tells-clyburn-a-savior-for-backing-biden-2021-1

Quote: AZDuffman

He had a Perot problem because he caved to the Democrats and raised taxes the first time they demanded he do it. If not for the Gulf War it would not have been as close as it was. Then after his Gulf War approval high he just played prevent defense hoping to coast on that. Like his low energy son Jeb he thought it would just be given to him by divine right.

I have no standing to either agree or disagree with that as I know almost nothing about his one term. You figure I wasn't even nine years old when he lost. I'm mainly just looking at the results, voter tendencies by party, stuff like that.

Quote: Mission146

I have no standing to either agree or disagree with that as I know almost nothing about his one term. You figure I wasn't even nine years old when he lost. I'm mainly just looking at the results, voter tendencies by party, stuff like that.

I lived thru it and remember well. He said strongly, "NO NEW TAXES!" and caved not even halfway into his term. This helped cause a short but sharp recession. After the Gulf War he was so untouchable that SNL did a skit of all the Democrats saying how they were not the one to run against him. Had heavier hitters gone in early Clinton would have never lasted past NH. Meanwhile 41 jsut let himself be attacked, be made fun of, just "acted presidential." And had a no energy re-election campaign. Perot had all the energy for the most part. Had he not dropped out then re-entered and had he not had such a fool as a running mate he would have taken 30% easily.