Trump is facing another election this fall, and there are many challenges that he has. However, the one that some view as the most challenging is not his poll numbers, but the death toll as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which The Hill reports may be his biggest problem with voters.
Now, in a White House once obsessed with statistical boasts, those close to the president are loath to set any milestones defining a positive outcome,” Lizza and Lippman report. “By far the most sensitive subject is the awful reality of the growing death count,” currently at 86,000, according to Johns Hopkins University. “I’m not going to play that game,” one White House official said. “I think all these body count things are somewhat gross….” Trump has compared this to a war, but wars have consequences, Politico notes:
When American war deaths in Vietnam spiked in 1967 and early 1968, Lyndon B. Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek a second term. When the Iraq War spun out of control in George W. Bush’s second term, his presidency collapsed. Similarly, there is now a grim conversation quietly happening in Republican circles about the COVID-19 death count, with some saying that if there are 250,000 people dead by Election Day, it will be hard for Trump to win reelection. [Politico]
Some advisers are more optimistic, but “the fear that Trump can’t survive a referendum on his handling of the crisis has allies pushing a series of change-the-subject strategies,” Politico reports: Question the death count, inflame partisan divides, blame China. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) told Politico that China-bashing won’t trump an effective strategy to quash the coronavirus, but extreme social distancing and other steps the U.S. has taken saved hundreds of thousands of lives. “The closer you can have it to 120 [thousand deaths], I think you can say you limited the casualties in this war,” he added.
If “30,000 Benghazis,” as some critics calculated, doesn’t sound like winning, Dr. Zeke Emanuel, a University of Pennsylvania health policy expert and Joe Biden adviser, says it’s also optimistic. “If you take out New York, the number of cases are still actually going up, and this reopening isn’t helping things,” he lamented. “We are going to be at 200,000 deaths. People are still dropping like flies.”(source)
Current trends still suggest a Trump victory. However, it may be more difficult than previously imagined. If conditions were normal, it would be almost impossible for Trump to win because people are sick of him as he has failed to follow through on his promises.
The “COVID body count” is a real political concern for him. The biggest test to this will come in the winter, as Shoebat.com and other sites have noted there is a strong possibility that there will be a second wave of the disease in the fall. This may propel Trump to victory, but it may also cost him- potentially -the election.
Right now, things are in a very confused state. Neither Biden nor Trump are good for the country, and there is no “better” choice” because they both do not care about the good of the people.
So what does a politically-inclined person so?
The answer is that as far as “elections” and “activism”, save for local politics, really nothing.
However, remember that economics and personal choices- fitness, financial decisions, food security, and culture, are all politics in themselves. This is something that the German Nationalists know very well, for while there is much critical that Ted, Walid, and I have discussed about them, the fact is that the potency of German nationalism to continually revive exists not because of some abnormal power, but because of the concept of self-identity had by Germans and the German minorities across the world. They have a strong understanding of who they are and their position in the world.
Now I am not advocating for National Socialism, but rather to point out that politics starts with people. It is not a parade like in America, which is really about isolating and dividing people to keep them from uniting in a circus meant to distract them from reality. True politics is the way that one lives, for politics resides in and for men, not the other way around.
Now is not the time to worry about political shows, but to adjust YOUR politics.
Are you a Christian? Do you have concerns for the future? Are you working to make a better tomorrow? Then adjust your politicas right so that you can be ready to stand up to the changes that are coming to society, which you cannot stop, but you can respond to in a way that is both beneficial for yourself and your community.
Let Trump worry about the body count.