[Genuine Realist]

I'm going to join the chorus of 'Trump wins without covid'. In fact, I believe that one of the reasons for all the nonsense he spouted about Covid was frustration at having some of the genuine progress of the economy under his administration erased by the virus - which, typically, he was too narcissistic to accept. 

I'm going to push back against the framing, because it really should be "Trump wins but for his response to COVID".  To suggest that COVID is something that happened to his presidency and not something whose trajectory was influenced by his response seems a bit misguided. Hell, Trump probably wins even with COVID being about as bad as it is, but showing a little empathy towards the people who suffered from it, and if he had actually managed to mount a competent response, Trump would have won in a landslide.  Then the narrative becomes "Trump may be a bit unconventional, but when faced with a crisis, he rose to the occasion."  Just look at Jocinda Ardern in New Zealand, who was actually trailing in polls before the pandemic hit, and won in a landslide.

BC

Oh,I accept that emendation with applause. For any politician except one with a narcissistic personality disorder, covid is deliverance from Heaven. All you have to do is say 'there, there' and cheerlead. You announce this accelerated vaccine program, and leave the rest to local government. You can't lose.

Unless you're Donald Trump. Then you take everything personally.

---

I think TDS applied as wishing the country harm because it's bad for Trump is a figment of Trump supporters' imaginations.

And I think the Wikipedia entry above (thanks Leftcoast) agrees with me on this.

Bill Maher (net worth: $100 million) publicly hoped (for two years) for a recession to bring down Trump.  NBC News' Richard Engel said the same thing.  

FWLIW, The Atlantic disagrees:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...on/596500/

i was going to mention Maher.

But apart from wishing disaster, there was a chronic, and I would say pathological, overestimate of the 'evil' that Trump would do. Right after the 2016 election, there was a spate of books that predicted that would be the last election in US history, that this was the neginning of a Fascist takeover. These were serious intellectuals - Lawrence Tribe for one. 

And bringing this back to Covid, some of the drastic measures suggested now for Covid, if implemented in late January-February, before the public was alert, would have been decried by the media as a pretext for the seizure. The Reichstag Fire would have been cited.

TDS basically consists of the notion that nothing that happened during the Trump Administration was at all good or purposeful, and that he personally is not capable of one good impulse - that he is at base, not simply self-centered, but Evil - and in that hyperbolic sense, it is absurd.

[Genuine Realist]

I'm going to join the chorus of 'Trump wins without covid'. In fact, I believe that one of the reasons for all the nonsense he spouted about Covid was frustration at having some of the genuine progress of the economy under his administration erased by the virus - which, typically, he was too narcissistic to accept. 

I'm going to push back against the framing, because it really should be "Trump wins but for his response to COVID".  To suggest that COVID is something that happened to his presidency and not something whose trajectory was influenced by his response seems a bit misguided. Hell, Trump probably wins even with COVID being about as bad as it is, but showing a little empathy towards the people who suffered from it, and if he had actually managed to mount a competent response, Trump would have won in a landslide.  Then the narrative becomes "Trump may be a bit unconventional, but when faced with a crisis, he rose to the occasion."  Just look at Jocinda Ardern in New Zealand, who was actually trailing in polls before the pandemic hit, and won in a landslide.

BC

Oh,I accept that emendation with applause. For any politician except one with a narcissistic personality disorder, covid is deliverance from Heaven. All you have to do is say 'there, there' and cheerlead. You announce this accelerated vaccine program, and leave the rest to local government. You can't lose.

Unless you're Donald Trump. Then you take everything personally.

---

I think TDS applied as wishing the country harm because it's bad for Trump is a figment of Trump supporters' imaginations.

And I think the Wikipedia entry above (thanks Leftcoast) agrees with me on this.

Bill Maher (net worth: $100 million) publicly hoped (for two years) for a recession to bring down Trump.  NBC News' Richard Engel said the same thing.  

FWLIW, The Atlantic disagrees:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...on/596500/

i was going to mention Maher.

But apart from wishing disaster, there was a chronic, and I would say pathological, overestimate of the 'evil' that Trump would do. Right after the 2016 election, there was a spate of books that predicted that would be the last election in US history, that this was the neginning of a Fascist takeover. These were serious intellectuals - Lawrence Tribe for one. 

And bringing this back to Covid, some of the drastic measures suggested now for Covid, if implemented in late January-February, before the public was alert, would have been decried by the media as a pretext for the seizure. The Reichstag Fire would have been cited.

TDS basically consists of the notion that nothing that happened during the Trump Administration was at all good or purposeful, and that he personally is not capable of one good impulse - that he is at base, not simply self-centered, but Evil - and in that hyperbolic sense, it is absurd.