Hrumph! Hrumph hrumph hrumph!
[Insert image of Neckbearded Biden, tipping a bright blue fedora, with “M’LARKY” written in white, black-bordered bold impact font below his face]
Djscman
5312
What if there’s a Senate vote that’s tied, but the VP is attending the launch of a yacht at some seaport of some minor ally? I suppose each Vice President carries out their duties differently, because their duty is to do what the President tells them to do. If Vice President Harris needs to be pinned down in the Senate chambers for tiebreakers, then I guess that’s where she’ll spend her time, and President Biden can send other flunkies out for minor diplomatic work, for drumming up domestic support, or for Cheney-style focusing on a key issue. At least she knows her way around the Senate.
Repeatedly breaking vital ties in live breathlessly covered broadcast TV if/when we nuke the filibuster and start passing actual legislation would probably be better for her future political fortunes than occasionally buttering up the Sub-Minister of Agricultural Innovations of Costa Rica with official gifts or whatever it is VPs normally do.
Plus she looks good in the Senate, like it’s her natural habitat.
magnet
5315
Then she’ll have to come back to DC.
But this is unlikely to occur often, since most legislation needs 60 votes to survive a filibuster and therefore already has the 51 votes needed for passage. The Vice President doesn’t really play a role in cloture votes. So realistically, she would be needed only for reconciliation votes (once or twice this year) and for any special drama like using the nuclear option.
Well, Democrats aren’t going to be surprised by a 50-50 vote.
Scuzz
5317
This was how I felt. I hated Trump before he was elected but I didn’t think he had the shit in him that it turned out he did have. The guy ended up being literally the person I thought was not possible to be, even though I hated him to start with. I probably owe many people on here an apology for the thoughts I had about their posts 3-4 years ago.
I have always been an optimist, and while I long ago quit being too optimistic when it came to politics, Trump really came as a shock to me. That anyone so obviously self centered could get elected in the first place doesn’t speak well for the future.
Alstein
5318
I might be the only person who thought it was going to be worse. I thought Trump would either be competent, or would listen to his more competent and ruthless advisors. Turned out they were all incompetent.
I fully expected the Republicans to let him do anything he wanted- I knew they would put party over country, except for 2-3.
I wasn’t sure the republic would survive a single Trump term. Prior to COVID I was definitely in the ‘it could be worse’ camp. As for 400k dead - those are horrific numbers, but looking at how it’s gone worldwide, I’m not sure even a competent president could have kept the body count under six figures*, so it might have been at least somewhat horrific anyway.
*go easy, I am not an epidemiologist
I think if Trump had simply promoted mask wearing and had worn a mask himself he would have saved tens of thousands of lives. We’d still have a horrific number of dead, but maybe we’d just hitting 300,000 instead of 400,000.
Menzo
5321
When COVID started hitting hard in May/June, Trump had an opportunity to bring the country together to fight it. He could have asked for shared sacrifice and made it clear that the US government was going to support its citizens through what was going to be a terrible time. In my mind I see it like the domestic effort during WWII.
He obviously chose another path. But to me he squandered a great opportunity to bring everyone together.
I also think had he done this he would have easily won re-election.
Absolutely. Ironically, if Hillary had won, that’s exactly what she would have done, but would have then lost re-election in a landslide for “killing 10’s of thousands of Americans!” “It’s like thousands of Benghazis!”
Vietnam has about 30% of the US population and they are at 35 deaths.
I think it’s unrealistic to think that a different president could have got it anywhere near that low, but we fucked up bad. We spend the most on health care, per capita, in the entire world. Out of all the countries in the world, we’re at about 95th percentile in terms of deaths per capita. Even if we were just at the median point, our deaths would be under 50k.
I didn’t get why he didn’t pivot when it was obvious that it was going to get bad. His interview with Woodward shows that he knew that. He was making statements that were obviously going to look dumb in hindsight.
But considering how much of his net worth (and income) is from resorts and hotels, it makes sense. Acknowledging the pandemic would have hurt his businesses.
Asia appears to be leveled up when it comes to pandemic response. I don’t know if that goes deeper than the cultural impact of SARS etc.
Germany - 50k ; France - 72k ; England - 94k; Czech Republic - 15k
At a guess I’d imagine even a competently presidented U.S. would have comparable numbers (adjusted for population) to countries like that.*
*I am still not an epidemiologist
100% agree, there is no reason we couldn’t be at Canada levels, or Germany or literally anywhere between the 50th and 150th worse country in per capita deaths. Actually, given that most of the epidemiologist are either Americans or trained at US university, having a per capita death rate below the median of the world is perfectly reasonable expectation.
Nah - I’m totally in that club as well, and for the exact same reason. I didn’t think Trump was particularly competent, but I had thought he possessed enough base cunning to act in his own basic interest. Turns out, he is quite incapable of putting anything above his own ego… with tragic consequences for the USA (but fortunately for democracy).
