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Considering the fact that most War time presidents in US do not lose elections, what impact do you think the current health crisis will have on Trump's re-elect

Considering the fact that most War time presidents in US do not lose elections, what impact do you think the current health crisis will have on Trump's re-election?

jcfrei 7y ago
He's gonna win. A viral outbreak like this has no precedent for anyone still alive. So it's hard to criticize the government based on personal experience. If they demonstrate leadership and decisive action that should be enough for a reelection. Any candidate simply cannot compete with the media exposure the president gets during times of a national crisis.
- Trasmatta 7y ago
  > So it's hard to criticize the government based on personal experience No it's not. You had every expert in the world talking about the potential dangers for months, while Trump kept talking about how it was just a flu that would magically go away on its own, and that there wasn't anything to be concerned with. The US's preparation has been incredibly bad and late in comparison to certain other countries. On top of Trump firing the Pandemic Response Team in 2018. The optics are going to start looking increasingly bad for him as the US death rate starts to climb. I don't claim to predict the outcome of the election, but you can't claim that it's "hard to criticize the government" based off of this, or that any future "decisive action" is going to be enough once the death rate hits tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.
  - jcfrei 7y ago
    I was trying to emphasize the "based on personal experience" part. Of course you can still criticize the government. But elections have time and time again shown that the opinion of experts matters much less to the electorate than their personal experience. That's one of the reasons why the state of the economy is so important for the reelection of a president. That being said, if the US economy really does tank that could make his reelection more difficult but I think he can easily blame that on the virus.
  - enitihas 7y ago
    > You had every expert in the world talking about the potential dangers for months? Experts have been also talking about dangers of climate change for years, yet Trump manages to win election while calling climate change a hoax. So not sure his base cares about expert advice. >while Trump kept talking about how it was just a flu that would magically go away on its own, and that there wasn't anything to be concerned with. You should read trump's tweets, there is a shockingly large number of people agreeing with him on this like everything. As long as trump can manage to limit the damage to the US, he will have strong arguments for a re-election.
  - TMWNN 7y ago
    >On top of Trump firing the Pandemic Response Team in 2018. Ah yes, yet another person who looked at the Snopes piece's headline and nothing else. One would think reading it, and the Twitter thread it is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was cut to save money, causing everyone in a large DC office building to lose their jobs. Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-trump-s-homeland-security-adviser-resign-n864321 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles it cites, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was. COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things. You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness. PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget!" either. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104
- mnm1 7y ago
  Are you joking? This is the worst response to this crisis imaginable. It's impossible not to criticize the government for completely fucking everything up (already listed the top things in another post so I won't rehash). Nothing has been done. We've had a good six or more weeks and still nothing. It's a total disaster. That said, I think you're right about the election. People are too stupid to even be informed. but if we have a few hundred thousand or million deaths, who knows? I still doubt the fox news crowd will change their mind.
Ididntdothis 7y ago
Since the best the democrats have to offer is a washed up 78 year old, Trump will probably win by a wide margin. It's like 2016. The opposition isn't even showing up.
- dlp211 7y ago
  Trump didn't win a wide margin in 2016, he won by 70k votes in 3 states. Biden is curretnly overperforming in every demographic that Clinton lost in 2016. Democratic turnout is up in these primary's. The POTUS is historically disliked especially by suburban white women who went for Trump in 2016. Arizona has a very popular Democratic challenger for the Senate. Arizona, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina are being added to the traditional battleground states. Biden might be washed up, but it might not matter. Bloomberg is about to drop $2 Billion in advertising and infrastructure in support of the Democratic party. I'm not saying Trump is going to lose, but if he wins, it's going to be by a narrow margin in which he loses the popular vote by more than 6 million.
  - Ididntdothis 7y ago
    Maybe they will win but I still think the choice of democratic candidates in 2016 and 2020 is pathetic.
    - stOneskull 7y ago
      tulsi would've been the way to go
      - Ididntdothis 7y ago
        She looked like an interesting candidate. I always wonder how some candidates find no traction while others do.
        stOneskull 7y ago
        she's smart, articulate, tough.. much better president than dementia biden
mindslight 7y ago
Delaying the response by a month is going to look terrible when the dust settles. That there have not been harsh partisan articles loudly airing this dirty laundry is, I think, more a function of the media having more substantive things to focus at this time. Sure, everything is relative and up for debate in our post-truth environment. But Republicans that reluctantly voted for him were already weary of his warmongering around Christmas. And many of those that did listen to his ignorant bullshit for the past month are likely to end up knowing someone who dies from this.
SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
Well, what are the odds that all the major players will still be alive at that time?
- david927 7y ago
  This is what no one is talking about.
- onetimemanytime 7y ago
  I might die before them, but statistically speaking CoronaVirus and 80 year old people don't get along that good
- Diederich 7y ago
  Pretty good. Each of Biden, Sanders and Trump will get unlimited amounts of the best health care in the world. They are pretty old, and this is a nasty virus for some people, but top of the top of the shelf health care is a wondrous thing. To another reply: you're correct, this is a big point that few people are thinking about.
- hutzlibu 7y ago
  Probably quite good, as it is not likely that lung ventilators will run out for anyone of them.
joezydeco 7y ago
Considering the fact that a US President has never had to deal with a war on US soil since Lincoln, with an invisible enemy that can’t be negotiated with, I would say the answer is unknown.
- enitihas 7y ago
  Yup, but the two events which US did face on it's soil (Pearl Harbour and 9/11) did boost the support for the sitting presidents though.
  - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
    Wasn't that due to steady, determined leadership? Hasn't the current commander in chief already pushed responsibility for this issue off onto his VP?
    - BoorishBears 7y ago
      The conference that just ended was a big win for him and the market is responding well so far. He didn't necessarily take responsibility of anything, but he managed to suppress his usual behavior well enough for the people behind him to assure people
      - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
        I sincerely and absolutely hope that he manages to pull himself together to see America through this storm. I doubt it, but I sincerely hope it happens.
      - joezydeco 7y ago
        How does the DJIA prevent future deaths from 2019-nCov?
        BoorishBears 7y ago
        Kind of hard to unpack such a vague/terse comment... If you’re trying to say “who cares about money when lives are on the line”... in this case a strong, life-saving, response begets a positive market response. People drying en-masse is not good for the economy, or anyone really. Also, recessions are generally not good for people’s health.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
This will be over--one way or another--in 2 months.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  That seems optimistic considering it's been months getting to this point and we're not even at the peak of anything.
- lukevdp 7y ago
  What makes you say that? This could stretch over a year. We have already been 3 months and nowhere near peak yet.
  - kangnkodos 7y ago
    At the current exponential rate of worldwide growth, by the end of June, we will be in one of these two scenarios: 1) Almost everyone in the world who is susceptible has it, or had it. 2) We implemented a way to slow down the global growth rate, or it slowed down by itself. One way or another, we will know in a just a few months. If you want to check the math, skip to about 3:20 on this video from 3Blue1Brown, Exponential growth and epidemics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg
- stinos 7y ago
  I assume you think so because it looks like 'standard' influenza which has a hard time surviving in spring. It's understandable to think that, problem is it's completely not known whether this virus also behaves like that.
  - hokumguru 7y ago
    SARS dissipated quite quickly come the warmer months, hopefully this similar coronavirus does as well. It's the best we can hope for right now.
    - 7y ago
dlp211 7y ago
It's too early to tell.
nitwit005 7y ago
It at least seems clear that Trump himself views it as a negative, and certainly he's lost the benefit of a strong economy.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Traster 7y ago
I don't think that's a helpful way of looking at things. Presidents who go to war generally don't lose elections because Presidents generally don't choose to get into unpopular wars. But there are exceptions - that's how we got Nixon, Obama campaigned against McCain's Iraq support. I think it will be far more important how Trump deals with this than the simple fact of it happening.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
rosybox 7y ago
Everyone who is going to has already made their mind about Trump. Nothing that happens in the next few months is going to change that after the last 3 years. If he botches the coronavirus response his detractors will yell about it and his defenders will blame someone else.
- kohtatsu 7y ago
  I think this is far too cynical.
- mattsfrey 7y ago
  People will likely not flip sides but might be disillusioned enough to not vote or vote third party
- nitwit005 7y ago
  What changes is turnout, and turnout decides US elections. When people get upset at their party, or lack enthusiasm, they tend not to show.
pvaldes 7y ago
This is the opposite to a standard war (young adults die and elder survive). People killed by coronavirus will not vote again for him, thats for sure. If republicans depend more on elder voters, any "positive" impact of the "war", would be counteracted with losing more voters in their (I assume) main demographic pool. The comparison between how the different countries will care for their population is unavoidable, and the results in China will be proudly stellar in that time (They had reasons to be proud). And this can't be solved with more fake news. Death values can be faked and anybody could start a badmouth campaign against South Korea to hide that they will have the lowest mortality rate (due to the korean strategy of extensive testing of the population) but in the end, death people will not vote you (neither their widows, friends and family?). So It depends also of how people will feel about replacing Obamacare by Trumpcare. Images from the past like "Trump throwing rolls of toilet paper to puerto ricans with contempt" will not help by comparison. He always had problems showing real empathy in public.
mnm1 7y ago
Despite the pres making this disaster worse in every way possible (cutting cdc funding, still not testing, still no quarantine, still no real action other than declaring this, way way way too fucking late with everything, hiding info, preventing states from testing, etc.) through the worst leadership one could imagine in such a situation, his idiot supporters are still likely to vote for him. And considering he'll likely run against Biden, a male Hillary, that increases his chances even more. The stupidity in this country is astounding.

Considering the fact that most War time presidents in US do not lose elections, what impact do you think the current health crisis will have on Trump's re-election?

jcfrei 7y ago

He's gonna win. A viral outbreak like this has no precedent for anyone still alive. So it's hard to criticize the government based on personal experience. If they demonstrate leadership and decisive action that should be enough for a reelection. Any candidate simply cannot compete with the media exposure the president gets during times of a national crisis.

Trasmatta 7y ago
> So it's hard to criticize the government based on personal experience No it's not. You had every expert in the world talking about the potential dangers for months, while Trump kept talking about how it was just a flu that would magically go away on its own, and that there wasn't anything to be concerned with. The US's preparation has been incredibly bad and late in comparison to certain other countries. On top of Trump firing the Pandemic Response Team in 2018. The optics are going to start looking increasingly bad for him as the US death rate starts to climb. I don't claim to predict the outcome of the election, but you can't claim that it's "hard to criticize the government" based off of this, or that any future "decisive action" is going to be enough once the death rate hits tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands.
- jcfrei 7y ago
  I was trying to emphasize the "based on personal experience" part. Of course you can still criticize the government. But elections have time and time again shown that the opinion of experts matters much less to the electorate than their personal experience. That's one of the reasons why the state of the economy is so important for the reelection of a president. That being said, if the US economy really does tank that could make his reelection more difficult but I think he can easily blame that on the virus.
- enitihas 7y ago
  > You had every expert in the world talking about the potential dangers for months? Experts have been also talking about dangers of climate change for years, yet Trump manages to win election while calling climate change a hoax. So not sure his base cares about expert advice. >while Trump kept talking about how it was just a flu that would magically go away on its own, and that there wasn't anything to be concerned with. You should read trump's tweets, there is a shockingly large number of people agreeing with him on this like everything. As long as trump can manage to limit the damage to the US, he will have strong arguments for a re-election.
- TMWNN 7y ago
  >On top of Trump firing the Pandemic Response Team in 2018. Ah yes, yet another person who looked at the Snopes piece's headline and nothing else. One would think reading it, and the Twitter thread it is based on, that to save money (or because the Trump administration hates science, or something) the entire "US Pandemic Response Team" agency was cut to save money, causing everyone in a large DC office building to lose their jobs. Actually reading the contemporary NBC News https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-trump-s-homeland-security-adviser-resign-n864321 https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/tom-bossert-t... and Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/05/10/top-white-house-official-in-charge-of-pandemic-response-exits-abruptly/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/0... articles it cites, they seem to have been a handful of people in one team in the National Security Council hierarchy, that the new National Security Advisor reassigned to related agencies. Ziemer resigned because he wanted to keep his team the way it was. COVID19 was not a surprise; that is, it was known to exist in China some time before the first cases appeared in the US. It is not unreasonable for a government to assemble a team to respond to something like a pandemic as needed, as opposed to having people dedicated solely to the purpose and nothing else. And that's exactly what the US did, implementing the ban on non-American travelers who'd been to China in late January, among other things. You may or may not agree with this. But please don't claim that this is somehow prima facie proof of the Trump administration's malfeasance/evilness. PS - No, Trump did not "cut the CDC budget!" either. https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104 https://apnews.com/d36d6c4de29f4d04beda3db00cb46104
mnm1 7y ago
Are you joking? This is the worst response to this crisis imaginable. It's impossible not to criticize the government for completely fucking everything up (already listed the top things in another post so I won't rehash). Nothing has been done. We've had a good six or more weeks and still nothing. It's a total disaster. That said, I think you're right about the election. People are too stupid to even be informed. but if we have a few hundred thousand or million deaths, who knows? I still doubt the fox news crowd will change their mind.

Ididntdothis 7y ago

Since the best the democrats have to offer is a washed up 78 year old, Trump will probably win by a wide margin. It's like 2016. The opposition isn't even showing up.

dlp211 7y ago
Trump didn't win a wide margin in 2016, he won by 70k votes in 3 states. Biden is curretnly overperforming in every demographic that Clinton lost in 2016. Democratic turnout is up in these primary's. The POTUS is historically disliked especially by suburban white women who went for Trump in 2016. Arizona has a very popular Democratic challenger for the Senate. Arizona, Georgia, Texas, and North Carolina are being added to the traditional battleground states. Biden might be washed up, but it might not matter. Bloomberg is about to drop $2 Billion in advertising and infrastructure in support of the Democratic party. I'm not saying Trump is going to lose, but if he wins, it's going to be by a narrow margin in which he loses the popular vote by more than 6 million.
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  Maybe they will win but I still think the choice of democratic candidates in 2016 and 2020 is pathetic.
  - stOneskull 7y ago
    tulsi would've been the way to go
    - Ididntdothis 7y ago
      She looked like an interesting candidate. I always wonder how some candidates find no traction while others do.
      - stOneskull 7y ago
        she's smart, articulate, tough.. much better president than dementia biden

mindslight 7y ago

Delaying the response by a month is going to look terrible when the dust settles. That there have not been harsh partisan articles loudly airing this dirty laundry is, I think, more a function of the media having more substantive things to focus at this time. Sure, everything is relative and up for debate in our post-truth environment. But Republicans that reluctantly voted for him were already weary of his warmongering around Christmas. And many of those that did listen to his ignorant bullshit for the past month are likely to end up knowing someone who dies from this.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago

Well, what are the odds that all the major players will still be alive at that time?

david927 7y ago
This is what no one is talking about.
onetimemanytime 7y ago
I might die before them, but statistically speaking CoronaVirus and 80 year old people don't get along that good
Diederich 7y ago
Pretty good. Each of Biden, Sanders and Trump will get unlimited amounts of the best health care in the world. They are pretty old, and this is a nasty virus for some people, but top of the top of the shelf health care is a wondrous thing. To another reply: you're correct, this is a big point that few people are thinking about.
hutzlibu 7y ago
Probably quite good, as it is not likely that lung ventilators will run out for anyone of them.

joezydeco 7y ago

Considering the fact that a US President has never had to deal with a war on US soil since Lincoln, with an invisible enemy that can’t be negotiated with, I would say the answer is unknown.

enitihas 7y ago
Yup, but the two events which US did face on it's soil (Pearl Harbour and 9/11) did boost the support for the sitting presidents though.
- SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
  Wasn't that due to steady, determined leadership? Hasn't the current commander in chief already pushed responsibility for this issue off onto his VP?
  - BoorishBears 7y ago
    The conference that just ended was a big win for him and the market is responding well so far. He didn't necessarily take responsibility of anything, but he managed to suppress his usual behavior well enough for the people behind him to assure people
    - SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
      I sincerely and absolutely hope that he manages to pull himself together to see America through this storm. I doubt it, but I sincerely hope it happens.
    - joezydeco 7y ago
      How does the DJIA prevent future deaths from 2019-nCov?
      - BoorishBears 7y ago
        Kind of hard to unpack such a vague/terse comment... If you’re trying to say “who cares about money when lives are on the line”... in this case a strong, life-saving, response begets a positive market response. People drying en-masse is not good for the economy, or anyone really. Also, recessions are generally not good for people’s health.

onetimemanytime 7y ago

This will be over--one way or another--in 2 months.

SketchySeaBeast 7y ago
That seems optimistic considering it's been months getting to this point and we're not even at the peak of anything.
lukevdp 7y ago
What makes you say that? This could stretch over a year. We have already been 3 months and nowhere near peak yet.
- kangnkodos 7y ago
  At the current exponential rate of worldwide growth, by the end of June, we will be in one of these two scenarios: 1) Almost everyone in the world who is susceptible has it, or had it. 2) We implemented a way to slow down the global growth rate, or it slowed down by itself. One way or another, we will know in a just a few months. If you want to check the math, skip to about 3:20 on this video from 3Blue1Brown, Exponential growth and epidemics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kas0tIxDvrg
stinos 7y ago
I assume you think so because it looks like 'standard' influenza which has a hard time surviving in spring. It's understandable to think that, problem is it's completely not known whether this virus also behaves like that.
- hokumguru 7y ago
  SARS dissipated quite quickly come the warmer months, hopefully this similar coronavirus does as well. It's the best we can hope for right now.
  - 7y ago

dlp211 7y ago

It's too early to tell.

nitwit005 7y ago

It at least seems clear that Trump himself views it as a negative, and certainly he's lost the benefit of a strong economy.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Traster 7y ago

I don't think that's a helpful way of looking at things. Presidents who go to war generally don't lose elections because Presidents generally don't choose to get into unpopular wars. But there are exceptions - that's how we got Nixon, Obama campaigned against McCain's Iraq support. I think it will be far more important how Trump deals with this than the simple fact of it happening.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

rosybox 7y ago

Everyone who is going to has already made their mind about Trump. Nothing that happens in the next few months is going to change that after the last 3 years. If he botches the coronavirus response his detractors will yell about it and his defenders will blame someone else.

kohtatsu 7y ago
I think this is far too cynical.
mattsfrey 7y ago
People will likely not flip sides but might be disillusioned enough to not vote or vote third party
nitwit005 7y ago
What changes is turnout, and turnout decides US elections. When people get upset at their party, or lack enthusiasm, they tend not to show.

pvaldes 7y ago

This is the opposite to a standard war (young adults die and elder survive). People killed by coronavirus will not vote again for him, thats for sure. If republicans depend more on elder voters, any "positive" impact of the "war", would be counteracted with losing more voters in their (I assume) main demographic pool. The comparison between how the different countries will care for their population is unavoidable, and the results in China will be proudly stellar in that time (They had reasons to be proud). And this can't be solved with more fake news. Death values can be faked and anybody could start a badmouth campaign against South Korea to hide that they will have the lowest mortality rate (due to the korean strategy of extensive testing of the population) but in the end, death people will not vote you (neither their widows, friends and family?). So It depends also of how people will feel about replacing Obamacare by Trumpcare. Images from the past like "Trump throwing rolls of toilet paper to puerto ricans with contempt" will not help by comparison. He always had problems showing real empathy in public.

mnm1 7y ago

Despite the pres making this disaster worse in every way possible (cutting cdc funding, still not testing, still no quarantine, still no real action other than declaring this, way way way too fucking late with everything, hiding info, preventing states from testing, etc.) through the worst leadership one could imagine in such a situation, his idiot supporters are still likely to vote for him. And considering he'll likely run against Biden, a male Hillary, that increases his chances even more. The stupidity in this country is astounding.