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What I'm saying is that if Sec. Clinton were in office the red states would be doing exactly what they're doing now. It wouldn't have made a lick of difference.

What I'm saying is that if Sec. Clinton were in office the red states would be doing exactly what they're doing now. It wouldn't have made a lick of difference. I should have been more explicit on that. > Contrast this with Andrew Cuomo of New York... Exactly. I think this is part of the problem on the left. The desire to do something, anything, when sometimes doing nothing, or less, is the right thing. And then if it doesn't work out saying "yeah but we did something!". Frankly, I think the outcome in NY was inevitable regardless of policy. So I don't blame Cuomo but I also don't think he's a hero. He just did his job and showed up. The way the data has shaped up against other jurisdictions around the country/globe I think they would have gotten about the same outcome regardless of the policy. > It was a choice by Trump, which then filtered down into Trump leaning local politicians, to turn it into a proxy war That's fair. He did "start it". He's a real problem for sure. Anything he touches or recommend almost can't be touched by the left for fear of keeping him in office. But same for the right. There's no way the red states would have saddled up with Clinton.

oramit 6y ago
Thanks for the clarification. I thought you meant a complete reversal. If Hillary were president I think red states would have resisted but its hard for me to imagine they would be doing it at the same level. Maybe i'm being too Pollyanna there. I also agree that simply doing something, anything, isn't always the right approach. I'm an independent who hangs out with the left and there is a tendency to reach for the hammer of government a bit too often. The feds shouldn't have led the charge by any means, but once individual states had started to shut down, a coordinated federal response to get this fully under control would have been the best approach. I think the end game for this will be something like that.
- FuckButtons 6y ago
  Here’s the thing, you can be as ideological about this as you want but if you look around the world at what has worked, empirically, national level intervention with a large testing and tracing effort at that level is what works. The best approach is what keeps people from overwhelming hospitals, not what meets some platonic ideal of overlapping spheres of influence.
dragonwriter 6y ago
> What I'm saying is that if Sec. Clinton were in office the red states would be doing exactly what they're doing now. It wouldn't have made a lick of difference. Sure it would. Heck if a Republican that wasn't Trump was in office now, there wouldn't have been the White House bully pulpit being used against basic safety measures and White House emergency powers abused to block states from getting PPE and other emergency supplies. We'd probably have a state aid bill, too, though probably a less generous one than a Democratic Administration and Senate would have been on board for, but probably more than nothing. Which make it financially more viable to do lockdowns (states often can't, Constitutionally, borrow for no capital expenses, and procedurally have a difficult process to approve new debt and have a high cost of borrowing, the Feds have none of those problems). Leadership matters and there's a reason Trump's numbers are falling even among Republicans.

oramit 6y ago

Thanks for the clarification. I thought you meant a complete reversal. If Hillary were president I think red states would have resisted but its hard for me to imagine they would be doing it at the same level. Maybe i'm being too Pollyanna there. I also agree that simply doing something, anything, isn't always the right approach. I'm an independent who hangs out with the left and there is a tendency to reach for the hammer of government a bit too often. The feds shouldn't have led the charge by any means, but once individual states had started to shut down, a coordinated federal response to get this fully under control would have been the best approach. I think the end game for this will be something like that.

FuckButtons 6y ago
Here’s the thing, you can be as ideological about this as you want but if you look around the world at what has worked, empirically, national level intervention with a large testing and tracing effort at that level is what works. The best approach is what keeps people from overwhelming hospitals, not what meets some platonic ideal of overlapping spheres of influence.

dragonwriter 6y ago

> What I'm saying is that if Sec. Clinton were in office the red states would be doing exactly what they're doing now. It wouldn't have made a lick of difference. Sure it would. Heck if a Republican that wasn't Trump was in office now, there wouldn't have been the White House bully pulpit being used against basic safety measures and White House emergency powers abused to block states from getting PPE and other emergency supplies. We'd probably have a state aid bill, too, though probably a less generous one than a Democratic Administration and Senate would have been on board for, but probably more than nothing. Which make it financially more viable to do lockdowns (states often can't, Constitutionally, borrow for no capital expenses, and procedurally have a difficult process to approve new debt and have a high cost of borrowing, the Feds have none of those problems). Leadership matters and there's a reason Trump's numbers are falling even among Republicans.