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FOr about a minute today I found myself feeling sorry for Donald Trump. The poor man is now “fighting” against Covid-19 (the pugilist verb is appearing all over the news). Is in the hospital. He’s out of shape. He is 74 years old. His chief of staff reportedly says his symptoms are “very worrying”.
Joe Biden is praying for him. Kamala Harris sends you her sincere wishes. President Obama reminds us that we are all in this together and we want to make sure everyone is healthy.
But wait: why should we feel empathy for one of the least understanding people in the world?
One reason is out of respect. It’s a human. He is our president.
However, there is an asymmetry here. While the Biden campaign has removed all negative television advertising, negative Trump campaign ads continue unabated.
And around the same time that Biden, Harris and Obama offered prayers and words of comfort, the Trump campaign slammed “Lyin ‘Obama and Phony Kamala Harris” and charged that “Sleepy Joe is unfit to be YOUR president.”
Can you imagine if Biden had hired Covid instead of Trump? Trump would be on him. He would attack Biden as weak, weak and old. He would scoff at Biden’s mask: “Look, masks don’t work!” – and satirizing his unwillingness to hold live rallies: “I guess he got Covid in his basement!”
How can we be sure that Trump has the disease? He has lied about everything else. Maybe you will reappear in a day or two, refreshed and relaxed, saying “Covid is no big deal. He will say that he took hydroxychloroquine and it cured him. He will brag about having won the “battle” with Covid because he is strong and powerful, without crediting the best healthcare money can buy.
Meanwhile, his “battle” has distracted the nation from revelations that he is a tax con man who paid only $ 750 in taxes in his first year in office, and hardly anything during the previous 15 years; and that he is a failed businessman who keeps losing money.
And of his performance in the shameful debate last week, in which he did not want to condemn white supremacists.
It even takes our minds off the main reason Covid is out of control in America: because Trump blew it.
He downplayed it, passed the responsibility on to governors, and then demanded that they allow businesses to reopen, too soon, for the economy to look good before the elections.
He has muzzled and disputed experts at the CDC, promoted crank cures, held maskless campaign events, and encouraged his supporters not to wear masks. All of this has contributed to tens of thousands of unnecessary American deaths.
Trump’s “battle” with Covid also diverts attention away from his and Mitch McConnell’s perversions on American democracy.
This is where the asymmetry is deepest. McConnell is now moving to confirm Trump’s supreme court nominee Amy Coney Barrett, having blocked Obama’s nominee from winning a Senate vote for nearly a year based on a made-up “rule” that the next president should decide.
However, Biden will not talk about increasing the size of the court to balance it, and Democratic leaders have rejected the idea.
Biden and leading Democrats also don’t want to suggest that Washington DC and Puerto Rico become states, a step that would remedy strange inequalities in the Senate, where a slim majority of Republicans representing 11 million fewer Americans than their Democratic counterparts can confirm a Supreme Court of Justice.
It would also help rebalance the electoral college, which made Trump president in 2016 despite losing the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by more than 3 million.
Democrats are concerned that this seems unfair to the public. Unfair, when Trump doesn’t even commit to a peaceful transition of power and refuses to stick with the results?
When you are already claiming that the election is rigged against you and will be fraudulent unless you win?
When you are preparing Trump voter lists to be certified in the states, will you claim you lost due to fraud? When are you urging your supporters to intimidate Biden voters at the polls?
Whether responding to Trump’s hospitalization this weekend or Trump’s biggest political maneuvers, Democrats want to act decent and kind, take the right path, and be fair. They want to protect democratic norms, values and institutions.
This is admirable. It’s also what the Democrats say they represent.
But the other side does not play the same game. Trump and his enablers will do anything to retain and expand their power.
You can sympathize with Trump this weekend and acknowledge that he is putting America to a moral test.
What kind of society does the nation want: one based on decency and democracy, or on cruelty and sheer power?
