Imagine if Hillary Clinton were President during this pandemic

[Silent3]

Last edited Fri Jul 3, 2020, 01:27 PM - Edit history (1)

We'd be doing much, much better I'm sure. I don't know if we'd be doing as well as Europe, say, because the red states would still have been going out of their way to fuck up their response, but we'd still be doing a lot better.

The thing is, however, we could be doing ten times better than Europe right now, and yet Republicans and Fox News would still have been screaming bloody murder that every death was on Clinton's hands.

They'd be blaming Clinton for not "building the wall" (as if that would have had anything at all to do with the virus). No matter what travel bans had been instituted to prevent the virus from getting into the country in the first place (as if it were even possible to keep it out forever), nothing she would have done would have been xenophobic enough to satisfy their post-facto demands.

Whatever the death toll had been, I can easily imagine that number commonly being divided by four, and counted as the number of "Benghazis" per day, per week, etc.

Crazy conspiracy theories (say Clinton being in league with China to create and spread the virus for example) would have gone mainstream among Republicans, and spread well into the general populace.

The so-called "liberal media" would have, as early as late February or early March, been somberly asking "Can Clinton's presidency survive the COVID-19 debacle?" or "When will she resign?"

We'd probably have Trump, or someone very Trump-like, sweeping into power this coming November, along with equally rabid Republican House and Senate majorities.

The idea that Clinton would actually have been widely praised for doing a good job seems almost unfathomable to me, no matter how good a job she actually would have or could have done.

This makes me wonder we've almost inevitably been building up to a Trump-like disaster in our country, with it just having been a matter of timing when it was going to happen.

[Beakybird]

1. Excellent point.

No matter how good of a job she did, the rednecks wouldn't wear masks, they'd be screaming to open up, there would be hundreds of conspiracy theories, and dozens of armchair quarterbacks on Fox News disparaging her response.

[GemDigger]

2. Every. Single. Day!

[Bettie]

3. Yep, and that "when will she resign" and "she MUST resign"

would have begun when the death toll reached 5.

[BlueCaliDem]

4. There simply wouldn't BE a pandemic in the U.S.

President Obama and VP Biden had put in place an office in the WH to strategize combating pandemics.

tRUmp threw it out.

REMEMBER! The SARS and H1N1 virus (2009) were also potential pandemics! Did we notice? Nope. That's because they arrived under the competent and capable presidency of Barack Obama.

[chriscan64]

5. Biden will have the unemployment rate hung from his neck day one.

Every covid-19 death will be like a count of murder. Bullshit will live on after Trump.

[ismnotwasm]

6. Don't entirely agree

We have gotten used to a unprecedented level of disfunction in government until Trump and Republicans.

Hillary is many things, the most outstanding is highly competent. You are assuming she would be a one term president. I don’t think so. The judiciary wouldn’t be in the shape it’s in. The ACA would be strengthened. We wouldn’t have the border situation, bigotry wouldn’t be socially acceptable out loud and without consequences. The virus would have been handled immediately instead of a government floundering for the right political response. Trump thus far has stayed out of wars, but set up the potential for firefights in several areas. I am not sure why he shit on our allies and embraces our enemies, yet business still goes on. She’d get criticized for the TPP, but it’s better than the new NAFTA. I don’t know man. Obama set us. Up for real progressive change. That is all gone.

Black men would still be getting shot, because we have a systematic racist problem in our police force, and our entire country, but the federal response would have been very different

I know people think that something good must happen out of Trump, but imo that’s just underestimating the damage he’s done. Yeah Hillary would be the bogeyman for the far left and right, but the far left has lost its momentum for change. And as frustrated as I get with them, their voices were sincere

The revolution happened on the back of social, not economic justice. We’ve been set back profoundly.

[Silent3]

7. I'm not sure where your point of disagreement is

Because I agree that Clinton would have done a lot of great things, and that we'd be in much better shape not just in terms of the pandemic response, but in many other areas like those you mentioned.

But in terms of public perception of the job she would have done, I have a hard time believing that would have meant diddly squat. I don't underestimate the damage Trump has done at all -- I know it's enormous.

But if Clinton had won, the horrible reality of a Trump presidency wouldn't exist for comparison. A severely down-played and under-appreciated Clinton legacy would be played up against an as-yet untried fantasy of Trump/Trump-like leadership.

I have a very difficult time imagining, no matter Clinton's talents and capabilities, that would have gone well for us.