Track Record Matters

We have suffered through hundreds of lies, big and small, every day. Doubling down on lies about trivial things like the size of his crowds. Doubling down on lies that are easily fact-checked. Regular lies that are contrary to science or demonstrated to be false by widely available video, often of the president himself or his own advisors.

It is easy to scapegoat the 'deep state' and 'fake news' until you need them. Today we need those state scientists' expertise to figure out how to keep Americans safe and the news media to help educate Americans so we can all work together to mitigate a global pandemic.

But the president continues to lie, even about the pandemic. Even the pandemic is now another 'hoax' and Fox News helps him spread his misinformation. This means no one, including private sector elites whose judgements are registered in the stock market, can believe the president. No one can trust him as a leader willing or able to help us figure this out.

The shelves are empty for a reason. It is now impossible for anyone to delude themselves into thinking this clown car of a White House is anything more than turbo-swamp. Republican Senators have known this for years and they failed to act when the House gave them an opportunity.

The additional lives lost and damage done, unfolding in real time, can be traced back to this double-whammy of incompetence in the White House and cowardice among Republican Senators. They are not responsible, of course, for the pandemic itself. But our inept, clumsy, and still not close to on-track response is entirely of their making.

Unless they triple down, finding an even lower level in the swamp, to scuttle the 2020 election, we will begin to right the ship in November.

Then it will become important for Democrats in power to not seek payback, to reject calls to prosecute their political enemies, and to focus on two things: enact competent governance that solves problems for American families and start the gradual work of rebuilding the rule of law and functioning democratic institutions and processes.