Trump Veers to the Left

The White House is veering to the left, declaring war on the virus, relying on the State to save the economy and seeking to distribute aid directly to those who need it most.

The only thing Donald Trump fears is the economy. He was never afraid of impeachment. He knew he would beat it thanks to the Republican majority in the Senate. And he knew how to use it to weaken and divide the Democrats. Fortune smiled on him early in the Democratic primaries; they were so disorderly and disastrous, and no candidate emerged who was capable of blocking a second presidential term for Trump. He was even hoping that Bernie Sanders might block the way for an unexpected candidate who might try to repeat what Barack Obama did, or weaken Joe Biden, the candidate of the Democratic establishment.

With low unemployment and good economic growth, the president will get another term. If voting takes place with a recession and unemployment lines, he will easily be defeated. This is what happened with George H.W. Bush, in spite of his excellent report card. Bush won the Cold War, organized the closest thing to a reasonable world order, and left the economy ready to grow just when Bill Clinton moved in to the White House.

Waving their banner of opposition to the bogeyman of the socialist peril, the Republicans were confident of a second term. They weren’t counting on the coronavirus, one of those unforeseeable events that are only determined as a matter of luck, a central idea in the art of politics, according to Niccolò Machiavelli. The principal virtue that the Machiavellian prince must demonstrate is knowing how to face these events, how to take advantage of uncertainty and how to turn them into an opportunity to consolidate power. Until last Monday, Trump did not understand this. He was only calculating the direct impact the paralysis in China could have on the economy. At first, he dismissed it as a Democratic hoax to undermine his presidency. Then he blamed China and Europe; it was a Chinese virus propagated by the Europeans. For Trump and his followers, accustomed to denying climate change and disparaging public health care, it could only be the fruit of a conspiracy of the left-wing elites.

The passive response that resulted from the denial by the Trumpists matches Boris Johnson’s strategy for combating the virus: mitigating the disease without confining the population or damaging the economy and hoping that herd immunity would develop when the contagion reached a sufficient critical mass of the population. Apparently, the cost calculations worked out, in terms of spending on hospitals, maintenance of the economy and an acceptable death toll, until a study from Imperial College London came out this Monday that revealed the appalling numbers: half a million dead in the United Kingdom, and 2.2 million in the United States.

And on top of that, after this Tuesday’s primaries, Sanders is not a viable presidential candidate. The Democrats already have Biden, who has distanced himself from Sanders and established himself as a normal and cautious candidate, capable of kicking Trump out and leading the country in a time of emergency. Now, but perhaps too late, the White House is even veering to the left, declaring war on the virus, relying on the State to save the economy and seeking to distribute aid directly to those who need it most.