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The wreckage that Joe Biden might inherit in November
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.
Can you imagine four more years of this dysfunction? American would indeed be a ****hole country to borrow a crass term from Trump.
Vote Trump out of office. Vote for Joe Biden. Vote the GOP out of the Senate. Vote to save the United States from Trumps dereliction of duty, his corruption, and his racism.
Democrat presidential candidate Joe Biden.
8/10/20
Like some medieval warlord on the verge of ruin, President Trump is burning the harvest and salting the fields. He seems determined to leave behind a broken nation. No one should take for granted that Trump will lose to Joe Biden in November. But the more likely this result appears to be, the more clearly we can see the wreckage that Biden would inherit. Trump’s tenure has been a disaster all along, but as Election Day approaches things are getting worse — with long-term implications that are dire. The smoke-and-mirrors executive actions Trump signed this weekend are but the latest example. They don’t actually do anything concrete to help the millions of Americans thrown out of work by the pandemic. Trump didn’t really forestall an expected wave of evictions; he just mandated a study of the issue. Trump didn’t really extend the $600-a-week federal supplement to unemployment benefits; he cut it to $300 and demanded that the states, which are basically broke, pony up an additional $100. But Trump’s deferral of employee payroll tax collection for the rest of the year, for workers making less than $104,000 — which probably is within his power as president — does real damage, all of it gratuitous. It takes away hundreds of billions of dollars from Social Security. And, of course, it helps precisely no one who is unemployed, since to pay payroll taxes one has to be on a payroll.
A Biden presidency would fix this dysfunction, though progress would be inhibited if Republicans retain control of the Senate. Much worse is Trump’s botched handling of the covid-19 pandemic. Just look at the devastation and disgrace the United States has suffered. With our schools now opening willy-nilly, without a national strategy in place or even in the works, there is no chance that the novel coronavirus will simply “go away,” as Trump fantasizes. He would also be left with a social crisis. So Biden’s first and biggest challenge, if he wins, may be to take the decisive and effective action against covid-19 that Trump has neglected. Biden would inherit not just a continuing economic crisis but, perhaps, a worsening health crisis as well. Cities across the nation are still rocked by the Black Lives Matter protests over police violence and systemic racism. None of the harm that Trump has done to the nation will automatically repair itself if Biden wins. The incoming administration would have to deal with acute crisis on top of acute crisis. The only worse prospect is the unthinkable: Trump wins. After four more years of disfigurement, would we even recognize ourselves?
Can you imagine four more years of this dysfunction? American would indeed be a ****hole country to borrow a crass term from Trump.
Vote Trump out of office. Vote for Joe Biden. Vote the GOP out of the Senate. Vote to save the United States from Trumps dereliction of duty, his corruption, and his racism.