Donald Trump faces the classic "snow on the streets" problem with the Coronavirus. (thread)
All politicians are used to saying things that are not true. Trump and his Republican sycophants have taken this to a new level where they boldly proclaim things that are utterly absurd on their face.
For example, Trump tells the story that he turned around the economy from a near depression to the "greatest economy ever."
In fact, the economy has largely continued the growth and employment trends from the Obama years. With the number of uninsured people rising rapidly, and millions facing crushing student loan debt, it's pretty hard to call it greatest economy ever.
But these are to some extent abstractions. People know their own economic situation, but they don't know the aggregates and the trends from the Obama years. This means that Trump and his gang can get away with lying.
The snow on the street problem refers to something that people can see with their own two eyes, where you can't get away with lying.
It refers to Michael Bilandic, who was filling in as mayor after the real Mayor Daley lied in 1977. He was running for re-election in 1979, after filling out Daley's term.
Chicago got hit with a bad snowstorm that winter, which is not terribly unusual for Chicago. The problem was that the city was totally unprepared for the snow storm.
It turned out that Bliandic had given the contract to develop a snow removal plan to a friend, who never did the work. As a result, the city was paralyzed for several days, since the snow removal process was a complete mess.
About a week after the snow storm Bilandic held a press conference where he was asked why the side streets still were not cleared.
Bilandic got indignant and insisted the side streets were cleared. Of course, everyone could see the streets in front of their eyes and see Bilandic was lying. He lost the election by a large margin.
The coronavirus is the same sort of situation. Trump and his Republican allies can lie about everything in the world, but if they say that the disease is contained, when people are getting sick, and likely dying, all but the total cultists will not believe them.
Trump will undoubtedly blame the Democrats and FAKE NEWS, but this time he will not get away with passing the buck. His Olympic levels of incompetence and venality are to blame and everyone will be able to see it.
