1. It's hard to overstate how bad things look right now for America being able to get a handle on the pandemic: support for the lockdown is becoming partisan, some state governments are prematurely lifting the lockdown, and outside of NY state it hasn't even peaked yet.
2. The botched response to the pandemic is due in large part to Trump, who lacks both the intellectual capacity and empathy that the moment requires. His singleminded focus on trying to preserve the image of a good economy for the sake of re-election has led to disaster
3. But as so often in the Trump era, the disaster was caused not just by Trump's unfitness but also by the very political system that elevated Trump to a position he is unfit for. There's the failure of the GOP & the bipartisan failure of policy
4. The GOP failure is a simple one: in their heart everyone in party elite knows Trump is unfit, yet they stuck with him. They had ample means of stopping him, up to and including impeachment & removal. At every step, they sided with him.
5. The bipartisan failure can be seen by thinking about the vector points where the pandemic is spreading fast: meat packing plants, nursing homes, & prisons. These were tinder boxes long before Trump came to office thanks to deregulation, austerity & bad management.
6. Some more thoughts on the size of the failure and the need for a reckoning. thenation.com/article/politi…
