At the start of the year, PM Jacinda Ardern was in danger of losing the next election in NZ. But she just won a historically large victory, likely allowing Labour to be the first party to govern NZ alone since 1993, when NZ reformed its constitution to encourage coalition govts.
Nobody should be surprised that the key to Ardern's victory was her successful response to COVID-19.
If Donald Trump loses in two weeks, many will blame the pandemic for his defeat. But this would be getting things precisely wrong.
Like Ardern, Trump was quite unpopular at the start of 2020 and was likely to lose his bid for reelection. Unlike Ardern, when faced with the pandemic, he reacted disastrously.
Since the start of the pandemic, Trump's approval ratings haven't cratered. They've just stayed more or less the same.
Far from dooming Trump's presidency, the pandemic was a great opportunity for Trump to secure reelection. An even moderately successful response might have actually moved those poll numbers in his favor.
But Trump's incompetence, indifference to the lives of most other people, lack of interest in doing his job, and narcissism made his flailing, non-response to the pandemic overdetermined.
There may be no better measure of what a lousy politician Donald Trump is than the fact that he didn't even understand that the pandemic _was_ a political opportunity, that taking it seriously and caring about Americans' health and lives was in his own political self-interest.
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