@JoeBiden promised us better. We were told - over and over again, in no uncertain terms - that the Biden team was going to turn the coronavirus pandemic around.
Today, they told us that wasn’t true. We’ve got a lot more examples to go. 👇
Over and over again his campaign told us they were ready from the jump to fix things.
Now that @JoeBiden is in office, apparently that’s changed.
How come?
This was the message that @JoeBiden delivered throughout the campaign.
This tone sure sounds like quitting to me, Mr. President.
There are so, so many of these. I could make multiple threads just of the different times and ways that @JoeBiden told us that he was going to get things turned around ASAP.
And his running mate was even worse. @KamalaHarris told us, again and again, that she and @JoeBiden we’re gonna fix this for all of us and do it “from day one.”
Remember, this was the core of their campaign.
Look. Her words. How’d those age?
And @KamalaHarris may even have been more frequent in her claims.
I spend a lot of time looking at bad takes and dishonest pandering.
I’ve got to be honest. This entire display from @KamalaHarris has got to be the worst that I’ve ever seen.
And naturally the campaign got their allies out on the trail to repeat this same message: Joe Biden has got this under control. A vote for him will change things.
And of course the partisan types were out saying the same thing. I won’t pretend that I had much confidence that @jonfavs would operate in good faith about this stuff, but this managed to sail under even my expectations.
Naturally, none of this happens unless someone else who can be counted on to be at least somewhat believable is carrying the water.
And not just her. Plenty of journalists were willing to repeat this claims - before and after the election - without so much as a shred of incredulity or pushback.
Plenty of outlets helped put a shine on Biden’s plan.
I wonder if we’ll get any follow up here from @politico?
@CNN, any interest in revisiting the framing of this piece? I’m not sure that this analysis from @StCollinson held up perfectly.
But I’ll admit this analysis from @StCollinson and @CNN might be even worse.
To be honest, I can’t really think of a worse bit of “news analysis” and that’s saying something.
At this rate I’ve grown quite comfortable relying on @DavidCornDC to provide some propaganda.
We even got the twitter doctors into the mix on all of this. Here’s @uche_blackstock explaining how medical workers are counting on Biden and Harris to “change the course.”
And perhaps I’m being a touch sensitive but I think that lying to the American people to give them false hope during a pandemic in order to win an election is a terrible, terrible thing to do.
Biden promised that, with him elected, things would change. They would get better. We would see things change.
That was never true. And he deliberately spread false hope in an effort to get elected.
A big part of the problem is that these kinds of estimates & predictions inform future action: if things will get better so long as we just hunker down, wait for a vaccine, etc. then it makes sense to expect short term sacrifices to see that realized. That’s what we’ve been told.
But it isn’t true. It hasn’t been true. Biden campaigned on a protracted version of 15 days to slow the spread. And today he conceded that, well, it’s gonna be a lot longer than 15 days.
In the interim, the sacrifices will be expected to continue.
But under that new calculus, those expectations don’t ACTUALLY make any sense - just like 15 days to slow the spread doesn’t make sense when it’s 10 months+ to slow the spread. The consequences are different - and severe, as I’ve tried to explain: google.com/amp/s/www.nyti…
We’ve got to rethink the way we’re approaching this. Because it isn’t tenable. And today, @JoeBiden confirmed that the pandemic’s trajectory isn’t going to get any better any time soon. And the consequences of the lockdown will only keep building.
And I know that it can be really easy to give in to anger on this stuff. But so many of those around us are struggling desperately. Food banks are working hard to help, and they need your support. capitalareafoodbank.org
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Today we saw the birth & death of a coronavirus news cycle suggesting - contrary to common sense - that the Biden Admin had to “start from scratch” on a vaccine rollout since the Trump Admin had done nothing.
Curious who bought the spin? I’ve got some thoughts👇
@mj_lee broke the story today for @CNN, who has shared it countless times and mentioned it dozens of times on air, citing (you guessed it!) unnamed sources.
Only problem is, Dr. Fauci shot down the claim today at today’s press conference.
Seems he’s got a reason to know.
Of course, before the story was rejected outright by the most believable person involved in all this, lots of @CNN’s main voices jumped in about how big of a deal it was. This is what we call expectation setting.
My hot take is that what the last four years has proven is that our democracy isn’t actually fragile and is in fact substantially more sturdy and resilient than most of us thought.
My worries are far more with the social fabric of this country and less with our democracy itself.
I’ll flesh this out as a full piece at some point.