Democrats undercut their own ability to use COVID-19 against Trump | Rooney

By Matt Rooney
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The smarter Democrat establishment types won’t say it out loud, but you can safely trust me on this: they’re positively giddy over COVID-19’s potential to upend the 2020 November elections. 

Ghoulish? Sure. Just listen to how incensed they become whenever some mentions that maybe, possibly, Hydroxychloroquine could save lives! It’s sick. But don’t worry. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for America), they’ve long since shot themselves in the foot on this one. Not with a paintball gun but a double-barrel shotgun of self-defeating, hyper-partisan, short-sighted rhetoric.

Look at it this way: there are two reasonable criticisms that you could level at the Trump Administration’s coronavirus response…

1) The Administration should’ve paused all incoming international flights even sooner than they did, and

2) The federal government should’ve been prepared with the ventilators, respirators, and other personal protective equipment needed to cope with a pandemic. 

#1 is inarguable with the benefit of hindsight, though it’s not like Trump was behind the curve (e.g. he acted sooner than most European leaders to restrict incoming Chinese travel, all while U.S. Democrats were still obsessing over impeachment).

#2 is fair criticism, too, but with the important caveat that we don’t yet truly know what the need will be. Most estimates circulating in media reports are based on the demands of nervous governors who, perhaps understandably, are trying to get their hands on everything they can for fear of being blamed themselves. What they actually need might be a very different number altogether.

Democrats can’t credibly criticize President Trump on either point.

Take point #1. The Democrat Party has repeatedly accused the Trump Administration of RACISM for attempting to restrict international travel for national security reasons. Remember the incorrectly labeled “Muslim ban” controversy? Many Democrats (Hillary Clinton among them) are even on record deriding the quaint notion that countries SHOULD HAVE borders. In fact, many Leftists are STILL criticizing him for trying to secure the border even with COVID-19 raging.

The presumptive Democrat nominee doesn’t know where he’s at on the issue (consistent with the general sense of disorientation he projects whenever he speaks). Joe Biden recently and simultaneously accused Trump of xenophobia while also suggesting he didn’t move quickly enough to restrict Chinese travel – despite the fact that the U.S. was one of the first Western nations to act. Which is it, Joe? Too slow? Or too racist?

No. 2020 Democrats can’t now pretend to give a damn about border security. That ship has long since sailed.

Which brings us to point #2. Failure to adequately prepare for a pandemic goes back to at least 2009 when, following the Swine Flu pandemic, the Obama Administration failed to restock most of the 97 million masks from the national stockpile built up by the preceding Bush Administration. We’d have a lot fewer sick medical personnel had the Obama Administration focused on pandemic preparedness with the same zeal it displayed in trying to socialize health care.

Joe Biden was, of course, Barack Obama’s vice president for all eight years. Is the marble mouthed ex-veep ready to defend that decision (and others) on a debate stage? I seriously doubt it. He can barely explain what he ate for breakfast.

Presidential elections are binary choices. We’ll see where the economy is at come the fall. What we do know sitting here today on our couches or at our dining room tables: Democrats have disqualified themselves as a serious, viable alternative through years of incompetence, hyper-partisanship and ideological extremism. They can’t erase YEARS of being wrong on all this stuff with the latest #OrangeManBad triangulation. It won’t work. Not this time.

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Save Jersey’s Founder and Blogger-in-Chief, MATT ROONEY is a nationally-noted and respected New Jersey political commentator. When he’s not on-line, radio or television advocating for conservative reform and challenging N.J. power-brokers, Matt is a practicing attorney at the law firm of DeMichele & DeMichele in Haddon Heights (Camden County). 

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Matt Rooney
About Matt Rooney 8405 Articles
MATT ROONEY is SaveJersey.com's founder and editor-in-chief, a practicing New Jersey attorney, and the host of 'The Matt Rooney Show' on 1210 WPHT every Sunday evening from 7-10PM EST.