A President in denial and a Republican party jittery of a trifecta

It is not the first time that Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States, has been in denial in the last three and a half years he has been at the Oval Office. But this time around even his cheerleading team is reluctant to go about with the routine.

Just five months ago he was a seemingly invincible leader of the Free World, with the Democrats having shot themselves in the foot by way of an Impeachment Process that they perhaps foolishly believed would lead two dozen Republican Senators suddenly waking up to issues of morality and propriety and throw their President under the bus.

Trump had the last laugh and the best one at that; and was seen as invincible getting into the Nov. 3, 2020 election, with a strong and rebounding economy and a handful of hopeful Democrats bleeding one another to the party nomination.

And then came something called Coronavirus or the COVID-19 disease that brought the world including the United States to a grinding halt. More than 1.3 million people have been infected across the 50 states of America and close to 78,000 people have died and the numbers continue to rise.

But as always, Trump is in total denial, not only of the chaos that has been brought around by the virus but is even questioning if there is anything called coronavirus which in his view is the figment of imagination of ill-meaning Democrats and Left-wing media houses and journalists. But all this has not prevented the man in the White House to loudly claim that had only the Chinese acted on time, the world would have been averted from such a tragedy.

Dismissive attitude

Still Trump refuses to take the virus seriously even if it is within the White House itself — three staffers of the President, Vice President and the First Daughter Ivanka Trump have tested positive — and three members of the Coronavirus task force — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Dr. Robert Redfield, the Director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and Stephen Hahn, the Commissioner of Food and Drug Administration — are going to be working from home because of the potential exposure to COVID 19.

The President may reluctantly observe social distancing in the White House, but he refuses to wear a mask; and even his advisers and senior officials are reluctant to do so, for fear of invoking the wrath of their leader.

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The administration’s response to the virus has been variously described as disastrous or scandalous with independent health experts ripping into the fashion the White House has responded to the situation, at times even going to the extent of denying medical supplies requested by States.

To top it all off, Trump injected the poison of politics in the process pitting Republican and Democratic Governors against one another and pushing people into open defiance of rules with a view to throwing open the doors to economic activity.

The soft spoken former President Barack Obama tore into the Republican’s coronavirus response as an “absolute chaotic disaster” calling it anemic and spotty. “It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset—of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’—… is operationalized in our government”.

Economy and elections

The virus has bled the American economy: some 33 million jobs have been lost over the last six weeks and the economy has shown a negative 5% growth this quarter. Economists believe that some 40% of the lost jobs cannot be recovered.

In a re-election year, the general rule of thumb is that the incumbent President has the advantage as he gets to have free media publicity from the bully pulpit whereas the opponent would have to pay through the nose through advertisements and what not.

But in the case of Trump, even Republicans do not want him around television cameras given his penchant to rattle off nonsense that does not just make for humor but political ammunition — take the case of Trump suggesting ingestion of disinfectants to get rid of coronavirus and later on making a bungled attempt to pin the blame on the media for failing to read into sarcasm!

At one time, mainstream Republicans believed that election year 2020 could mean the Grand Old Party retaining the White House, trying to get hold of the House of Representatives, and perhaps even improve its position in the Senate by a few seats.

In the aftermath of the Congressional elections of 2018 itself, many Republicans in the House of Representatives were thinking of retiring and those members in the GOP in the Red States are anxiously looking at their prospects, given the coronavirus tsunami that has just come in the way of America. The Republicans are defending 23 seats in the Senate as opposed to the Democrats who have only 12 to care for; and even this January, the GOP was confident of holding on to its four seat majority and perhaps even poaching one or two from the Democrats in the Senate.

The scene seems to be totally different today when jittery Republicans are worried about a trifecta, to use a horse racing terminology. They are worried of losing the White House, even more seats in the House and lose majority control in the Senate, a triple whammy that is sending shock waves in the GOP establishment.

Republicans are now seeing the danger zone in four, if not six, Senate races; and all because of the antics of one person who they believe has not risen to expectations in the face of a crisis situation.

It is now being pointed out that even a person like Trump is coming to realise that the coronavirus which was first making its deadly inroads into the blue states, or Democratic, has finally come to make its presence known in Republican Red states as well and rapidly so.

Trump’s urgency to open up states and cities stems from his calculation that the only way he is going to rebound is by reviving the economy which has undoubtedly tanked in the last three months because of the deadly virus.

The White House and President Trump would even go to the extent of arguing and taking cheap credit that they made the best out of a difficult situation — America had to settle to for 80,000 deaths as opposed to an initial projection of 2.2 million.

But one thing the White House cannot ride out of is if some 25% of the workforce is on the unemployment lines and families are torn apart on the day of election, numbers that cannot be fudged easily. Even the hardcore Republican base of Trump will find that a bitter pill to swallow.