One has gotten numb to the endless superlatives, real and contrived, of the Trump era, but it's worth wondering if yesterday's vertiginous New York Times Page One would have come even if the person who won the most votes in 2016 were president. Might we be world number one in infections, deaths, and job losses anyway?The societal dysfunction COVID-19 is revealing for all the world to see would be there still, from shocking and pervasively racialized inequality to the grotesqueries of a for profit health care system - though these might have been mitigated rather than exacerbated by presidential initiatives. Political polarization would not have gone away, surely, and suspicion of institutions and expertise, as well as resistance to thinking in terms of the common good and public health, might possibly be even stronger. The Trump virus has been able to wreak such havoc in this land in no small part because of abundant preexisting conditions like these.
I'm pretty confident COVID-19 deaths and infections would be lower, maybe very much lower. But still not as low as they could be: one would probably have also had a national movement of armed white men - think of those nice folks in Michigan, spread nationwide - claiming social isolation requirements violated their civil liberties. That movement would surely be led by a twitter-spewing Donald Trump, crowing from the top of the media empire he was actually aiming to establish in 2016. A Hillary Clinton administration would have done what every other functioning government has done, establishing national prerogatives and policies rather than the ducking, dodging and dissembling we continue to be subjected to. Testing and PPE would have been made priorities, and in a timely fashion. International coordination would have been emphasized, and would have informed tough decisions and helped explain them - but only to those willing to listen.
More of the economy would have been shut down sooner, though fewer people might have lost their jobs rather than been furloughed with pay. But with far fewer deaths, economic objections to public health measures would be even stronger. In the face of vile criticisms one can only begin to imagine, would the president have found a way to talk about balancing the needs of those particularly vulnerable to the coronavirus and "the economy," instead of pitting them unthinkingly against each other - you know, actually taken responsibility and led? Nobody's perfect and mistakes would have been made on her watch too (I fear she might have been tempted to play the China card as well), and the impact on the election of 2020 is painful to consider. But I'd sure love to be living that reality instead of this absolute chaotic disaster.
