The next few months of campaigning on virus politics are sure to be frustrating for anybody who is interested in a serious or measured conversation about the pandemic.
On Thursday, Joe Biden recommended that every person wear a mask outdoors — a senseless idea. He had been speaking about protecting teachers and store clerks, so it could be that he just meant generally outside of the home — he is prone to misspeaking.
Biden also called on governors to issue mask mandates, saying, “Let’s institute a mask mandate nationwide, starting immediately, and we will save lives.” It certainly sounds approximate to “nationwide mask mandate,” but Biden didn’t actually endorse a federal and binding mandate.
Still, President Trump spun it as if he did, saying that Biden “wants the president of the United States with the mere stroke of a pen to order over 300 million American citizens to wear a mask for a minimum of three straight months.” In politics, it can be easier to come out on top if you misrepresent what your opponent said.
Among the worst in Thursday’s coronavirus campaigning was Kamala Harris’s air ball directed at the president and the national vaccine effort.
“Ask the current occupant of the White House, when am I going to get vaccinated? When am I actually going to get vaccinated?” said Harris, who was announced as Biden’s running mate this week. “Because there may be some grand gestures offered by the current president about a vaccine, but it really doesn’t matter until you can answer the question.”
What is the insinuation here? That Trump isn’t doing enough to get vaccines ready? That he should set a date and require companies to speed up their trials and meet it — like Putin?
Trump has hardly given any “grand gestures” regarding vaccines, other than saying general things about progress in their development. In fact, he has been clear that he puts more faith in therapeutic drugs to solve the crisis than in vaccines.
Now, undermining the importance of a vaccine might be a worthy line of attack, but suggesting that because the president can’t give the public a date when it will be ready is ridiculous. Dr. Anthony Fauci can’t even do that. He has expressed hope that a vaccine will be ready by year’s end, but he can’t be sure. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield gave a similar timeline on Thursday. They certainly can’t offer a date.
Presidential tickets have an incentive to make these kinds of inflated arguments: They need to win, and making bad arguments is a working strategy toward that end, unfortunately.
