The Bureau of Economic Analysis announced that the economy contracted by 9.5% from the first quarter to the second of 2020, the worst GDP destruction in recorded history. While claims of the 3D intergalactic backgammon theory of President Trump’s tweets usually seem overblown, there’s no question that he was trying to distract from record economic losses with the following rage bait:
With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote???
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 30, 2020
Naturally, the ruse worked, and now, the A1 story of the morning is not the economic consequences of a national shutdown that costs millions in jobs and trillions in GDP but Trump’s tease that he’ll delay Election Day, which is determined by the Constitution and administered by the states.
Ironically enough, Trump’s proposition makes the exact opposite point that he should be making now. As the BEA report demonstrated, the government-mandated closure of industries such as healthcare and recreation primarily killed the economy, not a decrease in consumer demand. And further, it demonstrated the resounding short-term success of federal pandemic spending, which actually led to personal incomes rising even as the economy overall collapsed.
So, rather than claim our nation is in such shambles that we can’t even hold an election that’s been on the books for literally centuries, Trump should be spending every iota of political capital he has to get the nation reopened safely and swiftly and force Republicans to get a second pandemic spending bill done. To the GOP, he should remind it that it’s at risk of losing not just the White House, but also the Senate, and preventing Joe Biden from getting the keys to the kingdom even if Trump loses necessitates a stellar third quarter of growth. We already knew that the second quarter would be horrendous, and actually, it was slightly less awful than expert estimates. But everything from the speed of our economy to the extent of our long-term job losses will be determined by whether the economy grows by 8% from this quarter or 2%.
That means signing a spending bill that keeps people from getting evicted and employers from having to lay off employees permanently. Given the success of pandemic unemployment, that might even mean not slashing current unemployment payment levels to the extent Trump might want. All of this is deeply unconservative, but if Trump is going to put his reelection prospects over principle, he might at least do it effectively rather than tweet his way to a November blowout.
Furthermore, Trump needs to spend every single day pointing out that the science heavily indicates that children are simply not a vector of coronavirus transmission and that there is no reason not to listen to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Academy of Pediatrics and reopen schools with in-person learning come the fall. If mothers, and yes, the burden will fall on women, as it always does, must exit the labor force to assist their children with 15 minutes of government school distance learning per day, it’s hard to see how Biden doesn’t win by 200 electoral votes.
There’s plenty of blame to go around for our economic nightmare, and if Trump were smart, he’d realize that most people are more interested in and that his personal prospects are more reliant on how we can maximize our third-quarter growth than obsessing over the blame of the past. Proposing a ridiculous, tin-pot authoritarian fantasy rather than stomach the consequences of leadership like an actual adult isn’t merely a ticket to losing November. It’s also just pathetic.
