As Democrats hold their virtual convention this week, they have just one job: link the Coronavirus pandemic to the economy. Why is this necessary? Because the economy is the only metric in which Trump is leading, if only by a small percentage. Pick any other issue - the pandemic, race relations, better able to unify the country - and Joe Biden is wiping the floor with him.
It's been five days since Biden announced Kamala Harris as his running mate, and Trump and the GOP have struggled to define her. First, they said she was the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate, a charge so absurd any progressive not in a coma could easily refute it. Next, they said she wasn't even eligible to run for the vice presidency because apparently her parents were immigrants. For the record, Harris was born in Oakland, California, which makes her parents' country of origin irrelevant. According to the Constitution, any natural-born citizen is legally able to run for either the presidency or the vice presidency.
You know your opponent is desperate when the best they can come up is to call two decidedly center-left politicians radicals and take another stroll down the old birtherism trail. I can hardly wait till next week. Four years ago, the RNC looked more like The Purge than an actual convention. This time around, I wouldn't be shocked one bit if Trump sacrificed his own daughter. As the family of Herman Cain can attest, the only thing that matters on Team Trump is Donald's hide. Everyone else is expendable, quite literally.
So that's why, from start to finish, every speaker who takes to that virtual stage must make it their mission to remind the country that the economic collapse we're going through is directly tied to how badly Trump mishandled this pandemic. This didn't need to happen. That must be said over and over and over.
Yes, the virus hit virtually every country on the globe - that's why it's called a global pandemic - but all but a few managed to contain the spread, including Canada and most of Europe and Asia. The reason they were successful and we weren't was because they listened to the scientists while Trump played golf and insisted the virus would magically disappear.
170,000 people did NOT have to die; millions of people did NOT have to lose their jobs; millions of tenants did NOT have to face eviction; and tens of thousands of small businesses did NOT have to go belly-up. From Michelle and Barack Obama, to John Kasich, to Bernie Sanders, to Harris and Biden, to FDR if they can dig him up, that point must be driven home with the force of a battering ram. Nothing else matters.
When the convention is over and the virtual balloons are dropped from the ceiling, those who bothered to tune in and watch the festivities - and over the last few years, that number has been dwindling - must be convinced beyond any shadow of a doubt that the reckless imbecile who occupies the Oval Office is the one who made their lives the living hell it is.
This was not China's fault, it wasn't Obama's - and by extension Biden's - fault, it wasn't the WHO's fault, it wasn't the deep state's fault. It wasn't Anthony Fauci's fault. The fault was Trump's alone, and he alone must bear the responsibility for the wreckage that ensued.
If Democrats can make that case convincingly to America this week, Biden and Harris will be the next occupants of the White House. If they can't close the deal, or if they get caught up playing Trump's game of oneupmanship, they will blow the last, best chance they have of preserving the longest running experiment in representative democracy.
And may Heaven have mercy on their souls.
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