The Meaning of the General Election

A good Democratic friend of mine explained to me recently his “ah ha moment” about the November election.

He concluded that though Trump was beaten, many Republican down-ballot candidates across the whole country won because the voters –finished with Trump—still supported Trump’s view that jobs were more important than lives. And his “ah ha” was that was understandable, and we Democrats should heed that reality.

In my opinion, his thinking fell short in not questioning whether Trump’s view was correct or NOT! In fact, it was just plain wrong!

There need not – CANNOT — be a trade-off between jobs and lives because the only real solution to the jobs problem is to stop the virus.

There are three possible ways for that to happen. (1) One or more vaccines plus masks and social distance; (2) Wait for 150 MILLION people to contract the disease for herd immunity to take effect, suffering millions of deaths along the way; or (3) combine curbing the virus with phased reactivation of the economy in places where one or both of the above have proven effective.

Unspoken in all that is an implied judgment about who in society to favor. The Trump view clearly favors young, healthy people [he hoped to vote for his reelection] at the expense of the old ‘almost-finished’ folks who were going to die soon anyway.

In a strict literal sense, there may be something in that (which I believe was my friend’s point). But it is totally in conflict with basic democratic principles and societal beliefs. That is where UGH comes in BIG!

Trump may be gone but his nonsense lives on.

We have to be very careful to wipe Trump’s crazy ideas from our world ahead!