12 thoughts on “A Cuomo Nomination?”

  1. I agree with Althouse. It maybe an idea, but it is totally impractical. Biden is being chosen by the established process. Even if he wanted to step down from his life long dream; Bernie Sanders would step up and say he was second. Of course, nobody wants Bernie, because he may win a few states, but he has no coattails and no chance to win. Because of the effort to defeat Biden, there isn’t a brokered convention unless Biden resigns, and then you deal with a nice civil war in the party that would disadvantage any nominee that would win it.

    Also, considering how badly DeBlasio is doing in NYC, New Yorkers need at least one stable minded person. NYC is now ordering street closings to promote social distancing. There is no logic on how that works other than to disrupt logistics in a city that is complaining about supply chain problems. It was just last week that DeBlasio was demanding Trump nationalize businesses, which is something fascists do but not what Trump wants to do. New York probably needs to keep Cuomo for the time being.

    Word is AOC wants an in person vote on the Coronavirus bill, so Pelosi is having to recall Congress and can’t vote until Friday. I don’t believe these people are taking the pandemic seriously.

  2. Mead’s excellent essay is still marred by his inability to control snipes at Trump:

    “The blame game playing out over how the president has handled the coronavirus epidemic reflects the dynamics of this struggle. Mr. Trump’s establishment critics want a narrow fight over the dismal trail of bluster, evasions, missed opportunities and failed predictions that marked the president’s approach to the virus earlier in the year. Like many criticisms of Mr. Trump, these arguments against him are by and large correct and significant and it is part of the proper job of a free press to make them.”

    By and large correct? Gimme a break. The president consistently swims against a crazy current of bias and animosity from the media and the elite. Mead is a smart guy, but he seems to share the fear exhibited by David Brooks, Peggy Noonan, and George Will where they need to say these things to keep those cocktail party invitations coming

  3. It is amazing to watch the Trump and Cuomo press conferences and the types of questions asked by the reporters to each man. I’m sure Cuomo would continue getting the kid glove treatment if he were the nominee.

    The media wouldn’t have any problem washing away NY’s response being reliant on the federal government while saying the federal government had no response. They would do it while saying we need an autocratic strongman while attacking Trump as a tyrant.

  4. –In the present crisis of the coronavirus, what will determine the effectiveness of President Trump’s leadership is not what the media screams today or the polls say tomorrow. The praise of his supporters or the predictable damnation of his enemies won’t matter.–

    Well, an advantage Trump has had is he gets the idiot lefty media to attack him- and doesn’t work well in this particular situation/crisis.
    But it seems Trump has adjusted and getting Vice President taking the lead, is part of the adjustment.

    –Rather, Trump will win or lose on whether he has strategic foresight. If he panics and keeps the country locked down for too long, we will go into a depression that will cost more lives than the virus. But if Trump prematurely declares victory and urges Americans to rush back to normal life, he may reboot the virus and reignite another cycle of panic.–

    I think broad testing for Chinese Virus was needed in beginning {and was late coming online]. And I can see logic of not “worrying about it, now” but I think we have to do lot broad testing, in order to get the economy back online as quickly as possible. Or for “medical reasons” the cow has left the barn, but to be able get economy turned on, as soon as it’s safe to do, we need to do a massive amount of testing. Though it “appears” that this is already the direction the US is taking.
    A problem is ,massive amount of testing will make situation “appear worse, but I don’t that cause significant “panic”.
    And we going to have more “total confirmed cases” than China at any time, now. And world has about 8 times more confirned cases than China right now. If get twice or three times as confirmed cases as China in less than 1 week, that just means we doing a better job than China {Or appears that China has no clue about how many cases are in China {it’s probably more than 1/2 million}.
    So, it will not cause panic and it’s better PR to find out, AND it will allow us to get to point of starting economy, faster.
    How many are dying is something which could cause panic and percentage of who gets it, and dies, also could cause uncertainty and needless panic.
    So with lots of testing, we could get back at it, well before Easter.

    1. I think most Republicans would fall for the traps that the media places for them but Trump is usually good at ignoring their conflicting demands when making decisions. Democrats have the advantage of having a participatory media that helps them achieve their mutual goals.

      You are right that more testing will make things appear worse, at least in terms of the total infected. It could push the ratio of serious cases and deaths down but that wont matter much to the people most affected. A robust testing system that tests everyone could allow for people to return to work and constantly check to see if they are sick. It would allow for immediate action after results are obtained.

      Whether or not we test for a live virus or the antibodies of people who beat the virus, testing is coming for everyone. Wouldn’t be surprised if the testing was made part of yearly checkups. This testing could spread around the world if it can be done cheap enough. It would give us a much better understanding of what happened and how to fight future outbreaks.

      1. –This testing could spread around the world if it can be done cheap enough.–
        Right now, the testing is reported to be quite expensive.
        One purpose of testing should include finding the best way to test- something which is cheap and is reliable.
        The test which gets a result in about 15 min, seems like it could be quite cheap.
        It seems any new test that only tests say 10,000 people, would be expensive.
        So for some particular test, to be cheap one would need to test about 1 million people and over time period of a month or two {but if can test faster and not require additional money to test this fast, it would great if they do million within a week].
        So, roughly would want say, 2 million tests done [but they can be and should be different ways of testing] in the next week.
        And then you evaluate how good the tests are and have idea of how much it cost to give a test to 10 million people.
        If was expensive to test 10 million people, I don’t think you should test more than 10 million. If it was pretty cheap, I still would not test more than 100 million, this year.

        So doing tests to get more information about the state of the disease in the US, but also doing tests to find best way to test {testing the tests}.

      2. IMHO, what we most need (and it’s been developed, we should be seeing it soon) is an antibody test.

        The test for the Chinese Coronavirus (or as I call it, the ChiCom Virus) is an imperfect tool for some of this. Even if you test negative today, you can still catch it tomorrow. Also, we don’t know the false positive rate for this test. An antibody test can both answer that question, plus allow people to get on with their lives (if they have antibodies to the virus, they probably can’t get or be a carrier of it again).

        One thing I think we need to investigate pronto; why is the USA the country hardest hit by this virus, as it now appears to be? The rate of case increase seems a lot lower in most of the world – including a lot of places without our level of medical resources to fight it.

        1. I think the numbers rise faster here because our reporting is far more accurate than that of the ChiComs

          1. Totally agreed regarding the ChiComs – I trust nothing from them.

            I do think, though, that there are lessons to be learned here. For example, NY, after the Wuhan virus was known to be circulating in NY, going forward with, and publicly encouraging, mass gating such as Chinese New Year’s and St. Patrick’s Day. Does this have something to do with this nation’s largest outbreak? IMHO this is one of many things in need of investigation – not only the effect it had, but why the decisions were made in the first place.

            Also in need of investigating IMHO; how, exactly, does the Wuhan virus spread? We know some of the vectors – but clearly not all. Seems to me we’re relying too much on info out of China for some of that.

  5. I think Cuomo’s ban on non-hospital use of hydroxychloroquine was insane, and it will hurt him if he’s actually drafted.

  6. It seems a minority of people say that we are overreacting to the Chinese Flu. I would say in some ways we are AND in some ways we are not. But as general matter we are not, but in terms of US I think we might be overreacting to the Flu in coming weeks.
    Or if our response or reaction to FLU over the last few week will cause us to overreact in coming weeks, then we are overreacting right now.
    I think canceling the basketball season, was a near perfectly timed response. Or it could not really be expected that it would be cancelled sooner. And if seemed to result in all professional sports events being cancelled.
    Now I don’t watch basketball, so that could be a bias. And playing all these sports without the fans watching in a stadium seemed it’s possible it was plausible, but shutting it all down {including baseball, which I sometimes watch] seemed like the right move.

    During last few weeks, I have disagreed with idea of closing beaches, and instead it seems one could had reasonable restrictions.
    Reasonable restrictions may have been to not have overcrowding in a beach. Not have food vendors on the beach and not allow any alcohol and ask/require people not to stay on the beach for a long time, so that the beach could have more people going to it and still not have overcrowding. Managing this could be problematic, but this time of year by itself {other than spring break} doesn’t seem like overcrowding of beach is problem, and if arrested any for drinking {fine them and remove them from beach] that would stop the spring break problem. Or going to the beach doesn’t require drinking alcohol, loud music, littering, etc, but giving license/permission to do this, is an attractive aspect regarding the spring break beach parties. So other shutting down beach vendors, you don’t need new law, you simply enforce existing laws- though one could add more strict penalties for violation of laws.
    And roughly speaking overcrowded beaches are mostly a lack of parking rather the entire beach having too many people in the area- though I guess there could be tiny beaches which actually can be “packed” with people.
    Anyhow having closed and vacant beaches, seems like a overreaction. Though some may think if you can’t have vendors, then why have people at any the beach.

    Anyways as far as “restarting” the economy, I think we could re-start baseball, within a week, but like a beach, you limit the number of people in the stadium. So limit stadium to 1/4 capacity, and don’t sell beer. And perhaps in two weeks, allow restaurants and bars to be open but prohibit “full capacity” say likewise start with a limit 1/4 capacity, and within another week or two, 1/2 capacity.
    Now, all such businesses, could think it’s not economical to be limited to 1/4 capacity. But I would say within week it might be 1/2 and then maybe 3/4 in the following weeks.

Comments are closed.