By Howie Katz
Big Jolly Times
April 18, 2020
Call me a pessimist, but unfortunately it looks more and more like we are headed toward a Biden presidency. The lockdown has savaged America's economy and the country is unlikely to fully recover before 2021.
22 million Americans are now out of work because of the COVID-19 pandemic and many of them are Trump supporters. Among the jobless are 45,000 employees of Houston's billionaire Rockets owner and restaurant, hotel and casino mogul Tillman Fertitta. He had the audacity to say that by furloughing his employees, he was doing them a favor because they would be first in the unemployment line. A favor? I seriously doubt that any of those now 45,000 jobless Fertitta employees think he did them a favor by leaving them standing in long unemployment lines to apply for checks that will be smaller than what they got while employed, thus also forcing many of them to wait in long food bank lines.
Even when the economy is reopened , a significant number of the now jobless will not get their jobs back. Although they are receiving stimulus money, some of the small businesses will not reopen. Among the large businesses, Macy and J C Penney are facing bankruptcy and if they survive, it will be with far fewer stores, leaving thousands unemployed.
The jobless Trump supporters are not likely to stick with the president if they are still unemployed by October. Economists and virologists agree that the pandemic will prevent a full recovery of the economy before some time in 2021. If the economy has not recovered substantially by October and/or the unemployment rate remains high, history tells us that Biden will kick Trump's ass out of the White House.
Trump is not helping his cause any. He has been heading down the path of self-destruction. It has become apparent that he is suffering from a bad case of egomania, claiming he has absolute power over the states, having his name put on the relief checks and threatening to shut down the Senate because it won't confirm his appointments.
"When somebody is the president of the United States, the authority is total and that’s the way it’s gonna be. It’s total. It’s total. The governors know that." That was Trump's answer when asked if he could order the governors to end the lockdown and reopen the economy. He was immediately schooled by NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo about the 10th Amendment of the Constitution, which states: "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
When governors on the East and West coasts formed pacts to decide when to reopen their economies, Trump accused them of mutiny and threatened to withhold coronavirus aid to their states. He tweeted: "Tell the Democrat Governors that 'Mutiny On The Bounty' was one of my all time favorite movies. A good old fashioned mutiny every now and then is an exciting and invigorating thing to watch, especially when the mutineers need so much from the Captain. Too easy!" Now we have Trump depicting himself as Captain Bligh.
Further evidence of egomania is Trump ordering the IRS to put his signature on the coronavirus stimulus checks. Informed by the Treasury Department that would be illegal, the IRS complied when he then ordered that his name appear somewhere on the relief checks. Nancy Pelosi called Trump's order "shameful." Placing Trump's name on those checks caused a delay in sending them out.
Trump's latest daily news briefings and tweets of fake facts and unsustainable threats have cost him some supporters. Daily Mail columnist Piers Morgan, who has been a personal friend of the president and a fierce critic of the Democrats and the media for their relentless and unfair treatment of Trump, now calls him "deluded, boastful, petty and spiteful."
An ardent Trumper responded to Morgan's attack by belittling the columnist and saying: "President Trump makes mistakes. Everyone does." But calling Trump's threats and constitutional ignorance mistakes is akin to saying a person who commits a crime has made a mistake. A mistake is multiplying 3 by 2 and coming up with 5, or going to the grocery store and picking up a container of cottage cheese when you intended to buy sour cream.
Trump's self-destructive ramblings are not helping him in his campaign to defeat Joe Biden who will be a formidable opponent with his pick of a woman for vice president - probably Amy Klobuchar - even if the economy is robust again by October. And with Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren endorsing him, the Bernie Bros, as well as Warren's supporters, who craved their socialist agenda are now likely to vote for Biden instead of sitting out the election.
It will be a downright shame if Biden wins the presidency. He will restore all the Obama regulations that Trump has rightfully done away with. He will appoint Beto 'Hell, yes, we're going to take your AR-15, your AK-47' O'Rourke as his point man on gun control. He will restore the controversial Iran nuclear arms agreement and return to the Paris climate accord. He will disavow Trump's recognition of Israel's settlements as being legal and its sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Biden will restore funding to the UN agencies that have been constantly demonizing the Jewish state. And he will appoint liberal anti-gun, pro-abortion and criminal-cuddling Democrats to the Supreme Court. Look for Biden to replace a retiring Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with former Obama AG Eric Holder.
If the liberals become a majority of Justices on the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment will be interpreted as applying only to the military and the police, the wall will be torn down and the gates on our southern border will be opened, and the death penalty will be flushed down the crapper.
Caroline B. Glick, an Israeli columnist, has like Piers Morgan been a fierce critic of the Democrats and the anti-Trump media. She believes Trump has been getting bad advice from the experts. Glick says "Trump needs to figure out a way to get the US back to work within weeks while minimizing the infection and death rate even as he is receiving bad advice from his experts."
Glick also sums it up correctly, saying: "If Trump does not find the advisors that will help him to successfully shepherd the US through the coronavirus crisis and save the US economy from depression and collapse, the coronavirus will beat him in November."
If Trump achieves a robust economy by October, he will be considered a political genius and should defeat the 'White Obama.' If however, he reopens the economy too soon and the nation suffers more coronavirus deaths as a result, Trump will go down in history as the worst president ever.
In 2016, I held my nose as I voted against Hillary Clinton. Even though Trump kept his presidential campaign promises and did make America great again, this time around I won't hold my nose because my conscience won't let me vote for a deluded, boastful, petty and spiteful egomaniac. Although I want Trump to defeat Biden, I will be casting my ballot, not for Donald Trump, but for another Donald ... I'll be writing in Donald Duck.
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