XPost: alt.culture.alaska, alt.society.mental-health, alt.business.insurance   
   XPost: alt.business.accountability   
   From: potus@pig.com   
      
   December 2021 is obviously not shaping up as President Biden had   
   planned.   
      
   Last February, Biden told a CNN town hall that “by next   
   Christmas, I think we’ll be in a very different circumstance,   
   God willing, than we are today. … A year from now, I think that   
   there’ll be significantly fewer people having to be socially   
   distanced, having to wear a mask.” Instead, America will be   
   getting a very nasty Christmas present of the omicron variant.   
   More contagious than anything seen so far, it’s clearly able to   
   evade at least some of the immune defenses acquired from   
   vaccines or prior infection.   
      
   Then there are the other big nasties under our collective tree:   
   soaring homicides, a brewing conflict over Ukraine and the   
   highest inflation rate the United States has experienced in   
   nearly 40 years. In his stocking, Biden will get an approval   
   rating hovering in the low 40s, lower than that of any modern   
   president at this point in their first term other than Donald   
   Trump.   
      
   Happy Holidays, everyone.   
      
   Reality happens to every president, of course, but reality has   
   been happening especially hard to Biden. Nor can this be blamed   
   entirely on the fickle finger of fate. The Biden administration   
   has foundered in part because Democrats misjudged how much   
   difference policy could make — underestimating the effects of   
   economic policy, while overestimating the effects of pandemic   
   control.   
      
   Back in January, there was a very clear theory of the incoming   
   Biden presidency. All he really had to do was to not be an   
   incompetent, impulsive pandemic-denier.   
      
   “Look, we know what we need to do to beat this virus,” he told   
   Americans in March. “Tell the truth. Follow the scientists and   
   the science. Work together. Put trust and faith in our   
   government to fulfill its most important function, which is   
   protecting the American people — no function more important.”   
      
   And there it was: Joe Biden was going to be the guy who used the   
   healing power of science to give Americans their lives back.   
   Americans would respond with a burst of gratitude, and Biden   
   would use that political capital to pass big, ambitious programs   
   that would please his political coalition and further endear him   
   to voters. Cue the roaring applause, the starry-eyed crowd   
   chanting “Four! More! Years!”   
      
   To some extent, of course, the administration was obviously just   
   planning to take credit for rolling out the vaccines that his   
   predecessor had funded and pushed through expedited regulatory   
   review. But Democrats also clearly believed that better policy   
   could turn the pandemic around, because for the left, this has   
   been a running theme throughout the pandemic: “the Party of   
   Science” vs. a “death cult” that bore almost all of the blame   
   for America’s continuing woes.   
      
   They had a point. It does seem likely that Trump’s resistance to   
   pandemic precautions is the reason that the United States, which   
   started out with a lot of advantages that should have protected   
   us, nonetheless ended up with the worst death rate of any rich   
   country. But looking at other countries in our economic class,   
   it seems clear that, absent Trump’s deranged denialism, the   
   United States would probably nonetheless have lost at least half   
   a million people — and would still now be facing the most   
   contagious variant yet.   
      
   The country is swiftly reaching the point at which more   
   Americans will have died from covid-19 under Biden than under   
   Trump. It is not surprising that polls show voters losing   
   confidence in Biden’s handling of the pandemic. Much of the   
   decline is unfair, of course (such is the lot of presidents).   
   But in focusing so much of the blame for the pandemic on Trump   
   and Republicans, Democrats and their allies raised the   
   expectations that have now been brutally disappointed.   
      
   Yet, even as Democrats were overestimating how big a difference   
   policy could make, they were underestimating policy effects   
   elsewhere, notably the inflation that resulted when massive   
   relief spending collided with a kinked-up supply chain.   
   Democrats had been warned of the risks of a too-big relief   
   package, even by some of their own economists. But the left had   
   spent the past few years convincing themselves that old-   
   fashioned concepts such as balanced budgets and controlling   
   inflation were irrelevant to the modern world.   
      
   Though the mistakes on the pandemic and on inflation might seem   
   to be of opposite kinds, in fact a common thread links them: a   
   tendency to treat a policy’s intended effects as its actual   
   ones. Throughout the pandemic, blue-state Democrats tended to   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)