A Realistic Look at How a Democrat Would Have Handled Matters

[This post is initially being written on 2020/08/28.  That's for reference, in the unlikely event that someone reads it weeks or months later, when some of the background assumptions might be different.]

We are determined to be critical of how Trump dealt with the various issues that have confronted him: Foreign Policy / Corruption, Global Warming, Racism / Immigration / Tribalism, Economy, the Pandemic.  Of course Democrats have hated how Trump dealt with each of these issues, or even caused them, in the first place.  But what we ought to do, to be fair, is to contrast how he dealt with them, versus how a Democrat president—say Obama, or Hillary Clinton—would have dealt with them.  Many unimaginative Democrats think it would have been smooth as silk, but they aren't being realistic.  We must never forget that there are very angry Alt-Right types out there, hating every single thing a Democrat does or says, as well as very opinionated Democrats out there, who never think twice about criticizing even their own woman or man.  As the Democratic Party has grown—and it certainly has, due to the inability of the GOP to handle the challenges that the country faces—it has broadened, and the ideological genes within the party cannot be expected to give a unified prescription for every problem.

We all know what Trump did, faced with the COVID.  At first, it was denial, and then (responding to criticism of not being realistic) a grudging acceptance that he would have to take unpopular steps to stem the rate of infection, which he immediately passed on to the Governors of the states.  Some of them responded well, causing howls among conservatives (and those who needed to party* most of the time!  You know who you are).  Soon, the economy began to suffer, as was inevitable, and Trump's knee-jerk reaction was to open up the economy.  Again, he palmed off the rules of behavior for lifting the distancing advisory to Governors, some of who gave good advice, other did not.

How would a Democrat president have dealt with the problem?

• S/he would have first given a Press Conference about the disease, and most of what non-specialists know about it, and closed with some positive remarks that, working together, we can handle this thing; but make no mistake, it is likely to be quite a struggle.
• S/he would have called up the epidemic specialists—as least, when it became clear that the epidemic was here to stay a while—and got their best advice.
• I absolutely have no doubt that some of their recommendations would have been overruled.  Ideally, we should have sent everyone home, and said that we would shoot anyone seen on the streets on sight.  Obviously that would not have worked, politically, so the instructions would have to be softened.
• Pretty much like Trump did, a Democrat President would have held a press conference, and allowed the experts (Dr. Tony Fauci, presumably) to speak, and said—after the experts had done their report—that instead of a 24-hour curfew, we're going to allow limited visits to grocery stores for supplies, limited visits to Physicians' offices and Emergency rooms; limited visits to Drugstores, and so on.  The experts would have readily agreed.  Wearing masks would have come up, and one hopes that a Democrat president would have tried his/her best to get the supply of PPEs, or at the very least, masks, quickly available in large quantities.  (How this would be done is hard to see; very likely we would have had to depend on foreign manufacturers, because we have gotten so in the habit of offshoring essential manufacturing.) 
• The Economy would have taken a dive, and heaven knows what the stock market would have done.  Being maniacally friendly towards Trump, Wall Street would have, at least initially, taken quite a dive, and then, in self-defense, brokers and managers would have started buying again, and the indexes would have gone up.
• It is difficult to see how differently a Democrat would have tackled schools and colleges.  Each of us believes that if a Dem were in charge, s/he would have done what we think should have been done; but in practice, the steps or missteps would probably have been exactly the same.
• Trump is leaving local authorities to make up all the guidelines.  A Democrat would probably set out Best Practices guidelines right from the White House.  Of course, the Alt-Right would have howled about how unfair / unwise / ineffective the guidelines are.  The (hypothetical) president would have addressed the complaints, said that a lot of hardship cannot be avoided, and followed up with a lot of happy talk about how we, together, can beat this thing.  But Trump is terrible at giving bad news.  This is the sort of thing he has avoided at all costs, and the result is his leaving all major decisions to Governors, and often to Mayors.  (In some instances, Mayors have had to go against their Governors, who gave wimpy responses.  In other instances, Trump supporting Mayors have given instructions contradicting reasonable Governors.  So sad.)

So, Trump's reluctance to face the criticism of the people leads to a weak response, when a strong response is almost imperative.

In many ways—as many writers have pointed out—Trump is still playing the role that he played in his reality TV show, The Apprentice.  There, he was at pains, whatever he did, to make sure that he didn't lose his TV audience.  Here too, he proceeds as though the country is still his TV audience.  In some ways, it is; he keeps an eye on his audience, to make sure they're watching what he does, and steers their thinking via his Twitter account.  So, all along, it has been aimed at reelecting himself for another four years, and only secondarily, taking care of the Republican political agenda.

Archimedes

*Or at least socialize