Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton: Forever connected by self-created failure

 

Douglas MacKinnon, opinion 

The Hill

March 13, 2021

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At some point, non-biased historians (hard to find these days) will take a deeper dive into our recent presidential elections. When they do, an irony should jump out at them: Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are personally responsible for the losses they suffered. Two larger-than-life personalities and egos, who seemingly can't stand each other, will forever share an asterisk in political history. Who says karma can't be humorous?

Clinton twice lost the chance to become president. The first time, in 2008, the Democratic nomination was taken from her by a relatively unknown Illinois senator, Barack Obama. The second time, in 2016, as the Democratic nominee, she lost the general election to Trump.

Both losses clearly stung. But to lose the presidency to a man with no political experience, virtually no campaign, and someone who was belittled and laughed at from one end of the progressive spectrum to the other, must be the stuff of recurring nightmares.

In 2008, most of the conventional wisdom had then-Sen. Clinton pegged as the inevitable nominee. So, what went wrong? It's simple: Candidate and campaign hubris.

Clinton's campaign team truly believed they were invincible. Because of that, they underestimated Obama's toughness, his campaign, and the excitement he generated with a constituency that long felt abandoned. Just weeks before he announced his run, the Clinton campaign was assuring the world that Obama would not become a candidate for president. On top of that embarrassingly wrong prediction, strategically and logistically the campaign team couldn't get out of their own way.

When Clinton registered a shocking third place in the Iowa caucus, it showed the political world that the Obama campaign not only had figured out how to navigate the complex caucus system - which Clinton's campaign mostly ignored - but was not going to concede a single delegate.

Quite ironically, and seemingly forgotten by many in the news media, as Obama racked up delegate after delegate, it was then that Clinton first rolled out the argument, "But I've got more popular votes than him."

Most pundits believed Clinton had learned her lessons from the tactical errors of 2008 and once again installed her as the prohibitive favorite to win the presidency in 2016. Just weeks before the election, the RealClearPolitics average put Clinton up 7 points over Trump - a theoretically unbeatable number ... until it wasn't.

Inexplicably, Clinton decided she didn't need to campaign in Wisconsin and barely did so in Michigan. More than that, she apparently thought it was a winning political move to label potential Trump supporters as "deplorables" and, in March 2016, at a Democratic town hall meeting in Ohio, to declare: "We are going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business." That was a jaw-dropping gaffe considering that she needed to win coal-rich Pennsylvania in the fall.

She went on to lose all three of those states by close margins. As accurately summarized by the liberal authors of the book, "Shattered": "...While Hillary was measuring the drapes in the Oval Office, her team was mis-measuring the electorate."

Next, we come to Trump and his 2020 campaign. The argument can be made that Trump lost because he was a flat-out jerk at times, one who shamefully turned the Office of the President into a WWE smackdown chamber as he continually barked out insults.

As Trump supporter Conrad Black more delicately put it in a recent column for American Greatness: "Americans demand more dignity of the president and a president who is less exhausting and constantly in the face of the country - not only during all waking hours but, through his Twitter account, during much of every night."

In the end, Trump could not deliver such dignity.

Consider the state of Arizona, historically a reliably red state, which Trump managed to lose by about 11,000 votes. How? Well, to start with, he repeatedly had bashed the late Sen. John McCain, Arizona's war hero. That presumably cost Trump well over 10,000 votes among the more than 3 million cast.

Several Republican political professionals with whom I spoke believe that Trump's bullying tactics directly cost him 10 percent of the vote. Let's assume they are being much too punitive and dial down that estimate to, say, 1.5 percent of voters who were turned off by Trump's infantile affronts after initially intending to vote for him.

Even giving him that generosity, Trump lost Arizona and its 11 electoral votes by three-tenths of 1 percent of the vote. He lost Georgia and its 16 electoral votes by two-tenths of 1 percent of the vote. He lost Wisconsin and its 10 electoral votes by seven-tenths of 1 percent of the vote, and he lost Pennsylvania and its 20 electoral votes by 1.2 percent of the vote. If we add up the electoral votes lost to Trump's churlishness, we get 57. Had Trump won these states along with those he did win in November, his Electoral College votes would have totaled 289, instead of 232, and President Biden's total would have dropped from 302 to 245, making Trump the winner.

Tens of millions of Americans collectively put their faith in Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump and their respective visions for our nation. Sadly for those voters, the vanity and condescending attitudes of these two candidates betrayed that trust. It is, as former two-term President Obama might say, "A teachable moment" regarding out-sized egos and political hubris.

"A pox on both their houses" became apocryphal with the advent of the coronavirus and the worldwide pandemic that ensued.
Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration.

Conservatives and FOX NEWS Are Furious Biden Delivered a Non-Insane Presidential Speech

Jonathan Chait 

March 12, 2021 

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The American presidency offers numerous opportunities for a chief executive to make use of his symbolic role as head of state in a way that advances the national interest while simultaneously benefiting his own political standing. Donald Trump usually forfeited these opportunities, either because he was unable to pretend to care about people who didn’t vote for him or because he couldn’t adapt his free-form insult-comic rants to a teleprompter format.

Joe Biden has reaped the normal rewards that come from behaving like a normal president — perhaps benefitting more than most due to the contrast with his unhinged predecessor. This has naturally infuriated Republicans, who see Biden’s strategy of reaping positive coverage by acting normal as a form of cheating.

The party’s agony in responding to this was best exemplified by Tucker Carlson, who covered Biden’s speech by adding a small box of his scowling face in the corner of the screen so that Fox News viewers could share his disdain and sit through the speech with the promise of a scalding rebuttal.

Carlson turned out to be angry that Biden promoted vaccines. “The military will give you that shot, and if you take that shot, things potentially could get back to normal,” he sneered. “No mention at all of the people who might not want to take the shot.” That is true! Likewise, Ronald Reagan’s Berlin Wall speech made no mention of people who support Soviet communism, and George W. Bush’s Ground Zero speech snubbed Americans who support plane hijacking. Presidents take positions in speeches, and the current president no longer caters to the dangerous ignorance of vaccine skeptics.

Carlson likewise interpreted Biden’s goal that the virus will be largely sidelined by Independence Day as some kind of threat: “This is a free people. This is a free country. How dare you tell us who we can spend the Fourth of July with?” Of course, public-health restrictions are set by governors, not the president. And in any case, Biden was suggesting people who are currently afraid to gather with friends will be able to do so without risk, not actually threatening to withhold legal permission to do so.

One could rightfully push back that Biden is underpromising by leaving almost four months until normalcy returns, when current vaccination trends suggest the virus might be vanquished earlier. But the idea that he is threatening to have jackbooted thugs come to snatch away your hot dog is pure fantasy.

Other Republican commentators seized on the strange notion that Biden was threatening the public in the guise of promising an end to the pandemic. He “threatens to take away the cookie if the little children don’t behave,” complained Laura Ingraham.

Yet in their scramble to find a party line, some of the conservative commentators seemed unable to decide if Biden was a terrifying authoritarian menace or a pathetic, feeble old man. Ingraham — immediately before complaining about Biden’s (imaginary) threat to cancel the Fourth of July — described his speech as “funereal.”

Conservative publisher and pardoned criminal Conrad Black develops this line of thinking further. Black describes Biden’s speech as a “complete and total failure.” And to show that he really means “complete and total,” he includes Biden’s lack of girth. “Nor is the president’s appearance reassuring,” he complains. “He has a sickly pallor, is underweight, and quavers at times. … Trump, who looks like Tarzan in comparison …”

Yes, not so long ago, we had a strong, healthy president capable of staying up to the wee hours watching Fox News and still waking up fresh enough to hop into his golf cart in the morning.

You can see in these responses a sublimated rage that Trump set the bar so low; Biden needs only to step over it to seem triumphant. What they can’t seem to grasp is exactly who is responsible for this.

If you are upset because Trump exacerbated the success of the coronavirus by doing nothing, you should be appalled by FOX NEWS opening the window and letting the virus float on in on a breeze of alt-right stupidity: "How dare you tell us who we can spend the Fourth of July with?" - Tucker Carlson.

Democrats passing COVID-19 relief turns out to be even more popular than the bill itself

 

Dem leaders Hoyer, Durbin, Pelosi and Schumer answer questions from the media.

Kerry Eleveld

Daily Kos Staff

Thursday March 11, 2021 · 10:37 AM MST

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President Biden and congressional Democrats crafted a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that clearly met a need felt by the vast majority of Americans, which is why it consistently polled at roughly 70% support.

But then congressional Democrats went on to do something Americans almost never see: They actually passed the legislation the public deeply want to see enacted. That anomaly after final passage of the bill Wednesday proved even more popular than the bill itself, according to a new survey from CBS News/YouGov.

Overall, 75% of respondents approved of Congress passing the COVID-19 relief package, including 77% of independents and 46% of Republicans.

Here’s the breakdown one more time because, why not?

• Overall support for passage: 75%
• Democrats: 94%
• Independents: 77%
• Republicans: 46%

Oh, and don't look now, but 67% of Americans think Biden is doing a "very good" job handling the pandemic—an 11-point jump from last month. The survey has Biden's overall job approval rating at 60%—not too shabby for less than two months in office. Several recent approval polls have put Biden in the 50s (still better than Trump, of course), so the CBS results could either be a bit of an outlier or an early sign of an upward trend. Only time will tell.

But if you want a gauge for how Republicans think their 100% opposition to the wildly popular plan is panning out so far, just look at the defensive posture of everything they are saying. When Sen. John Cornyn of Texas was asked about GOP prospects for smearing the bill, he started with, “Unfortunately, there’s going to be a sugar high because free money is very popular.” True, senator, especially when people really need that money and tell pollsters in survey after survey that they really need that money. 

On Wednesday, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell even tried to rob Democrats in advance of getting credit for the plan's future effects on the economy.

"We're about to have a boom," McConnell said. "And if we do have a boom, it will have absolutely nothing to do with this $1.9 trillion."

Hoo-boy, good one. McConnell’s press shop followed up on Thursday with another prebuttal to the booming economy he sees on the horizon. 

"2021 is set to be an historic comeback yr," read the McConnell Press tweet. "Not because of far-left legislation that was passed after the tide had already turned. But because of the resilience of the American people."

What McConnell’s pre-gaslighting tells is that the transformative Democratic package has the support of many Republican voters (something polling has confirmed), and he's pretty desperate to make sure Democrats don't get credit for it.

The best way to do that would have been to support the bill and let congressional Republicans vote their districts/states. Instead, GOP leadership whipped against the package, forcing Democrats to pass it entirely on their own.

McConnell was part of the braintrust of GOP leaders who made that call. Seems to be panning out perfectly.

Don't forget which party was unanimously for and which unanimously against the latest Covid stimulus bill.

Trump's Long Con Is Finally Catching Up With Him

Former President Donald Trump. (photo: Getty)

By Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast

10 March 21

readersupportednews.org

The Republican Party has paid a steep price for signing on to his hustle. Now he may be about to pay one, too.

oward the end of the 2016 campaign, Michael Wolff reported in Fire and Fury, Donald Trump was talking with Roger Ailes about how perfectly the campaign had gone. He’d never dreamed in July of 2015 that the Republican Party was stupid and soulless enough to give him its nomination. But it had! And he got all these months and months of free publicity, all three cable news nets constantly cutting off regular programming to show him, Trump, carrying on about whatever rile-up-the-rubes outrage popped into his head that evening.

And now here it was, close to Election Day, and soon it would all be over. He’d lose, so he wouldn’t actually have to be the president, but what a hustle!

Wolff: “He’d come out of the campaign, Trump assured Ailes, with a far more powerful brand and untold opportunities. ‘This is bigger than I ever dreamed of,’ he told Ailes in a conversation a week before the election. ‘I don’t think about losing because it isn’t losing. We’ve totally won.’”

And there you have it. The campaign was a scam. Use the Republican Party to increase his brand value. Four and a half years later, here we are as Trump, like some blood-sucking roundworm, is still trying to suck as much life as he can out of the host body while he still can, with a $421 million loan bill coming due and the Manhattan district attorney breathing down his neck. He’s about to come face-to-face with a fact that I suspect, deep down, he’s known all along—which is why he was bragging to Ailes that he was delighted to lose: that winning the presidency would destroy him.

It was just reported this week that Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance’s probe into Trump’s finances was being extended to include a Chicago development deal where the lender (which is not under investigation) forgave a big part of Trump’s loan, more than $100 million. The question is whether the Trump Organization properly recorded the forgiven debt as income, which would require the company to pay tax on it.

Meantime, Trump has $421 million in debt (most of it presumed to be owed to Deutsche Bank) coming due soon. During the 2020 campaign, he scoffed at the debt, because of course to hear him tell it $400 million is a “peanut.” No one knows the truth right now, except maybe some investigators in the Manhattan DA’s office, but it would hardly be shocking to learn that Trump just doesn’t have the money.

Hence, the current, post-presidency phase of the hustle: to bleed every penny he can out of the Republican National Committee. First, he said they couldn’t use his name in fund-raising material, an obviously unenforceable demand in a country where political speech is explicitly protected in the Constitution.

But then, because the Republican Party is such a bunch of ninnies, the RNC announced that it was moving part of its spring donor retreat next month to guess where? Hint: It rhymes with Bar-a-Pago. So even after Trump picked a petty fight with the RNC, and even while he's urging people to donate to his personal PAC instead, the RNC will be paying event and catering fees to Trump. Probably not $421 million worth, but every little bit helps.

Even as Trump has cost his party control of the Senate and the White House, Republicans just can’t quit the guy. That doesn’t prevent some of them from seeing the hopelessness of the situation and deciding to chuck it in, the latest being Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, a member of the party’s Senate leadership and, at 71, a veritable teenager by Senate standards. They could stay and fight for their party, and spend their lives getting death threats and losing battle after battle, or they could go make $300,000 a year working part-time and spend two days a week trying to learn to read the slope of the greens at Burning Tree. You tell me.

It would be worth staying and fighting if there were some principle at stake. But there is none. The party is totally brain-dead and without conscience. OK, maybe not totally. There’s Mitt Romney, who shows signs of actually wanting to legislate. There’s Adam Kinzinger, who seems a decent fellow. And, gulp, I can't believe I'm saying this, but there’s Liz Cheney.

But by and large, it is a party so unmoored from thought, so bereft of ideas and a sense of standing for anything that Republicans couldn’t even bring themselves to put up a decent fight on the COVID bill. Were you as struck by this as I was? Trump was near-silent. The party’s legislators never mounted a strong counter-argument. And Tucker moved on to Dr. Seuss. It was astonishing to watch, but then again it wasn’t, because their only principle for several years now has been power. And now that they don’t have it—thanks, of course, to Trump—they have no idea what to fight for.

Trump, at least, knows what to fight for, the only thing he’s ever fought for: himself. But he is surely beginning to see now what a tragic mistake he made when he descended that famous escalator.

If he’d never become president, he could have carried on lying and swindling people just as before, and no one would be the wiser.

But when you’re president, certain checks and balances kick in. You’re being watched more closely. Lying about your tax returns being “under audit” will keep the dogs at bay for a while, but they’ll bash down the door eventually. Private citizen Trump paying off Stormy Daniels? Feh, who cares. Candidate/President Trump doing it? Against the law. And so on and so on and so on.''

And most of all, at least my hunch? Private Citizen Trump keeps Allen Weisselberg on the pad his whole life and makes sure that his children and grandchildren and even great-grandchildren never have to fly coach. But in the Candidate/President Trump reality, just maybe Weisselberg starts singing.

The whole point of the campaign, as Trump told Ailes, was branding. Well, he’s going to be branded, all right. Just not the way he thought.

If there is a god, surely he is about to smite this man dead with a lightning bolt for taking his name in vain, or, worse yet, using it to make a few bucks.

 

Nobody Told Us That Oprah Was Going to Air a Special on White Supremacy

 

Michael Moore, from your editor's hometown of Flint, Michigan, has become a fixture in the progressive media.  If you doubt his prowess, remember this - he was one of the very first to predict the Donald would defeat Hillary.

By Michael Moore, Michael Moore's Facebook Page

09 March 21

readersupportednews.org

  withering, devastating interview with Harry & Meghan via Oprah. The Kingdom which first brought slaves here 400 years ago had their current Royal racism outed in all its glorious brutality last night — just how black will her kids be? The Palace refused to provide security for her baby or her husband. Meghan, crushed, depressed, asked to seek help. The Palace — “The Firm” — blocked her from getting mental health services. 

Meghan, in despair, considered suicide. Harry frightfully saw the deja of this — it was the treatment of his dead mother all over again. 

So it was time to get out. His father wouldn’t return his calls. This airs today in the UK on Commonwealth Day - yes, that British Commonwealth, in which 40% to 60% of its inhabitants are people of color. None of this comes as a surprise those of color in the Commonwealth. The British press, when referring to Meghan, uses words like monkey, demon seed, straight outta Compton. It’s good to see where our original White Supremacy came from and how the Mother country embraces it to this day.

Nobody told us that Oprah was going to air a special on White Supremacy yesterday on the anniversary of the Selma March. Powerful. And the mental health/suicide discussion was so intense and so helpful, I’m certain it will save lives.

Meghan — observing your wedding in 2018, I remember thinking, oh god, she’ll pay for this. You and Harry conducted what racists saw as a “Black” wedding — complete with an incredible Black American firery preacher giving the sermon and a black gospel choir rockin’ it out. The Royals and the rich sat there stone-faced in the church through it all. I thought, she’s cooked. 

The press immediately went after you. I’m so sorry. Thank you for the good works you continue to do. Welcome home. It ain’t perfect here. Today the murder trial of the cop who killed George Floyd begins in Minneapolis. There is much for us all to do.

And on this International Women’s Day, congrats on the new baby girl you’ll soon be bringing into this crazy world.

You almost have to wonder if the U.S. is now only the second most racist nation on Earth.  But then go back and watch the video of the murder of George Floyd.  The Brits only wondered about Archie's skin color.  Our title is still safe.

Republicans have turned getting vaccinated into a political issue, placing everyone at risk

Anti-vax protesters outside the Super Bowl match between Kansas City Chiefs and Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Mark Sumner

Daily Kos Staff

Saturday March 06, 2021 · 8:43 AM MST

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The actions of Republican governors—like Texas’ Greg Abbott or Mississippi’s Tate Reeves—who are outlawing mask mandates and insisting that businesses rush back to full capacity, are an obvious threat to public health and deft both medical advice and common sense. However, they may not be the worst thing that Republicans are doing to extend the pandemic in the United States and bring a fourth wave of disease and deaths.

In the last week, President Joe Biden moved up the clock on providing vaccines to America. When Biden came into office, not enough vaccines had been secured to provide for all American adults. Biden moved quickly to change that, and by the end of February, announced that vaccines would be available by the end of July. Then, after the Johnson & Johnson vaccine gained approval, Biden moved again, using the Defense Production Act to secure additional manufacturing from Merck and accelerate other vaccine deliveries. As a result, Biden announced on Tuesday that enough vaccine for all American adults would be available by the end of May; enough vaccine for 75% of adults should be available by April.

All of that rightly has many Americans feeling the end is in sight. After a seemingly endless year of horrors in which death from COVID-19 has become so common that 2,000 Americans dying each day doesn’t even merit a mention on national news, there seems to be a genuine light at the end of this dark tunnel. But that light could still be an oncoming train, as it’s not just Republican governors doing everything they can to throw a spanner into the works.

What other Republicans are doing could be worse.

For weeks, polling results from Civiqs have shown that there are some groups in America still don’t intend to be vaccinated. When the first polls were taken back in November, that included 65% of Black people, who were either unsure about the vaccine or determined not to take it. Considering the long history of the United States government either treating the Black population like experimental subjects, or failing to collect data on Black patients when conducting medical research, that apprehension was understandable. Pile on the speed with which these vaccines were developed, and a year in which the White House provided a steady stream of quackery (hydroxychloroquine!) or simple lies (“soon be down to zero!”), and it’s a wonder that the numbers were not higher.

But with Biden in office, science clearly back in vogue at the White House, and a regular, reasoned message on COVID-19, the number of Black Americans who intend to take the vaccine has steadily improved. That 65% of unsure/no response in polling back in November dropped to 36% by the end of January. It’s currently at 27%. 

It’s now white Americans who stand in the way of vaccine rollout. Back in November, 27% of white Americans placed themselves in the solidly anti-vax “no” category. That number hasn’t changed in the last four months. The number who are “unsure” has declined, but still stands at 11%. That means that over a third of white American adults have not committed to getting the vaccine. That reversal is also visible among those saying “yes” to the vaccine. The number of Black Americans saying that yes, they will get vaccinated, is now 15% higher than it is for white Americans.

Before moving on from the racial aspect of this issue, it’s also important to note that, despite having a higher desire for the vaccine than white Americans, when it comes to actually being vaccinated, Black Americans are running well behind. Why? Because vaccine distribution continues to be left to the states, where governors favor white rural areas and suburbs. Vaccine has been handed out as a reward to counties that voted big for Republican governors, and as a favor to big-money donors. Meanwhile, areas with higher Black populations have been shortchanged. That’s before factoring in a system where actually getting that vaccine is often dependent on good internet access.

How did it happen that white Americans moved into Camp Anti-Vax in such numbers? It’s not hard to figure out. Because the difference is much starker when political parties are added to the filter. Fully 41% of Republicans are a solid “no” on the vaccine. Another 15% are unsure. Compare that to Democrats where just 5% are no and 7% are unsure. White Democrats are even more likely that Black Democrats to say “yes” to vaccine.

That 44% difference on accepting a vaccine means that Republicans have a bigger difference with Democrats on this issue than they do on multiple major issues. Just as happened with masks, being vaccinated for COVID-19 has become an issue so politicized, that a majority of Republicans are unwilling to take a basic step to protect themselves from a deadly disease. Refusing vaccination has become another inexplicable shibboleth of the right.

The overall result of this is that a quarter of all American adults are currently a “no” on COVID-19 vaccination, and another 11% are unsure. So even as President Biden makes vaccine available to every American adult, it seems entirely possible that a third of those adults will pass. Add in those under 18, and over 40% of Americans will still not be vaccinated, even when vaccine is readily available.

That’s a formula that makes it almost inevitable that COVID-19 won’t go away. The numbers will certainly drop, but the disease will stick around, rumbling through the remaining population as an endemic infection, coughing up new variants and constantly threating to become evasive of vaccines or capable of reinfecting those who have already suffered through a previous bout. It means that thousands more will die. It means that millions more will be subject to the debilitating long term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection. 

And if that seems like a lot to draw from a single poll, Pew Research looked at the same topic this week. Their findings tracked almost exactly with those of Civiqs.

“A majority of Black Americans (61%) now say they plan to get a COVID-19 vaccine or have already received one, up sharply from 42% who said they planned to get vaccinated in November. … Democrats are now 27 percentage points more likely than Republicans to say they plan to get, or have already received, a coronavirus vaccine (83% to 56%).”

Republican governors stripping away mask mandates and removing social distancing limits is an immediate threat to public health, but the anti-vax sentiment that has settled in among Republican voters may be the greater threat, especially over the long term.

Joe's bold moves to increase vaccination are being hampered by repugnant Republican recalcitrants.

'If masks and social distancing don’t work, then what the hell happened to the flu?'

   "What's the big deal?  It's just a little paper thing."

Aldous J Pennyfarthing

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Sunday March 7, 2021 · 12:07 PM MST

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Though my spot on the introversion spectrum lies somewhere between Kleenex box-wearing Howard Hughes and urine-collecting Howard Hughes (and as I continue to age, I’m on a bullet train to raw-fish-eating Gollum), I still usually get sick in the winter at least once.

In the past, while grocery shopping or taking in a matinee movie, I’d occasionally run into someone I know. (If I can avoid early eye contact, I usually conduct a rapid one-man exfil, though I’ve noticed that smoke grenades are far less welcome in Whole Foods than Fred Meyer for some reason, just in case you’re keeping track.)

This year? I haven’t had so much as a sniffle, though every throat tickle and minor cough sends a frisson of dread down my spine.

Turns out I’m not alone. This year’s flu season—long feared as the second head of a twin-headed monster—has been decidedly more Matt Gaetz brain than Matt Gaetz cranium (i.e., walnut-sized as opposed to college dorm refrigerator-sized).

That’s almost certainly because of the coronavirus mitigation efforts that have helped flatten the COVID-19 curve, even as our ex-pr*sident did everything in his power to secure our spot in the record books.

For the nontweeterers: “Serious question: If masks and social distancing don’t work, then what the hell happened to the flu?”

Of course, that guy is a medical doctor, so Qonservatives will naturally dismiss his pointed question out of hand and/or counter with something Donald Trump read off the back of a Lucky Charms box, but Dr. Ghali raises a good point. What happened to the annual flu season, which has traditionally been a deadly killer in its own right?

The AP:

Flu has virtually disappeared from the U.S., with reports coming in at far lower levels than anything seen in decades.

Experts say that measures put in place to fend off the coronavirus — mask wearing, social distancing and virtual schooling — were a big factor in preventing a “twindemic” of flu and COVID-19. A push to get more people vaccinated against flu probably helped, too, as did fewer people traveling, they say.

…

Nationally, “this is the lowest flu season we’ve had on record,” according to a surveillance system that is about 25 years old, said Lynnette Brammer of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In the midst of a brutal pandemic, we’ll take these small victories. Though when you consider that flu typically kills tens of thousands of Americans each year, “small” probably isn’t the right way to describe this.

One possible partial explanation for these lower numbers, according to the AP, is that COVID-19 has “essentially muscled aside flu and other bugs” that tend to emerge in the winter. Scientists don’t fully understand this phenomenon, but it has been observed in the past with competing flu strains.

That said, the drop in flu cases has been remarkable. And it’s occurred across the country. Dr. Nate Mick, head of the emergency department at Maine Medical Center in Portland, told the AP: “I have seen zero documented flu cases this winter.” Meanwhile, in Oregon, Salem Hospital’s affiliated respiratory clinics have also been flu-free.

In addition, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, only one pediatric flu death has been reported in the U.S. as opposed to 92 at this same point last year.

That’s a nice, comforting ray of sunshine in the midst of a dark, depressing winter.

Personally, I hate getting sick. I may wear a mask in stores and movie theaters for the rest of my life. And not just because I don’t want to be recognized. But, you know, that would be a perk.

Social distancing? Erm, well, I’ve pretty much always done that.

”This guy is a natural. Sometimes I laugh so hard I cry." — Bette Midler on author Aldous J. Pennyfarthing via Twitter. Need a thorough Trump cleanse? Thanks to Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, Dear F*cking Lunatic, Dear Pr*sident A**clown and Dear F*cking Moron, you can purge the Trump years from your soul sans the existential dread. Only laughs from here on out. Click those links, yo!

Out here in Blue  Country wearing a mask is a no-brainer.  Those who refuse?  Well, they're a different kind of "no-brainer."