Celebrate, America!

Trump turned 2020 into a year of death and despair. In 2021, Biden has tamed the virus and made the economy roar again

Photo credit: frank mckenna on Unsplash

One year ago, an American tragedy was unfolding. The corrupt Trump Administration had displayed such criminal negligence in responding to the Covid-19 pandemic that the US economy, which Trump had already driven into recession even before lockdowns hit, completely collapsed.

By the end of June 2020, US GDP registered its worst ever quarterly decline, plunging 32%.

And for many, the worst was yet to come.

Trump’s psychopathic recklessness about the virus, combined with his increasingly transparent attempts to cheat his way to re-election, plunged millions into poverty and killed hundreds of thousands of Americans who would otherwise be alive today.

In some parts of the country, the tragedy of Trump is still playing out.

With the encouragement of the “GQP” and influential Fox News voices such as Tucker Carlson, millions are rejecting the vaccine—and putting themselves, their loved ones,  and their communities at continued risk of disease and death.

As Sarah Zhang writes in The Atlantic, MAGA and QAnon stupidity is creating a tale of two Americas, with vaccinated America “on track to real safety,” and unvaccinated America still facing “real danger”:

COVID-19 cases are rising sharply in several states with low vaccine coverage, fueled by the spread of the coronavirus’s more transmissible Delta variant. In southwest Missouri, understaffed hospitals are already having to send COVID-19 patients hundreds of miles away. The same July 4 party that is very safe in Massachusetts is riskier in Missouri, where much more virus is circulating (15 new cases per 100,000 people a day) and many fewer adults are at least partially vaccinated  (56 percent).

With the economy roaring and the virus now easily containable, all of America should be celebrating this July 4th. But, less than six months after Biden’s Inauguration, the red-hatted morons who wanted to “make America great” are rejecting the opportunity to fully participate in America’s resurgence. Instead, they are choosing the “shithole” reality of Trumpism, pitting their immune systems against a virus that has killed four million people worldwide—and potentially turning themselves into “variant factories” that could, ultimately, infect all of us.

As Zhang puts it, “at a time when the advantages of vaccination are clearer than ever,” we have “too many doses and too few willing arms.”

The rest of America is safely celebrating the “Biden Boom”

Under Biden, competence is back and America is on track to once again lead the world out of an economic downturn. In just five months, 329 million vaccine shots have been given and more than 150 million Americans are now fully vaccinated.

That gives most Americans a reason to celebrate this summer, even as other countries that controlled the virus well in 2020, but have been slow to vaccinate, such as Australia, are re-imposing lockdowns and battling new surges.

The “Biden Boom” means:

1. Jobs, jobs, jobs! The June jobs report showed a staggering 850,000 jobs were created in June—blowing past economists’ estimates. That brought the total to 3,000,000 jobs created in just six months.
2. Wages are up! As Reuters reports, “the economy ended the second quarter with strong momentum, following a reopening made possible by vaccinations against COVID-19…. Average hourly earnings rose 0.3% last month, led by low-wage industries, after gaining 0.4% in May. That raised the year-on-year increase in wages to 3.6%.”
3. Consumer confidence is soaring! Also from Reuters: “The Conference Board's consumer confidence index raced to a reading of 127.3 this month, the highest level since February 2020, from 120.0 in May. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the index at 119.0.”
4. Fastest US growth in a generation! Biden has put the US economy on track to grow by 7.4% in 2021, according to the latest CBO estimates. If achieved, that would be an even faster growth rate than the 7.2% growth that was the high-water mark of Reagan’s 8 years of debt-tripling, income-inequality-accelerating “voodoo economics”.
5. Biden approval at 60%! This one must really hurt The Former Guy who, after finishing second in the 2016 popular vote, never achieved a 50% approval rate. According the The Hill, Biden’s approval rate is “holding steady” at a YUGE 60%, driven by exceptionally strong approval of his handling of the pandemic and broad approval of his handling of the economy.

Compare today’s reality to the miserable July 4th of 2020, when Trump’s Covid “Death Panels” were becoming the new normal and the U.S. unemployment rate stood at 11.1%. Three years after the GOP Tax Scam had transferred even more wealth to the already-rich, all of Trump’s “snake-oil” promises about the economy and job creation—along with his exaggerated claims about how his policies helped Black Americans in particular—were revealed as worthless.

In the early days of the pandemic, as Trump failed on testing and refused to speed PPE to nurses and front-line workers, it quickly became clear that Trump and Jared Kushner’s were not just waging a war on Blue States. They were also comfortable with the fact that African Americans and Latino-Hispanic populations were registering higher rates of hospitalizations and deaths due to Covid-19. As Adam Serwer wrote in The Atlantic in May 2020: “The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying.”

Meanwhile, Black and Latino unemployment soared. Last 4th of July, the Black unemployment rate was 15.3%. The Hispanic/Latino unemployment rate was 14.5%. Today, five months into Biden’s first term, Black unemployment is down to 9.2% and the Hispanic/Latino unemployment rate has fallen to 7.4%.

If Trump were honest, he’d celebrate the Biden Boom, too

Trump honest? LOL. But if he were, he’d already be admitting that Biden is the BEST PRESIDENT EVER. Because, based on the one gauge Trump repeatedly told us we should use to judge Presidential performance—the stock market—Biden is already way out ahead.

As Forbes reports, “the S&P has jumped 16% this year—faring much better than the index’s 7% decline during last year’s first six months and pulling off the second-best first-half performance since 1998.”

So spread the news! We should all be celebrating.

OK, I understand you may not want to see your unmasked, unvaccinated MAGA relatives in person. But maybe tell them on Facebook that, by Trump’s own standards, America is great again! And remind them, if they want to get vaccinated, they can enjoy the Biden Boom this summer, too.

Happy 4th of July!

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