The latest news from the US is not encouraging: the country became the third after China and Italy in the number of cases of coronavirus infection. On Sunday alone, their number increased by more than 6 thousand people and reached 30,291. In all, during the time that the epidemic is raging in the country, 388 people became victims of the insidious virus.
Nevertheless, the presidential campaign - 2020 continues, no matter what. Liberal media scare their readers: the monster that has settled in the White House can, taking advantage of the coronavirus pandemic, postpone the election “for later” and remain at the helm of the state for an indefinitely long time. But Trump himself is convinced that postponing the election is “not a good idea,” even if it is just a primaries. So he commented on the initiative of Ohio Governor Michael Devine, who ordered the closure of polling stations due to a public health emergency and rescheduled the primaries to early summer. Ohio became the third state — after Louisiana and Georgia — to refuse to hold primary elections in the midst of an epidemic.
Authorities in other states that voted on the so-called Small Super Tuesday on March 17 turned out to be less timid: the primaries were held in Arizona, Illinois and Florida. Formally, three candidates took part in them: former US Vice President Joe Biden, socialist senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders and congresswoman from Hawaii Tulsi Gabbard, but no one takes into account the latter. The fight is between two old men, and in all three states Biden won it.
In Arizona, 42% of Democrats voted for him (30% for Sanders). In Illinois, almost 60% voted for Biden (Sanders - 35.8%). But Biden’s victory in Florida turned out to be the most devastating - 62% against Sanders' 22.8%. The “Sunny State” turned its back on the “crazy professor” for two main reasons. Firstly, there are many wealthy elderly white Americans who, like most wealthy Democrats, prefer to vote for the establishment candidate, rather than for the dangerous socialist Bernie (the idol of liberal youth). Secondly, there are a lot of Cuban emigrants in Florida who escaped here from the "horrors" of the Fidel Castro communist regime. And Sanders seemed to intentionally shoot himself in the foot, praising several times the social programs adopted in Cuba under Castro. As a result, of the 219 delegates from Florida, distributed according to the results of the primaries, the senator from Vermont got only 52, while Biden grabbed three times as much (the rest will decide who to vote for at the summer party conference, themselves, but most likely also go to Sleepy Joe).
According to experts, the “Small Super Tuesday” has already provided Biden with a decisive advantage in his rivalry with the “crazy professor” Bernie. In order to get a nomination at the Congress of the Democratic Party in July, the candidate needs to enlist the votes of the 1991 delegate. After Biden’s “small super Tuesday”, Biden already has 1147 votes in his pocket, and Sanders has only 861 votes.
The team of the senator-socialist reigns ill-concealed panic. The head of his staff, Faiz Shakir, told reporters that Sanders would "discuss the situation with his supporters," and before that, "he would focus on measures of social support in connection with the spread of coronavirus." Some influential Democrats (as well as wealthy party sponsors) are no longer just hinting, they are saying plainly that Sanders should repeat his “noble departure” of 2016 and withdraw from the race to avoid protracted primary elections and to rally the US Democratic Party.
“Rallying around Biden to prevent Trump from being re-elected” - this slogan is becoming more and more popular among the top of the “donkeys”.
Sanders, however, does not intend to give up - at least for now. His associates especially emphasize that, having remained on the "treadmill", Bernie mobilizes the youth electorate, which under ordinary conditions does not show much interest in the elections. Unlike the older generation (“OK, Boomer!”), Millennials and “Generation Z” often ignore campaigns at polling stations. And in November 2020, this indifference of young people can play into Trump’s hands, supporters of the “crazy professor” believe.
True, it remains unclear why the young supporters of Sanders would have to come to vote for Biden, whose nomination as a candidate from the Democratic Party at the July Convention is already considered a settled matter. The political strategists supporting Bernie are ready to answer: staying in the race, Sanders will thereby push the mossy Sleepy Joe to a more progressive course, close to the aspirations of the young.
But it is entirely possible that behind these streamlined words lies a different, cynical plan. The current presidential campaign is taking place in conditions comparable only to the mid-term congressional elections in 1918, when a Spanish epidemic raged in the United States, killing more than 600 thousand Americans. And this fact makes its outcome extremely unpredictable, since a whole flock of "black swans" is now influencing the development of events.
Let me remind you that the term "black swan" was coined by Nassim Taleb, an American philosopher of Lebanese descent. Taleb called events that no one can predict, which, having been accomplished, are completely unexpected for the observer and at the same time, after everything has happened, can be easily explained, so it remains unclear why they all the same " overlooked. " It should be noted here that before becoming a world-famous intellectual, Taleb worked as a stock broker. The strategy of identifying “black swans” allowed him to make a fortune during the financial crisis of 2007-2008, so he knows firsthand about the sudden events that arrive from somewhere in the future and ruin his carefully constructed structures with his black wings.
When Trump won the presidential election in November 2016, this event became the classic Black Swan.
Trump’s victory did not leave stone to stone from the hopes of the American political elite, who expected that the course of the progressive and liberal B.Kh. Obama will be without much change continued by Hillary Clinton. The damage done to this elite by a black swan named Donald was not limited only to the moral sphere. In accordance with their unfulfilled expectations, American globalists invested gigantic sums in international financial projects, which sagged significantly after Trump began to implement a protectionist policy. It is this circumstance - and not at all differences in views on social ideals - that explain the "holy war" that the main ideologists of globalization, such as George Soros, declared to the 45th US president. This war was with varying success all the time that Trump was in the White House.
But, starting with the failure of impeachment in February this year, it began to seem that the president was defeating his opponents.
The U.S. economy was growing at a steady pace, unemployment was shrinking like a shagreen skin in Balzac’s novel, Democrats, pushing their elbows and interfering with each other, were eager for the coveted nomination, almost trampling the main establishment candidate, former vice president of the country Joe Biden. Trump from his oval office watched them flicker and rubbed his hands. The ideal sparring partner for him would be a socialist senator from Vermont Bernie Sanders, but the talking old man Biden would have completely fit in as a whipping boy: the Trump team of prospectors, headed by his faithful friend Rudi Giuliani, had already accumulated a whole bag of dirt on the former vice who seriously messed up the reputation of his family with corruption schemes in Ukraine.
And suddenly everything changed.
Flapping black wings, a whole flock of swans flew in and mixed all the pieces on the great chessboard of not only American, but also world politics.
The biggest and fattest swan was, of course, the pandemic of the notorious COVID-19. At first, Trump was inclined to underestimate the danger. “Everything will work out. Everyone should be calm, ”he said March 6 at a meeting with his supporters in Pennsylvania. - We have plans for all possible options for the development of events, and so we will act. We hope this does not last long. ”
When the US president said these words, there were about a hundred sick people in the country, 12 people died. After a week, there were 1268 confirmed cases, and 33 people became victims of the virus. On March 13, Trump announced the introduction of an emergency regime, emphasizing that this would allow $ 50 billion to be allocated to fight COVID-19.
A week later, in the United States there were already at least 10,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus, from which 154 Americans died.
On March 18, at the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, the Dow Jones index fell below 20,000 points to 19,899, to January 2017, when Trump delivered his inaugural address.
On weekends, the number of cases has tripled, deaths - more than doubled. By the time you read this article, a few thousand more Americans will pick up the coronavirus.
The more the virus spreads across America, the more obvious it becomes that, firstly, nothing will form by itself and, secondly, that all this will last long enough to cause enormous damage to the American economy.
The very economy that Trump for three years literally dragged by the ears from the swamp of the recession, where progressive and liberal B.Kh. drove it. Obama
Under Obama, unemployment in the United States used to reach 10%, and GDP growth in the last year of his presidency was close to zero (although, in fairness, it must be said that the unemployment rate fell quite decently in 2016). Trump was proud to present to the Americans: GDP growth for 2019 was 2.3%, and the unemployment rate fell to 3.6%. These were excellent indicators, demonstrating to the whole world the powerful potential of “tramponomics”. And now the demon of the coronavirus threatens to turn it all into shards.
“All the gains of the stock market since taking office as President Donald Trump in January 2017 have been nullified in a few weeks. Economists admit that the United States, the largest economy in the world that produced more than $ 21 trillion worth of goods and services last year, could soon slide into recession for the first time in more than ten years, ”writes Ken Bredemeyer, economics columnist for Voice of America.
According to fairly restrained estimates by the IHS Market, in 2020 GDP will drop to 1.7%, while unemployment will be 9% by December.
And Trump's close ally, US Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin scares senators on Capitol Hill with even more dire figures: according to Mnuchin, a pandemic can increase the number of unemployed to 20%, that is, by 33 million people.
And this is very bad news for the owner of the White House.
Not only because all the achievements that really were and that Trump intended to present to voters as the main argument for his re-election are nullified.
But also because the whole strategy of Biden’s political annihilation developed by his team is collapsing, largely repeating Obama’s successful strategy in the fight against Mitt Romney in the 2012 elections.
Obama's strategy was to immediately after the primaries, on which Romney spent most of his resources, bring down a massive anti-advertising campaign on him (in particular, Romney was portrayed as a carefree venture capitalist who cares only about his profit, reducing jobs and neglecting the interests of the worker class). In one of these videos, the laid-off worker accused Romney of earning more than $ 100 million by closing his factory.
The Obama team did not use any particular compromising material against Romney, but the carefully selected moment for the strike made him extremely effective.
“Romney had a great team, but it takes time to recover from the wounds received in the primaries, replenish the bank account and reconfigure the headquarters for the general election,” quoted Politico website as Paul Begal, a political strategist who worked for Obama in 2012. “It will be difficult or even impossible for Trump to do with Joe (Biden. - K.B.) what we did with Mitt (Romney. - K.B.) because of the coronavirus pandemic.”
And indeed - now, in a situation where all the forces of a powerful American state are aimed at preventing the catastrophic spread of COVID-19, voters are unlikely to care about the corrupt sins of Sleepy Joe. The main question that will determine the fate of the 2020 elections will be: which of the competitors for the chair in the oval office of the White House is able to defeat the pandemic.
“If President Trump effectively copes with the pandemic and manages to restart the economy, he will be re-elected,” said former presidential speaker Newt Gingrich (who lives in Italy coronavirus-infected), who supports the president. “If he doesn’t, then he will probably be defeated.” Gingrich added that under the circumstances, Biden “will have more time” to prepare for the decisive phase of the struggle.
Sleepy Joe (of course, not himself, but cunning political strategists from his team) announced a week ago that he was creating the “Health Advisory Committee” - an alternative to the government center for combating coronavirus. This committee, of course, does not have any real instruments for the struggle, but they are already trumpeting from every liberal iron. Moreover, one of the main ideologists of the B.Kh. program is at the head of this headquarters. Obama Obamacare, which Trump could not cancel, Professor Ezekiel Emmanuel (scandalously famous for his "bioethical views", according to which the elderly should die before they become a burden for society, at 75).
Obviously, the main goal of the Biden Committee is to criticize the Trump administration for not fighting the pandemic in the wrong ways.
Now - in this Newt Gingrich is right - it all depends on how efficiently Trump and his team can cope with the "black swan" COVID-19 - and whether they can do it at all.
The question, as usual, is money.
The measures already taken (free coronavirus tests, fully paid bulletins for patients with COVID-19 and partially quarantined ones, payment of a bulletin for parents of children sent for forced vacations) already led to an enormous burden on the budget. But they will not end. Frightened by Mnuchin, the congress is preparing to approve a package of economic assistance totaling $ 1.8 trillion (!!!).
The Mnuchin Plan involves issuing to all citizens of the country, except the most well-off, checks for $ 2 thousand (in two tranches - in March and April), airline support ($ 50 billion), and the issuance of interest-free loans in the amount of $ 500 billion to small and medium-sized companies business.
Will the backbone of a mighty American economy crack under the burden of such unprecedented measures?
Some believe that the Ministry of Finance can issue an infinite number of treasury bonds that banks will buy, and if banks do not have enough money for it, they will borrow from the owner of the "printing press" - the US Federal Reserve. And the Fed can print money as much as it wants. The bonds will be sold to investors from all over the world, and the funds needed to support the American economy will be received.
In other words, the whole world will again be thrown off in order to save the US economy, which is moaning under the blows of the wings of black swans.
All this, of course, is a monstrous simplification - and the Fed cannot print money uncontrollably (if only because it threatens an explosion of inflation), and US treasury bonds in the world, whose main workshop itself has not yet recovered from the COVID-19 outbreak, will not buy as willingly as before, but the truth is that America really has more opportunities to cope with the misfortune that has befallen its economy than other states. And Trump, fortunately for the Americans, is the same leader who is able to overcome all the black swans of 2020 - even if at first he underestimated their dangers.
If Trump's plan succeeds, he will not only save the country and secure a second presidential term, but will go down in history as one of the greatest American leaders along with F.D. Roosevelt. If it doesn’t work out, the black swans of 2020 will sweep away both his hopes for re-election and the protectionist model of “tramponomics” itself.
But there is one more nuance, which, perhaps, is secretly counted both by the owner of the White House and by each of his rival Democrats.
COVID-19 is the most dangerous for the elderly. Trump is 73 years old, Biden is 77, Sanders is 78. The coronavirus test showed that no infection is sticking to the US president, but there is no such certainty about his competitors.
So the intrigue of the 2020 elections will continue until the very end.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.