Bold talk, poor results from Biden and Harris on the pandemic
“All we needed was a competent president; one who was willing to listen, willing to lead, take responsibility, have a plan, do their job,” said then Sen. Kamala Harris in August of 2020 of former President Donald Trump’s COVID-19 response.
And then in October 2020, in a vice presidential debate, the California Democrat said of Trump’s COVID response: “The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.”
And then speaking to the
Los Angeles Times over this past weekend, not quite one year into the job of vice president, Harris said: “We didn’t see delta coming. I think most scientists did not — upon whose advice and direction we have relied — didn’t see delta coming. We didn’t see omicron coming. And that’s the nature of what this, this awful virus has been, which as it turns out, has mutations and variants.”
What a difference a year makes.
How Harris could say her latest comment with a straight face is unclear. As pointed out by Dr. Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical advisor: “We definitely saw variants coming.”
The possibility of variants has been known since the early days of COVID — and virology for that matter — and certainly since Harris and
Joe Biden were campaigning throughout the country torching Trump and saying they could do better.
To then be allegedly caught unprepared for multiple variants, seems to contradict the confidence in herself Harris projected during the campaign.
It’s the kind of gaffe and detached-from-reality response we’ve come to expect from her.
While there were many failures of the Trump administration in its response to the coronavirus, Trump at least has the defense that at the time the virus was even more novel and all leaders were trying to adapt in real time; with Harris and Biden, the virus has been around for years.
Harris has so often said that Trump’s perceived failures were “deadly.” So then what are Biden and Harris’s failures?
Consider, for example, Biden’s statement in October 2020, at a time when 220,000 Americans had died due to COVID-19, that “Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain president of the United States.” According to the Washington Post, the number of Americans who have died of COVID during Biden’s presidency is approaching 400,000.
Will Biden and Harris apply the same standards to themselves as they held the Trump administration?
Will they resign due to the deaths that have happened on their watch?
Of course not.
As much as partisans seem to forget this when it comes to their favored team, politicians, and certainly aspiring presidents and vice presidents, will in fact say anything to get elected.
They hold opponents to high standards and themselves to malleable ones. It’s how the game goes.
If one is fair, it’s obvious that no government, anywhere, has the perfect solution to how to handle COVID-19. It is, after all, a novel coronavirus.
But Harris and Biden put the standards out there. Partisans will stick with their sides, but moderates and independents are sure to notice the mismatch between rhetoric and results.