Daniel W. Drezner has a piece in the Washington Post Thursday checking in from Earth 2, where Hillary Clinton won the presidency, and seeing how the COVID-19 pandemic is going there. Or would it even be a pandemic were Clinton in charge? Drezner admits in his tweet that he gave Clinton “every benefit of the doubt,” which could get you killed if you’re, say, an ambassador.
In sketching out the counterfactual of how President Hillary Clinton would have handled the coronavirus, I gave her every benefit of the doubt. The result was much more policy success and just as much political rancor. https://t.co/RhWZ3o83HN
— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) April 9, 2020
Of course you did
— Wuhan Bat Plague Survivalist (so far) (@Italian8675309) April 9, 2020
Drezner completely blows the illusion by assuming Donald Trump would still be whining about the 2016 election as Clinton has done:
Allegations that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention mishandled initial coronavirus testing protocols continue to plague the administration, as have accusations that Clinton browbeat the Food and Drug Administration into approving testing kits using regulatory standards lower than standard FDA protocols.
Trump, who has essentially been campaigning since his surprisingly narrow loss in 2016, told his allies in Congress to demand an inspector general report from the Department of Health and Human Services for mistakes made in containing the spread of the coronavirus: “THE CDC WAS BAD AT EBOLA AND A DISASTER AT CORONAVIRUS!! WE NEED TO HEAR FROM THE IG!!!” he tweeted.
Trump also mocked a public service announcement by former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush advocating that those in the affected quarantine zones wear masks when they go outside. “Look at Tweedledum and Tweedledee — what a joke! None of this would have happened in a Trump administration. Sad!”
Meanwhile, in real life, when Clinton saw the headline that the United States led the world in coronavirus cases, she tweeted, “He did promise ‘America First'” — the most tasteless and tone-deaf tweet we could have imagined. And that actually happened.
Could there be a more pointless article ever written?
— Hooray Beerz (@HoorayBeerz1) April 9, 2020
Write one with no benefit of a doubt. How does that go? I mean if we're putting together masturbatory exercises in fiction writing.
— Owner Of Many Sardines (@basinmusic) April 9, 2020
“I gave her every benefit of the doubt” – why?
Why do you attribute preemptive “20/20 hindsight” to a pol who had trouble filling hallways with followers & couldn’t win a race with 98% odds of winning?
Would she really have slammed borders shut by Jan 30? Lockdown by 2/10? No.
— Camping Roomba (@ctdonath) April 9, 2020
Why would you give her every benefit of the doubt? In what world would a liberal president pursue FDA/CDC deregulation?
Questions you should be asking yourself, and your editor should have asked you *before* publishing this liberal fantasy porn.
— Brad Polumbo (@brad_polumbo) April 9, 2020
The failure of the @CDCgov & @US_FDA to act quickly and get out the way is at the root of our current problems and there is nothing in @HillaryClinton's history to suggest she would have pushed them to be less obstructionist any more than @realDonaldTrump did. https://t.co/K6CHNeULuv
— Nick Gillespie (@nickgillespie) April 9, 2020
Policy success? No shot she would have ceased flights to/from China or closed borders.
— Matt (@mattowanHP) April 9, 2020
Everyone would be healthy if the magic messiah lady wasn't denied by heathen Wisconsin https://t.co/ncKxOka1jy
— Anthony Bialy (@AnthonyBialy) April 9, 2020
Things that no president would have done better:
Travel bans (they would always have been too late, or not at all)
CDC testing protocol (which is the single biggest failure)
The counterproductive mask use guidance— You Should Have Voted For Gary (@colorblindk1d) April 9, 2020
She did a good job in Libya and Benghazi
— Panama Jack (@raider296) April 9, 2020
She was absent at the wheel on September 11, 2012. How do you know for a fact how she’d do with the virus problem?
— Tom Chamberlain (@ChamberlainDr) April 9, 2020
how do you get paid to write political fanfiction?
— Dr. femalerespecter69, Ph.D. (@PolicyFagget) April 9, 2020
Harry Potter orgy fanfic is more intellectually stimulating than all this "but if Hillary had won" shit… https://t.co/CGbh09KEqj
— Alan (@AlanWillNot) April 9, 2020
Alt headline: I made shit up and reached my predetermined conclusion.
— Suck on that, TTUN! (@Sloopyinca) April 9, 2020
Earth 2 fan-fiction is not helping contain the spread of the coronavirus on the real Earth.
Related:
Ghoulish Hillary Clinton stoops to deplorable new low to hit Donald Trump over COVID19 (with some help from the ChiComs) https://t.co/7g7fcEeN4G
— Twitchy Team (@TwitchyTeam) March 27, 2020
