COVID19 Update - Day 218

US Tests: 112,501,414*

US Cases: 7,876,324*

US Deaths: 208,387*

Worldwide Cases: 38,423,591*

Worldwide Deaths: 1,091,123*

* - Numbers are a lower bound.  True numbers are being suppressed by the Trump administration

Republicans care about power.  Not America.  If you're still looking for a reason to help Democrats retake control of the Senate, this should give you the only reason you need.  It appears that McConnell and the GOP-led Senate don't actually want to pass another stimulus bill to help lift the #TrumpVirus-ravaged economy --- because any bill passed now will only help President Biden:

Republicans almost certainly suspect Trump will lose even with a big stimulus and already hope to put an incoming President Joe Biden in a fiscal straitjacket, saddling him with the terrible politics of a grueling recovery.

A big package now under a GOP president would make that harder to get away with. That’s bad enough, but the evolving strategy here may be worse than this suggests. The calculation is probably not just about avoiding the hypocrisy of spending big now and embracing austerity under a Democratic president.

It’s also likely that a big package now would put the economy in a somewhat better position early next year, when Biden (should he win) would take over. This, too, is probably what Republicans want to avoid.

Indeed, as Eric Levitz points out, if Republicans can scuttle a robust package now, that would hand Biden a “deepening recession.” If Republicans hold the Senate and can block big stimulus measures at that point, Levitz continues, “Biden’s presidency would be over before it starts.”

And so, when McConnell chortled with glee at this week’s debate in Kentucky about the failure to pass more aid at a desperate national moment, it telegraphed what’s coming. And we’ve already lived through what happened when Republicans, led by McConnell, tried to cripple the recovery from a previous economic calamity that a Democratic president inherited from a Republican one.

Back then, McConnell calculated that if Republicans adopted a strategy of openly tailoring everything around the overarching goal of denying Barack Obama bipartisan support, Obama would take the blame for it. It’s likely McConnell is already thinking the same.

Politicians gonna politic.  That's true for both Republicans and Democrats.  Nevertheless, all members of Congress (as well as The Stain himself) were sent to Washington to do a job.

And when there are 8 million Americans sick with a deadly virus, and nearly 210,000 dead, unemployment at 8% and food insecurity at record highs, the politicians need to do their jobs and provide more stimulus.

But the Senate Republicans don't care.  They're already thinking about how to cripple the government to maximize the pain Americans suffer for the next 4 years.

So I'll ask you to do what you can to help kick these bastards out of the Senate.