We begin today’s roundup with Joe Biden’s op-ed in The Washington Post calling out Donald Trump for his divisiveness and complete lack of leadership during this crisis:
It’s been more than two months since Trump claimed that “anybody that wants a test can get a test.” It was a baldfaced lie when he said it, and it still isn’t remotely true. If we’re going to have thriving workplaces, restaurants, stores and parks, we need widespread testing. Trump can’t seem to provide it — to say nothing of worker safety protocols, consistent health guidelines or clear federal leadership to coordinate a responsible reopening.
The Washington Post calls out Trump for his lack of leadership in helping to provide the level of testing we need to reopen safely:
The pandemic response demands a testing regimen that does not yet exist. According to the Covid Tracking Project, states are reporting about 300,000 tests a day, about a tenth of the 3 million or more a day that experts say is the minimum needed to begin to safely open workplaces again. Weeks ago, Mr. Trump should have embraced this as a uniquely federal responsibility, under the supervision of an experienced leader, a Manhattan Project for the pandemic age. Instead, he left the job to governors, and the nation is staggering under the consequences.
David Graham at The Atlantic emphasizes that the plan at the White House is no plan at all:
It’s been 111 days since the first reported case of the coronavirus in the United States. It’s been 57 days since President Trump issued social-distancing guidelines, and 12 days since they expired.
Yet the Trump administration still has no plan for dealing with the global pandemic or its fallout. The president has cast doubt on the need for a vaccine or expanded testing. He has no evident plan for contact tracing. He has no treatment ideas beyond the drug remdesivir, since Trump’s marketing campaign for hydroxychloroquine ended in disaster. And, facing the worst economy since the Great Depression, the White House has no plan for that, either, beyond a quixotic hope that consumer demand will snap back as soon as businesses reopen.
At New York Magazine, Gabriel Debenedetti dives into the type of presidency Biden may be planning if he wins:
While it’s impossible to tell where the country is headed, Biden’s camp is in the disorienting position of scaling up its laundry list of proposals to match the ambition, and the political appetite, he thinks the American people — desperate for relief — will have in January. [...]
“I think it’s probably the biggest challenge in modern history, quite frankly. I think it may not dwarf but eclipse what FDR faced,” Biden told CNN’s Chris Cuomo last month.
On a final note, don’t miss The New York Times and its take on Attorney General William Barr and his loyalty to the president over the law:
In service to Mr. Trump, Mr. Barr is abusing his power not to write, but to erase, some of the most important lessons of American history. [...]
If you’re having trouble distinguishing Mr. Barr’s vision of the presidency from the rule of a king, you’re not alone. “George III would have loved it,” said Douglas Kmiec, who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.