Certainly true. I have said before that it is his greatest achievement as president, but if you want to defend the Abraham Accords, I will hear from you. Regardless, I don’t think Durbin is just a great guy to give Team Trump a bit of credit here. There is a strategy behind it, one that we may see duplicated by other Democrats in the coming weeks and months. Watch and then read on.
Biden has a problem. He wants to have as many people as possible vaccinated in the shortest possible time. The success of Pfizer’s vaccine and the rosy media coverage surrounding it have made that easier for him if you believe the polls, but he and his advisers know that convincing the base Republicans will be a big step once Trump is absent and not longer to profit politically from the approval of the vaccine. Anti-vax messages are already replacing “stop stealing” messages in some populist media outlets. Whether congressional Republicans will adopt blind rejection towards Biden remains to be seen, but there is no doubt that parts of the GOP base will. How do you convince those people to get vaccinated?
Ideally, you would appoint Trump yourself as your salesperson.
The problem is that Trump will not help for altruistic reasons of “being a good citizen.” Undoubtedly, he is eager to see Biden fail as president in everything he does, eager to highlight any hiccups in vaccine distribution after January 20 on his social media feeds. I would say the odds are no greater than 50/50 that out of spite he turns himself anti-vaxxer and eventually grapples with an unfolding conspiracy theory about how the vaccine was secretly ‘changed’ after Biden took office and the new version is dangerous . The fact that Republican voters want him to be credited with spreading the vaccine so quickly isn’t a logical hindrance to many of those who eventually – or already – are turning to opposition to the vaccine.
If you want him to help sell the vaccine, there must be something in it for him. You must appeal to his vanity. Marc Thiessen understands:
Nothing like this has ever happened in the history of modern medicine. As my colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, former FDA chief Scott Gottlieb, told me, “We have never really experienced this level of development work in such a short time with so many successes. This is a special achievement. I can’t think of a historical proxy. “…
Biden has criticized Trump’s failures to pandemic reactions, so why not give credit to the president for this unadulterated success? Because that would mean recognizing that, despite all of Trump’s shortcomings in controlling the pandemic, he is also responsible for ending it. And Biden is saving that credit for herself.
Given Trump’s awful behavior, Biden may not be in the mood to praise the president. But it’s not about Trump; It’s about Biden keeping his promise to reach his opponent’s supporters and bring Americans together. If he really wants to unite the country, he must give credit where the credit is due – and pledge to continue Operation Warp Speed.
Nothing will ‘bring Americans together’, but giving Trump a public reputation in the continued acceptance and success of the vaccine would be a smart way to tone down some of the politically driven opposition to it, including Trump self. “There is a whole margin of the population that listens very closely to the president, which is why he has an important role,” Moncef Slaoui, chief of Operation Warp Speed, told CNN a few days ago. Biden’s team has reportedly considered reaching out to Sean Hannity and Rand Paul to try to do justice to the vaccine instead of asking Trump, but no contact has been made yet. Trump aides told Politico that Biden “the president-elect is deliberately ignoring Trump’s vaccine achievements and playing only partisan politics. Biden, they said, should vocally praise Trump for pushing through in record time for what they have dubbed the “ Trump vaccine. ” “
That’s where Durbin comes into play. Perhaps the task of commending the president for his vaccination work has been outsourced by Biden to Senate Democrats. Left-handers don’t want President-elect Trump to salute everything COVID-related, especially if things like this keep dripping in the media. But it’s so rare for a Congressional Democrat to celebrate a Trump achievement that Durbin and others on record talking about the astonishing success of Operation Warp Speed could impress him. With any other ex-president, including those who have lost an election to their successor (Bush 41, for example), this would be a simple matter of picking up the phone and politely asking for their help in an effort to benefit Americans. With Trump, more psychological work is involved. How do you get him to participate in the vaccine pep rally? Answer: You make it as much as possible about him.
Speaking of hiccups in vaccine distribution, this ‘hiccup’ is worth mentioning – but not (yet) crazy about:
The first worker, a middle-aged woman who had no history of allergies, experienced an anaphylactic reaction that began Tuesday 10 minutes after receiving the vaccine at Bartlett Regional Hospital in Juneau, a hospital official said. She experienced a rash on her face and trunk, shortness of breath, and an increased heart rate.
Dr. Lindy Jones, medical director of the hospital’s emergency department, said the worker first received an injection of epinephrine, a standard treatment for severe allergic reactions. Her symptoms disappeared but returned, and she was treated with steroids and an infusion of epinephrine.
When doctors tried to stop the IV her symptoms showed up again, so the woman was transferred to intensive care, observed overnight, then weaned off the IV early Wednesday morning, said Dr. Jones.
She also spent last night in the hospital as a precaution. Another employee at the same Alaska hospital also had a reaction treated with epinephrine, but he recovered within an hour. Those are the only cases I’ve heard of so far this week of semi-serious reactions to the vaccine developing. It could be pure fluke, one-in-100,000 events, or whatever, but the fact that two people in the same hospital had negative reactions requiring medical treatment makes the “fluke” theory more difficult to swallow. I wonder: Could there have been something from the environment in or around the hospital, possibly related to the specific work they were doing, that might have made them susceptible to side effects from the vaccine?
I assume conspiracy theories are already circulating on Facebook, claiming that reactions like this are happening all over the country and being covered up, but that’s not in line with the extensive lawsuits that Pfizer did. “Historically with a vaccine, the terrible (serious side effects) that we always worry about occur within a few weeks,” an emergency room physician told USA Today. “We don’t see that kind of spike … in the weeks when we see people on the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine.” By the way, vaccinations in nursing homes have already begun, with several thousand Western Virginians getting the shot and more than 20,000 Floridians to receive it this week. No reports of serious side effects among America’s weakest citizens to date.