Dear Democrats: Lockdowns Equal Losses
By: Mike Houghton
Tags: Democratic Party, Covid 19 Crisis, Joe Biden, Michael Osterholm, Lockdown

In the wake of a Joe Biden presidency, national lock-down advocates like epidemiologist Michael Osterholm are renewing their public calls for “national lockdowns” to contain the renewed and rapid rise in COVID-19. However, if Democrats want to (a) have any hope of winning Georgia’s run-off elections in January and (b) avoid the utterly damaging label of “socialist” they need to quickly convey that a nationalized, centrally-managed shut down of the country will not be part of Biden’s plan to contain COVID-19.

Michael Osterholm

Even if Mr. Biden is considering a national lock down — a strategy even the WHO now advises against because of its long-term damage — it can’t be part of the national conversation with respect to Democratic strategy. Because nothing would give the Trump faction of the GOP-media complex the ammunition it needs to blow smoldering holes into Biden’s anti-progressive and anti-socialist stonewall that he has, for better or worse, cultivated in his long political career.

Aside from calls to defund the police, talks about national shutdowns and government restricting freedoms are detrimental to an already shaky Democratic congress and presidency. Biden supporters and the media are forgetting that Biden still has an eternity before he is sworn in. And with an electoral loss almost certain for President Trump, to think he’s not going to vigorously mobilize every last GA voter so Republicans keep the Senate is foolish thinking.

And the way he will mobilize voters in GA is to finally and successfully paint the incoming president as a freedom-crushing, dictatorial, authoritarian socialist. Like it or not, even if labels are fundamentally meaningless today, this strategy seems to work just enough to push competitive races over the red finish line in states where the default winner is a Republican.

There is a reason why the states where the pandemic is surging the most still broke for Trump: they have a deep distrust of government telling them what to do, how to do it, and when. These states have a population that fears this more than COVID-19. Perhaps some of us think that is foolish. But it does need to be respected.

Using the pandemic as a political tactic — which both sides are guilty of — goes both ways. While Trump staunchly attempted to place the economy over the short-term damage of COVID-19, a Biden presidency cannot start with an unprecedented grab of power. It can’t even start with people thinking there will be an unprecedented grab of power — something people, including many liberals and moderates, are already scared of.

The odds of a national lockdown are slim, but the hysteria the talk of its possibility will cause isn’t. And for Democrats who are resisting on-the-ground operations because of the pandemic (and have been somewhat lax in their digital efforts), they need every advantage possible if they want to retake the Senate.

If the Biden transition team were smart he would sincerely advise his team not to talk to the media about national lockdowns. It earns him no points with, gains him no support, and fires up an already more active GOP base.