Notice to the GOP: Stop Playing Politics With COVID-19 or You Will Lose Big

Texas Governor Abbott "Worst Poll Numbers"

Florida Governor Desantis Approval Falls 14 Points

Yeah, so polls are polls.  Polls don't vote, people do.  You can twist questions to make polling data say whatever you want.  And so on. 

In two big states with Republican governors where Democrats have excellent chances of winning house and senate seats in 2022, the fights over vaccination and mask mandates has yielded wonderful news for Democrats.  Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis have not just failed to take action to stop the spread of the virus, they have opposed the efforts of others to do so, screeching about "individual rights" and then trying to stand in the way of those who want to exercise their "individual rights."  

Fighting to prevent school districts from instituting measures to protect their students from the threat of COVID-19 was a gigantic mistake by both of these incompetent, egocentric and politically self-absorbed governors.  You don't mess with people's kids.  And while their overall inaction when it comes to COVID has eroded their support all along, the big nosedives have come as school has started, the delta variant is surging and they both went to war with school officials over mandatory masking and employee vaccination.  

The school officials won.  

As Republicans across the country are getting bent out of shape over Biden's tightening and moving forward on efforts to get the US through this pandemic and back to normal, you can hear Republican poll numbers crackling and crashing down.  I don't get why it takes such a long time for people to see where things are headed, but the constant resistance to doing anything that will actually stop the spread of COVID, and prevent the virus from mutating even more, and the constant whining about restrictions and mandates and measures taken to protect people from getting sick appear to finally be yielding some fruit.  An increasing number of people are waking up and seeing that these Republican politicians, and the people who listen to them and make up most of their base, really are that stupid and that ignorant, and it is beginning to look like it will be a major factor in how they cast their vote. 

Democrats aren't really having to spend much money to push the narrative, either.  It's catching on really fast as schools reopen, cases among school-aged children surge, especially in states with governors fighting mask mandates where there are also low vaccination rates, and the death rate, including children, climbs once again.  It's an eye opening experience for parents who are already fearful about sending their children to school to spend every day in a room full of other kids, to see their governor on television every day doing their dead-level best to prevent the school officials from protecting the students.  

At a religious-based private school in Broward County, Florida, when a "mask optional" policy was announced, parents lined up to withdraw their children, until the administration relented and made masks mandatory.  At a large, suburban Chicago religious-based school, the administration announced a "mask optional" policy until a large group of parents called the state board of education which then pulled the school's recognized status, affecting scholarship dollars and credit for coursework.  Large public school districts in Texas simply hunkered down and dared the governor to take action against their mask mandates, then went to court against his actions.  

Governors, mostly Democrats, in states that have been both pro-active and competent in preventing the spread of the virus are being rewarded, not only with lower numbers of cases and deaths, per-capita, but with high job approval ratings.  J. D. Pritzker, of Illinois, may be the "dean" of COVID prevention.  The most recent polling data reported by the Chicago Tribune shows him at 57% approval of his handling of the pandemic.  With 54% as the low, and 58% as the high, it looks like Gavin Newsom will hold on to his seat, and that's about what Californians think of his handling of COVID as well.  

Doing More Than Most Republicans

West Virginia Gov. Justice Goes Off on Antivaxxers

Whether he is so confident in his popularity, or just has common sense and doesn't care about the politics, West Virginia Governor Jim Justice has taken a big step forward in helping his state resolve its pandemic problems.  West Virginia ranks near the top of the pile in terms of unvaccinated residents, and in per-capita COVID infections and deaths but the governor is not an antivaxxer.  It doesn't appear that he is doing all that much to mediate the spread of the virus, except talk, but that's more than most Republicans are doing.  

The Republican threat to sue over Biden's tougher mandates has little chance of succeeding.  Legal precedent is in favor of the mandates and many of the laws necessary to put Biden's mandates into effect are old laws already on the books and have already passed court muster.  I'll be curious to see if the threats materialize into actual court cases.  I don't think Republicans will want all of that negative attention, keeping the narrative focused on being the party that doesn't want to keep children safe.  They already resist efforts to keep students safe from mass shooters and gun violence.  Do they really want to flood courts with lawsuits against masks and vaccinations that keep children safe?  Someone needs to come up with a good meme linking Republican resistance to masks and vaccines with their resistance to gun laws that keep schools safe.  

Republicans Want COVID-19 Relief to Fail

It doesn't appear, at this late stage of the pandemic, that Republicans will be able to reverse their fortunes and recover from the negative image they have created for themselves by their resistance to ending the pandemic.  If it ends, they reason, Democrats will get credit for it.  That's too bad, they had their chances.  But they also had Trump.  Maybe Republicans like Jim Justice, or Larry Hogan, Maryland's governor who has been among the more aggressive when it comes to fighting the pandemic.  It shouldn't be a political issue.  We should all want to do everything we can to get past it and resistance to that out of fear that another political party might benefit from the results is selfish and cruel.  If the Republicans want to take that risk, then they deserve to lose, which is exactly what is going to happen.