Democrats Against Democrats

As Hasan notes, this is what Democrats do:

This is why Democrats lose to Republicans. Because no matter how badly Republicans behave, certain centrist Democrats will always indulge them - as Coons here does, with Graham - and self-flagellate. It’s infuriating to watch Lucy, Charlie, and the football again and again. 🤦🏽‍♂️ https://t.co/y01508XmuM

— Mehdi Hasan (@mehdirhasan) April 9, 2022

A press release from the governor of Florida on March 7 boasted "Today, Governor Ron DeSantis was joined by Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo and world-renowned physicians and epidemiologists to discuss the failures of lockdowns and mandates in response to COVID-19."  Last August, Texas governor Greg Abbott declared “One thing that we know is that safe practices are important. That said, one thing that we learned along the way is lockdowns are wrong during the course of a pandemic..."

House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn and other center-left Democrats rail against Democrats embracing the label "socialist" or slogan "defund the police," though it is mostly they themselves who in disgust employ the terms. Similarly, two prominent Republicans refer to "the failures of lockdowns" and "lockdowns are wrong." But then, there also are Democrats who use the same framing, as when Democrat and famed SARS-CoV-2 minimalist Bill Maher on Sunday evening stated (at 2:02 of the video below)

We're not in the middle of one (pandemic) and it's no wonder and it's debatable whether we should have lost our s_ _ _ to that degree. And there are also people who say lockdowns didn't really change anything.

The common thread is "lockdowns" and the assumption is that we've suffered through them.  Notwithstanding the unavoidable closure of schools in the spring of 2021, "lockdowns" have been nearly nonexistent in the USA.  

The USA never has gone into lockdown because, like almost every country, a "zero Covid strategy" never has been our goal. Two of the exceptions have been Australia and New Zealand, the latter going "into the highest level of restrictions when a single person was diagnosed with Covid-19 in Auckland. No working in the office. No going out to dinner or the gym or church. In most cases, no leaving the house."

Contrast that with the USA, in which freedom of movement never was restricted. In the extreme, of course, lies mainland China, which on March 11

ordered a lockdown of the 9 million residents of the northeastern city of Changchun amid a new spike in COVID-19 cases in the area attributed to the highly contagious omicron variant.

Residents are required to remain at home, with one family member permitted to venture out to buy food and other necessities every two days. All residents must undergo three rounds of mass testing, while non-essential businesses have been closed and transport links suspended.

The latest lockdowns, which also include Yucheng with 500,000 people in the eastern province of Shandong, show China is sticking to the draconian approach to the pandemic it has enforced for most of the past two years, despite some earlier indications that authorities would be implementing more targeted measures.

Those are actual lockdowns, harsh in democratic republics and ruthless in totalitarian states such as mainland China. For Democrats to have allowed reasonable and sensible restrictions during this pandemic to be defined as "lockdowns" is serious political malpractice. If messaging is considered an art, Democrats struggle for the grade of D-.

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