Performance is in fact divergent by party; see e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/hso3sf/oc_.... Blue counties are doing worse than red in both state cohorts due to population density, but counties of either party are doing worse in R states. Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not.

>Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative

Healthcare.gov was a shitshow, but referring to it here is a very silly false equivalency. It was not time-sensitive in the same way that COVID-19 response is. It involved getting the federal government to exercise new competencies that it hadn't done at scale before; responding to national crises is kind of the number one job of the federal government, and PPE acquisition, distribution, and even manufacturing are not new. It failed for reasons having to do with mismanagement of timelines, not outright fraud; COVID PPE shipments have been hijacked and sold off to the president's cronies.

But sure, both sides technically did something wrong, so there's no difference between them.

> Blue states were worse early on, mostly due to New York City being quickly overwhelmed, but now that's not the case, because D governors (e.g., Newsom) are generally leading responsibly, and R governors (e.g. Kemp) are... not.

The relevant metric is not "amount of time doing relatively better or worse." You can get all over with quickly like NY did, but they ended up with 8x the deaths of FL. NJ has 3x FL's. AFAICT, "leading responsibly" here means simply having (D) after their names, as these governors' policies were catastrophically bad.

> responding to national crises is kind of the number one job of the federal government

I responded to your sibling comment about other examples about how D-dominated governments have failed spectacularly in areas which are supposed to be the core jobs of governments - public infrastructure. (ref: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23875739).

> both sides technically did something wrong, so there's no difference between them.

I actually don't see much difference in the incompetence of the two sides. Presidents (or Governors) are simply impotent to get anything done in the US systems. At best (in terms of their powers), they can only stop something from happening.

> Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes.

Maybe if it were also possible to lock down borders between states, making them truly separate sovereign nations.

A lot of states had a declining infection rate and looked to be getting things under control, then people traveled to other states and brought back the virus with them.

There are still things only the federal government can do or coordinate.

You mean when all the New Yorkers left for Florida?

> Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no?

It’s not so simple in that many states are miniature versions of our polarized country. For example, you have a Democratic governor facing Republican opposition in rural counties in Washington, and a Republican governor suing a Democratic mayor in Georgia.

>Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative

It's very frustrating seeing people continually arguing that because some people screw up, learn from experience, and fix things, that it justifies others going in the opposite direction, ignoring experience, and breaking things.

Even before your metrics show that the destruction has reached a crossover point, the latter is fundamentally different because it's unnecessary. The former is fundamentally sound because there will always be mistakes.

It doesn't matter how bad you think government is, it's not an argument for making it worse.

This is not true; a) more rural states have a much easier time with covid and b) blue states started off being hit the hardest, but red states are now catching up because their governors are incompetent

I think this is a misrepresentation. Texas has 85% of the infections as California and 74% of the population. California has had steady growth while Texas has been very quick with several days over 10k.

I think the reason the outcome is largely the same is this is a situation where we rely on our federal government to lead the response, and so far they haven’t.

> I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative[1]. The problem is much deeper.

This strikes me as a pretty passive-aggressive argument style.

Who, in your opinion, is the better leader? Which of Obama or Trump do you think would handle this pandemic better?

You are picking out one mistake, and kind-of-sort-of implying that makes them both the same, except you don't have the courage to directly state that. If you have a point to make, make it.

> If you have a point to make, make it.

My point - a solo good leader is insufficient in the US because the systemic rot is deeper and bipartisan. (FWIW, Obama was an okay leader, though vastly better than Trump).

> You are picking out one mistake

Here are a few more: California High-Speed railway, which was being implemented when CA had D-dominated government under a very competent governor (Brown). Did that leadership or unified government control help? Absolutely not.

Another: 2-mile stretch of Second Avenue subway in NYC, which took almost a 100 years and $4-5B. Why? Were all the NYC leaders incompetent for a century? I don't think so.

The problem is that people think the D's and R's are dramatically different. They both have similar statist agendas just marketing themselves towards different demographics. Neither party has many any substantial effort to rebuild our infrastructure, develop genuine disaster preparedness, reduce tax burdens on the middle class, and so on.

All of those things lead to what we're seeing now where the average person can't even afford to live on savings for a few months. If the average person can't keep themselves above water, how can they realistically contribute to their community efforts like we did in WW2? And if they're all going broke and risking losing their houses and livelihoods you end up with a massive backlash to anything keeping people away from work.

We need leadership that pushes serious reform initiatives to reduce government bloat and reach goals that actually benefit the people.

I see that you are being downvoted, but I do agree with some of your points.

> people think the D's and R's are dramatically different

This is so true. Let's ignore fringe topics like Green New Deal or White Supremacy and look at what the mainstream portions of the parties are debating about - abortion, transgender rights etc.

But what are the key differences between tax policy or curtailing corporate powers or entanglements in various wars? You will have to squint hard. And please don't cite Warren or Sanders when it comes to corporations and D's - those two lost the primary handily and when D's controlled all the levers of the powers in D.C., they happily bailed out the Wall Street without punishing a single banker for the crash of 2008.

Yeah it's pretty obvious by reading by what is NOT being discussed and talked about that there is some serious disconnect from both the Ds and the Rs and the people that make up the US that is behind a lot of the current problems.

Sometimes the silence says more than the noise.

The upvotes/downvotes I get are weird to watch because there's so much apparent disagreement and very little dialogue. This is the case on anything I post that takes a more 'conservative' stance.

> the mainstream portions of the parties are debating about - abortion, transgender rights etc.

I sometimes call these the clickbait issues. They get the most public attention but affect people's daily lives the least. Of course, that statement is going to upset some people because they will not immediately consider the net effect of trans rights legislation in comparison to taxes / corporate lawmaking / warfare / international trade.

Worse, some people take statements like the above and think that I don't want all humans to have truly equal rights, which I do.

> they happily bailed out the Wall Street without punishing a single banker for the crash of 2008

Very true. I've seen many people (including on this forum, which is better educated than average) make statements to the effect of 'democrats are better for the economy' without considering the fact that both parties have been complicit in creating and maintaining the systems that have led to massive government debt and economic collapses.