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Murphy is a longtime veteran of the other side, and he's both won and lost, and he's got a well-placed tight focus on beating Trump. Murphy is, in short, a good co-belligerent (not ally or friend, certainly not convert). With that always in mind, listen. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/21/how-biden-could-still-lose/
Democrats and media should -- and CAN -- be ready for Trump to drop the Medical Miracle Bomb; it will be near Nov 3 because normal media time to establish that it is false (which is likely) exaggerated (that's near certain) or premature (certain) is a matter of a month or so.
So the Good Guys will not have that month. Ten days or a week, maybe. What can we say (yell, trumpet to the skies, flood the channels with) the day he announces that they can cure it with Jeremiah Peabody's Green and Purple Pills? Thoughts:
1. Reporters and editors: get a go-file ready for each research center known to be working on the problem. Who's the real principal investigator? Can you give them a get-acquainted call now?
2. Or if you find that some research centers are bogus, have needed info on file ....
2. Or if you find that some research centers are bogus, have needed info on file ....
... and if possible blow them up before they publish. The White House Gang almost certainly doesn't know what they're going to claim as the miracle cure on Oct 24. Bogus/shady labs are going to be rushing to look good; if you catch them now or next month, Trumpty loses options
3. Regular citizens, irregular citizens, citizens who do not recognize the regular/irregular binary: HAVE YOUR ELEVATOR PITCH READY. You know everything you need to know already: a) it won't have any effect until after the New Year, even if it heartens all of us.
b) Trump had several things available -- lockdown, masks, contact tracing, your favorite 3-5 -- AND DID NOT USE THEM; he also didn't roll out PPE and he failed miserably at distributing ventilators. If a cure is almost here, we need experienced career public health ...
... and medical people with full support from an involved president who understands experts (and listens to them). So WE'VE GOT TO GET TRUMP'S SORRY FLABBY ORANGE BUTTOCKS OUT OF THE WHITE HOUSE BEFORE HE FUCKS THIS UP LIKE HE DID EVERY OTHER OPPORTUNITY TO STOP COVID BEFORE.
c) Also it's clear he doesn't think very clearly about science, and he's really in trouble at the polls, and he always thinks less clearly when he's losing, so what are the odds that he's just grasping at a straw that doesn't mean what he desperately hopes that it does?
4. People already don't trust Trump. (See Lincoln, some/all/fool matrix). It will take very little to plant the suggestion that this is going to turn out to be something he has a financial interest in, that he's probably silencing his own experts, that the principals, lab,...
... university, etc. are going to turn out to have major ties to a swing state.
5. And if they go low enough to claim that Miraculum excrementis tauri was developed in a Manhattan Project type top-secret thingie, straight up: WHY WOULD ANYONE DO THAT? Science works fastest when it is cooperative and international; secrecy means nothing good!
Anyway, in all seriousness: Trump's going to drop the Miracle Cure Bomb close to the election. The moment a Trumpty Dumpkin brings it up around you, you gotta not just rain on that parade, but take a crap on its sodden drowned corpse, and push it into the gutter for pickup.
Don't wait till one of Trumpty Dumpty's little homunculi is standing in front of you spouting unbelievable stupidity about the University of Swing State Vaccine. Practice. Be ready. You want to jump in while his throat is still open.
