Just when you think 2020 can’t get any weirder comes a story like this:
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has confirmed she is in talks with Joe Biden’s campaign to become his running mate, as the race to join his ticket reaches an unseen fever pitch.
“I’ve had a conversation with some folks,” Whitmer said in a Tuesday morning interview on the “Today” show.
“It was just an opening conversation and it’s not something that I would call a professional formalized vetting,” she added.
A rising star in the Democratic Party who has garnered national headlines through her handling of the Wolverine State’s COVID-19 outbreak, Whitmer is considered one of several women on the shortlist to join Biden’s ticket.
The 48-year-old governor joins Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, who, according to a Senate colleague, was selected for an interview with the Biden camp over the role.
There’s no guarantee that Whitmer will be Biden’s running mate, and maybe he’s just doing his due-diligence on every remotely plausible female VP possibility.
But it’s also possible that Biden has been so isolated and insulated by his team that he’s unaware that Whitmer’ authoritarian Wuhan coronavirus lockdown missteps and overreactions have made her possibly the least popular governor in America:
It is difficult to describe, and impossible to exaggerate, just how badly Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s COVID-19 response has been, and it has been a catastrophe from the very beginning. In early March, when the country was already becoming concerned about the spread of the virus, Whitmer did not cancel the Democratic presidential primary, and indeed, there was record turnout for the March 10 primary, which turned into a “super spreader” event in metropolitan Detroit. She has since bungled practically every aspect of the pandemic, including her deliberately punitive and irrational lockdown policy.
Her reaction to widespread protests against her? Naturally, she called protestors “racists” and “misogynists.”
More of Whitmer’s greatest hits:
One word keeps recurring in online discussions of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s latest orders to fight the state’s raging COVID-19 outbreak: “insanity.” Last week, the first-term Democrat issued an order extending the state’s stay-at-home policy, which had been set to expire April 15, until May 1. Michigan has the third-highest number of coronavirus cases of any state in America, and certainly strong measures are required to get the pandemic under control. But the devil is in the details, and Whitmer’s new order instantly provoked a firestorm of outrage.
Among the complaints was that Whitmer had prohibited sale of seeds and other garden supplies at a time when vegetable gardens need to be planted. Executive Order 2020-42 is titled, “Temporary requirement to suspend activities that are not necessary to sustain or protect life,” and it is quite specific about which activities are and are “not necessary.” Stores with “more than 50,000 square feet” (e.g., Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot) are ordered to close areas of the store “by cordoning them off, placing signs in aisles, posting prominent signs, removing goods from shelves, or other appropriate means” that sell carpet or flooring, furniture, and “garden centers and plant nurseries.” So if grandma went to Walmart for groceries and hoped to pick up some tomato plants or cucumber seeds while she was there — sorry, grandma! You could get a thousand-dollar fine and 90 days in jail for disobeying Whitmer’s orders.
Posting photos from a Walmart in Grand Rapids showing the now-banned seeds cordoned off with yellow tape, one Twitter user declared, “@GovWhitmer has banned us from growing our own food. This is [bleeping] insane.” Another user posted a photo indicating that it’s now apparently forbidden to sell American flags in Michigan. Barbecue grills, lawn chairs — anything in the garden section is now streng verboten in Michigan. References to Whitmer as a “dictator” proliferated on social media over the weekend as Michigan residents came to grips with the consequences of the governor’s draconian order.
Whitmer imposed a strict prohibition on “not necessary” travel, which means that Michiganders are forbidden even to visit their own private vacation cabins in the “Up North” part of the state. This prohibition includes exceptions, however, that expose the arbitrary nature of Whitmer’s policy. My friend Ray Patnaude remarked on Facebook, “If you live in Chicago you can visit your Michigan Lake house. If you live in Michigan, nope. Unless you drove to another state first and come back in. Insane.”
Snip.
“Insanity” — the word keeps cropping up in discussions of Whitmer’s reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic. Last month, the governor actually threatened the licenses of medical professionals who prescribed the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) for coronavirus patients. A week later, however, Whitmer was trying to secure supplies of HCQ from the federal strategic stockpile. Erratic, arbitrary, deaf to criticism — she has thoroughly botched Michigan’s response to this crisis, and yet, despite her blatant failure, there is talk that Whitmer is on the list of potential running mates for presumed Democratic nominee Joe Biden. Such a choice would almost certainly destroy whatever hope Democrats still have of winning Michigan in November. A petition to recall Whitmer had nearly 150,000 signatures Sunday, and a Facebook group, “Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine,” signed up a quarter-million members in a matter of days.
Moreover, she extended her state’s lockdown despite having authority from the legislature to do so.
Also, like Governor Andrew Cuomo of New York, she forced nursing homes to take coronavirus patients. “Whitmer’s order effectively turned the state’s nursing homes into breeding grounds, exposing hundreds of vulnerable residents to the virus. It’s no coincidence that 30% of Michigan’s COVID-19 deaths occurred in populous nursing homes.”
With the exception of Hillary Clinton, it’s hard to conceive of a plausible Biden running mate that would be less popular than Whitmer. Since you should never interrupt your enemy when they’re committing suicide, we should all hope Biden picks her for the VP slot.
