Jurecic and Wittes: "Trump's Allies Know He Has Failed"

This is such shit I couldn't even finish it.
As to whether Trump has succeeded or failed, I'm agnostic.
I'm not even sure how to measure success and failure in this case.
My current half-assed inclination is to compare our morality rate to other countries. But economic recovery will also be an important comparison.
Basically, I don't think anybody knows anything about these things, and most of the people writing about it--like these two--are partisan hacks. (One of them's from Lawfare. 'Nuff said, as we say.)
It's always easy to make a negative case of this kind, because hacks don't know what the real options were, nor how others might have done things differently. (Nor do they usually care.)
We've done a lot better than most other countries--but the left scrupulously ignores per capita mortality rates, focusing on total deaths, which don't provide a relevant comparison.
(Though: it also matters that our population density is lower than that of most other relevant countries, and that we had more time to react.)

So far as I can tell, everybody did a bad job. First, the Chicoms. Second, the WHO. Third, Europe. Fourth, everybody else. Did we do notably worse than other countries? Not so far as I can tell. I mean: we didn't do well. Nobody did well. (Well...maybe the RoK and Sweden.)
I don't care about making excuses for Trump. But I've become very impatient with this kind of bullshit argument, which basically goes like this:

We're going to list all the mistakes and suboptimal actions, and then conclude that that guy from the other party is shit.

It's just not a good argument. We'd need to know what the average number of mistakes and the average degree of suboptimality were. We'd need to know how credible the threat was, what other people would have done, what if anything was done better-than-average...
Look, I harped a lot on Bush ignoring the famous PDB titled Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S. I kinda knew I was being unfair at the time, but I was mad, mad, mad at the dishonesty of the Bush administration...and in particular at the "Bush kept us safe" line. Which was bullshit.
But I have no idea how a reasonable person would react to such a PDB. What's the average PDB like? I have no fucking earthly clue. They could predict Armageddon every single day. I don't know. It could be analogous to me opening up the WaPo and reading that eggs or potatoes or sugar or WTHever is going to kill me. I barely even register that shit now, because I know it's all alarmist bullshit that has virtually no chance of being right. Without knowing what it's like in the Oval Office, and knowing how many threat-descriptions like these come across your desk, you just can't know whether the president's reaction was responsible or otherwise.
   Anyway. Look. The Jurecic-Wittes argument is shit. It's simply and obviously false that the arguments being made by Trump's defenders show that they "know" that he's failed. Jeez what a shit argument. First, what it probably shows is that they--like me--think that impeachment wasted time and attention that might actually have made a significant difference with respect to our reaction to WuFlu. Second, as everyone knows, you put all the good arguments on the table even if you don't think you need them. You know the other side is coming after your guy, so you smoke 'em if you got 'em.
   None of this shows anything about whether Trump did a good job or a bad job with respect to the WuFlu. All it shows is that the Jurecic-Wittes argument is shit. Or the first half of it, at least.
   The argument about tangibles in this case is going to ultimately favor Trump, in my estimation. I'll bet he will, as usual, come out looking so much better than the left on those measures that he'll win the battle. Whether it'll be enough to win in November is, of course, less clear.

[I try to still read the Atlantic...I really do...]