Think about where the 2020 presidential race was a little over a month ago: President Trump was acquitted in the Senate impeachment trial and his approval approached the 50% mark, which had eluded him for most of his first term. His reelection chances were greatly enhanced. With Joe Biden’s apparent demise, Trump v. Sanders appeared to be a fait accompli.
Since then, we’ve watched the coronavirus swarm across the country. President Trump’s response has been abysmal.
As of the weekend, 554 coronavirus tests had been conducted in Indiana according to the Indiana State Department of Health website. Nationally, thousands have been tested, and it should be millions by now. “The system is not really geared to what we need right now. That is a failing,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee.
The day before he visited the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Trump said of the pandemic, “It’s going to disappear. One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear. We’ll see what happens. Nobody really knows.” Now he says he knew all along it was going to be a serious crisis.
Faced with a Trump vs. Sanders shouting match, voters responded. After Rep. James Clyburn’s clarion endorsement and the presidential field moderates of Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Michael Bloomberg coalescing around Joe Biden, an unprecedented turn of events occurred. Though Biden’s “No Malarkey” campaign was running on financial fumes, with virtually no field offices and a tiny advertising budget, he has swept Sanders in the Deep South, Texas, Minnesota, Massachusetts, Missouri, Michigan, Illinois and Florida.
And telltales are emerging that Biden v. Trump won’t be the nail-biter that conventional wisdom envisioned. If the 78-year-old Biden can avoid a health emergency, keep his malapropisms to a cute minimum, and choose a running mate who enhances his electability; and if Trump continues his unempathetic approach to the pandemic, the November showdown may not even be close.
In the March 10 Missouri primary, white men with college degrees swung 55 percent away from Sanders. According to CNN exit polls, Sanders defeated Hillary Clinton 64% to 36% in 2016. On Tuesday, Biden won that demographic 60% to 33%. As the Political Wire’s Taegan Goddard observed, “That’s pretty solid evidence that a significant amount of Bernie Sanders’ support four years ago was more anti-Hillary than pro-Bernie.”
As I’ve stated at the beginning of the 2020 cycle, Trump won’t have Hillary Clinton to kick around anymore.
Sanders upset Hillary in Michigan in 2016; on March 10, he didn’t carry a single county against Biden. Turnout in the Texas Democratic primary was described as “staggeringly high” with long lines at polls.
Sadly, we now face an engulfing pandemic. The Trump administration’s decision not to accept the World Health Organization’s coronavirus test has mystified and infuriated American governors. Universities, schools, basketball tournaments, the NBA schedule and political rallies have been canceled. The bears have moved on to Wall Street, stoking recession anxiety after an 11-year bull run.
Fear, once Trump’s tool of choice, is now induced within the population in a way polio once did more than a half-century ago.
What has become painfully evident is that President Trump is woefully unprepared for his first non-self-inflicted crisis.
This is not to say that incredible events and fate won’t whiplash the body politic once again before this cycle runs its course. But we find ourselves in a vastly different place than we were a month ago.
Brian A. Howey is publisher of Howey Politics Indiana at www.howeypolitics.com and the CrossroadsReport.com. Find Howey on Facebook and Twitter @hwypol. Send comments to [email protected].
