Joe Biden is emerging from his basement, but has a long way to go
The former Vice President, Joseph Biden, has been in Washington since the early 1970s and in the political establishment for close to five decades. And he knows better than to start celebrating his string of polling victories nationally and in the swing states, particularly in the Red States that the incumbent Donald Trump was placing his bets on.
Every national poll over the last three weeks has shown Biden leading Trump by anywhere between 8 and 14 points, the latest one by USA Today showing the one time Senator from Delaware up by 12 points. But the real sting to Trump is not from national polls but from the battleground states of Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Arizona all showing the soon to be formalized Democratic nominee ahead of the sitting 45th President of the United States.
The real shocker is in Texas where Trump is barely ahead by one point according to one survey even as some others point to a slim Biden lead. Mitt Romney hammered Barack Obama by 16 points in 2008 and Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 8 points in 2016. What is really troubling the Grand Old Party is that the current polling trends are ominous for Congressional elections.
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At one time, Republicans were boasting of wresting control of the House of Representatives from the Democrats, and even bettering their slim lead in the Senate. Today with Trump dithering in the polls, the GOP has started sweating and looking at further losses in the House and perhaps even losing control of the Senate. Which means that even if Trump manages to win on November 3, 2020, and Democrats take control of Congress, it is a totally different ball game on Capitol Hill.
For a long time, Trump has been taunting Biden. With name calling his speciality, President Trump has been referring to his Democratic opponent as “ Basement Biden”; “Sleepy Joe”; “Beijing Biden”, all in the hopes of drawing out the Democrat to come out in the open and say things which then could be turned around in whichever fashion the Trump campaign wanted.
But Biden played his strategy well indeed more akin to a championship boxer allowing his challenger to waste his energy by punching in the air. As Biden stayed in his basement, Trump did what he was good at—running his mouth and let his fingers do the offensive talking on Twitter.
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America as a nation was bleeding on two fronts: a COVID-19 pandemic that has taken the toll of nearly 130,000 lives; and an ugly racial tension in the aftermath of the brutal killing of African American George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis for which the President had little soothing words, but had at his disposal a lot of gasoline to add to the raging fire.
Trump may be faring better than Biden when it comes to scoring points on the economy or on economic policies of this Republican administration. In fact, for two months in a row, the Trump White House has been getting some good news. In June some 5 million jobs were added, and in May close to 2 million people were back in the payroll prompting Trump to call the latest news “spectacular” and that the economy was coming back extremely strong.
In one sense the President has everything to be cheerful about for unemployment has come down to about 11 per cent from 14 per cent in April, but still quite high since the times of the Great Depression. And Trump has pointed to the fall in unemployment rates for African Americans from about 17 per cent to 15.5 per cent. “These are historic numbers”, Trump has said.
The frustration for President Trump is that he is unable to go to town on the economic news for the simple reason sober-minded people are taking the view that a rollback to even worse times may be on the cards on account of the sudden spike in infections and deaths of COVID- 19. Close to 3 million Americans are said to be infected in all fifty states of the country and a staggering death toll that started places like Texas, Arizona and Florida.
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And the chief infectious diseases specialist, Dr Anthony Fauci, has warned lawmakers that the worst is yet to come; and other knowledgeable people saying that Round Two will be more savage than what the country is going through right now. And in every national and state poll, Trump is getting low scores for his handling of the coronavirus—the strategy of wishing it away by pretending its non-existence or renaming it “China Virus” or “ Kung Flu” has not gone down well.
The pandemic has indeed made a mark on the American electoral process, at least in the style of campaigning. President Trump found out what a damp squib his Tulsa, Oklahoma rally was; and the August 24 Republican National Convention in Jacksonville, Florida might turn out to be a “ compulsory mask” event if it is going to be held at all given the fashion the virus is galloping in that sunshine state.
Clearly the Trump campaign may be coming to the conclusion that this time around on November 3, it is going to be the people’s perception of how this administration handled the pandemic may be the only thing that matters. And for his part Biden, while coming out of his bunker, knows full well that even in the context of a changing political environment and different style of campaigning, four months is still a long way to go in politics, especially if incumbent still holds on to his ace strategy—Fear Mongering!
(The writer was a former senior journalist in Washington D.C. covering North America and the United Nations)