Getting in the stretch: Poll situation looks tough for Biden and Trump

With just two months to go for the November 3 showdown between Donald Trump and Joseph Biden, one cursory look at the rhetoric that is flying around would show that America is witness to two different elections.

To the Republicans, it has all boiled down to ‘law and order’ and a choice between the ‘American way or socialism’, however it is defined. A ‘compassionate’ incumbent is working overtime to save life, liberty and property from a bunch of rioters, looters and marauders. But to Democrats, it is the difference between ‘light and darkness’, compassion and everything that the country has always stood for.

Even within the Grand Old Party, there is a dejected feeling that the party has been hijacked by a handful of extremists who find it difficult to tell the difference between their heads and a hole in the ground. How can they be in denial, a section of the conservatives ask, of what is taking place in the country?

The economy is in shambles, devastated by the coronavirus. The virus has also claimed the lives of 1,84,000 people and infected around six million in every one of the fifty states; unemployment is in double digits and approximately 22 million workers are without jobs, which is as bad, if not worse since the Great Depression.

To top it all off, there is the matter of persisting racial tensions that the President so scandalously refers to as a “game of golf where a player chokes on a three-yard putt”.

If the elections had been held in March, Trump would have won hands down just based on where the economy was—a strong growth, low unemployment with all indications of a pick up in the following months. Six months seem to have made all the difference, but still, the Trump campaign appears reluctant to push the economic card even if the President scores high marks only on this front.

For that matter, for all the claims put out on the coronavirus front, the campaign staffers are also quite wary of holding this out as any sort of an achievement for the simple reason that medical and health specialists are fearing at least 20,000 more deaths between now and the election day. Furthermore, there is all round apprehension that clinical trials are being rushed through so that a vaccine can be on the shelf by the first of November, ignoring all norms on the ethics front.

The Trump campaign seems to have decided that that this is an election where only one issue is on the ballot — law and order — and the President is the only one who can deliver on this front and allaying the fears of suburban America. Trump is trying to equate himself with Richard Nixon’s Law and Order campaign of 1968 held to assure people in the aftermath of the killing of Martin Luther King and the riots that engulfed America. But some have also not forgotten that this Law and Order campaign is a worn-out piece of history that predates Nixon and into the era of Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater.

But what historians and elders are pointing out is that the face of suburban America has changed—it is no longer Whites only as it now has a good population of African Americans and Hispanics. The problem, six decades down the line, is that the environment may have changed, but the issues are still the same.

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“There are a number of obvious parallels, but also really important differences, between what we’re seeing in the streets of American cities today and the 1960s. The proximate cause of the unrest being police violence and the underlying issues that have fueled the protests, which are continued racial equality and discrimination and socioeconomic exclusion, are really at the heart of both. In the 1960s, even though there was an attempt on the part of federal policymakers to address [those issues], their solutions did not go far enough. Ultimately, they embraced a set of policies that continued the very same violent conditions that had led to the original unrest in the 1960s in the first place”, historian Elizabeth Hinton said in a recent interview.

“… there are more police on the streets who are increasingly being equipped with military-grade riot prevention gear. And instead of stopping future unrest, in many cases, the investment and widespread deployment of police forces on the streets of American cities may have done the opposite,” Hinton added.

There is also a critical difference in all this brouhaha about Trump running on the platform of a ‘Law and Order’ President; neither Johnson nor Nixon fanned the flames of racial discrimination. There is the definite perception that this Republican administration has been openly inciting violence between races in the pretext of putting order in the streets of America. The fashion in which Trump has responded to the goings on in Portland, Oregon and Kenosha, Wisconsin are put forth as examples.

It is still too early to make the final call on which one of the tickets is going to make it on November 3 — in 2016, nearly all political pundits wrote off Trump, only to be shell shocked later.

The former Vice President seemed to be on an easy ride about a month ago—nationally, he was up by anywhere between eight and fourteen points over Trump; in battle ground states, it was by about six points; and in states like Texas and Georgia, Biden appeared to be closing the gap. But today, the difference gap has not only narrowed but is showing the incumbent pulling up in swing states. In fact, there are those pollsters who are cautioning against reading too much into the surveys—that some, out of embarrassment, may hide their approval of President Trump!

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Joseph Biden and Senator Kamala Harris will have to make up their minds and pretty fast at that: either they are going to respond to the falsehoods and below-the-belt blows from the Trump campaign, or they are going to maintain a sense of decorum in what seems to be already a campaign of indecency on the part of the right wing extremists.

In a political season shorn of all the fanfare—excepting the mini-circus type environment at the Republican National Convention—and where the candidates did not even get the customary “bounce” after the nomination or re-nomination process, it is difficult to see the debates setting the record straight on issues and perceptions, for there seems to be no serious discussion this time around.

Assuming that there is going to be four debates in September and October—three between the Presidential and one reserved for Vice Presidential candidates—the larger question is the impact of this on the voting population. In a rational and no-nonsense campaign, the Democrats and Republicans would have squared off on major issues in domestic and foreign policies.

But here, the 2020 campaign appears to be a notch or two higher than the previous one in terms of an elevated pitch on misinformation, disinformation, and a penchant for fear mongering. The Biden-Harris ticket is indeed looking for a positive turnaround to a poisonous environment but is finding a ruling opposition that is hell bent on putting on a show that is so detached from reality.

(The writer was a former senior journalist in Washington D.C. covering North America and the United Nations)

(The Federal seeks to present views and opinions from all sides of the spectrum. The information, ideas or opinions in the articles are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Federal)