7 May 2020
Pestilence Two
by J.R. Thomas
Not the goddamned plague again, you groan. No, don’t worry, a little, but not much. But back to the future we must first go, to November 2020. Here is what we never expected; Joe Biden’s name on the ballot paper, the results starting to come in: “And the winner is…”.
Maybe. But at the moment even Democrat commentators seem to think the winner will be Donald J. Trump. Even the New York Times. The NYT hates its fellow citizen of New York in a way no respectable public print should ever hate, but for The Donald they make an exception. They still think he could win a second term though. They growl and retch against it, but in a despairing sort of way whose coded message is “the baxxxrd is going to win”. This is all very odd. The Trump Presidency first term has been built, more than anything, on economic success. The US economy is – was – booming and whilst there is some cyclical inevitability in that – we are at the fat end of a boom after all – the President did all the right things to make the boom louder and longer – principally well aimed tax cuts, coupled with some careful protectionism. He’s increased US government debt, which is a turkey that will need feeding in the future, and he has slowly and quietly disengaged America’s role as world policeman, which ought to be a gift to any successor. Though maybe not to a dangerous world containing regimes in Russia and China both anxious to distract their unhappy populations. In fact Mr T has left undone quite a lot of those things the media thought he would do, or shall we say, not done those things which his electors thought he would do. To mention a few more, building Mexican walls and nuking North Korea. For a single term it is not bad for a moderate administration, one run by a man who was a Democrat supporter not that long ago.
But now comes the troublesome bit. How to get re-elected. Mr Trump’s reaction to the Covid Plague has been fumbling to say the least. Disbelief followed by doubt followed by lack of action. That still continues as the President sends out varying signals – for and against lock down, for and against testing. But even so, look at what he does (or allows to be done) rather than what he says. Rapid build-up in essential equipment, massive aid package, closed borders. What Donald is doing is allowing the experts to get on with it whilst keeping a very careful eye on what it might be doing to his electoral prospects. Ignore presidential remarks about drinking disinfectant – or at least watch the clip – the whole clip – to see what he was actually doing. The biggest problem is of course the economy, which is tanking. And the Trump stimulus early in his Presidency gives him little room for more stimulation, unlike say, the UK. The global economy is everywhere tanking but that may not comfort the electors; they would at least like the USA to be doing not as badly as the rest of the world.
So this should be the Democrat opportunity, and it could be yet. If Joe can convince the public that Donald mishandled the virus, that America’s natural advantages were thrown away, that the economic miracle was always built on sand and that only the rich have got better off, then the autumn campaign ought to be a walkover. It might be and the early signs are promising. Mr Biden is leading in Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, the key marginals where Trump over turned Hillary Clinton’s strong summer lead. If the President can’t win those, then he will be moving back to New York early next year.
So Joe should be feeling good. Well, up to a point. The point being, and no doubt his back room strategists are chewing whatever strategists chew in a digital age (their mouses?), and thinking that Hillary was much further ahead in those states than Donald at this time in 2016. She still lost them all in November. Joe hasn’t really started campaigning yet, Covid-19 is seeing to that, though you might say Donald is running one long campaign. That could be a big issue for Mr Biden. New candidates have to work much harder than any incumbent president looking to a second term, and, say what you like about Hillary, she was an astonishingly energetic and dedicated campaigner. She still lost. But she did win a majority of citizen’s votes; she lost in the Electoral College which has a current inbuilt GOP majority – smaller older Republican leaning states have more votes than they would if the citizen vote was equally distributed – as with the Labour Party in the UK. (Electoral College vote allocations are recalculated from time to time, the last being in 2010. In 1960 Nixon won the popular vote but lost to Kennedy in the College.)
That is why those four states are so key to the Biden campaign, most of all Florida, which has 29 college votes – the same as New York. If the Democrats do reasonably well and win Florida, the presidency is likely to be theirs. Joe’s next hurdle is to appoint a Vice-Presidential running mate and that has to be a woman – Joe so promised. But who? It will matter to the electors, Joe being 77 and promising to be a one term president, and all that. So, maybe not Elizabeth Warren on grounds of age and lack of a natural supporter base, but perhaps Kamala Harris of California, younger, mainstream experience, and from a minority group. She did fight a rotten primary campaign, but overall she is the most impressive of those twenty four or whatever it was (we lost count). This is a topic to which we will return in a month or so, because we must, distasteful though it is, mention another woman issue Joe faces.
Mr Biden is a friendly sort of chap and last summer several accusations were made that he liked to get close up and personal with ladies around him. Joe did not deny it; he said he was a tactile sort of guy and a joyous hug, a comforting arm around the shoulders, a pat on the shoulder, was his stock in trade. But sorry, Joe said, we live in changing times, such things are liable to misinterpretation, and it won’t be happening again. End of fuss, end of story. Well handled, sir. Whoops, not quite the mot juste.
But it turns out not to be the end. Another allegation has popped up, dating back to 1993. Joe has smoothly batted it away and that might be the end of it. Donald had much more heavyweight mud thrown and none really stuck. But Joe has a clean reputation, so if these allegations somehow get proven then there could be big damage to that wholesome image.
It is always dangerous to guess electoral campaigns this early; and we do mention in passing that Joe hasn’t even got the nomination yet; a few bad slip ups this summer and the Democrat convention (late August, Milwaukee, Wisconsin) could be taken over to draft somebody else. Rumours though that Mr Trump is backing Ms Warren for a coup are emphatically untrue. We believe.
