A presidential election year like none in American history continues. The proverbial (and painfully clichéd) “campaign trail” is empty. Primary elections remain to be held in 20 states, many of them having postponed their primaries from March and April. Those elections are now viewed as formalities. Joe Biden is expected to easily collect the remaining 529 delegates that he needs in order to clinch the nomination.
Biden is running his campaign from a makeshift studio in the basement of his home. In an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, he insisted that there is “no evidence” that remote campaigning is hurting his bid.
Absent the COVID-19 pandemic, President Trump would likely be holding his signature campaign rallies in key states on a weekly basis. It remains to be seen if we will ever see a Trump rally again. If by late summer-early fall Major League Baseball is playing games inside empty stadiums – a plan that is under active consideration – it is hard to imagine that it would be politically acceptable for Donald Trump to pack 20,000 people into an arena.
Which brings up the political conventions, now scheduled in back-to-back weeks starting August 17. The Democratic and Republican National Committees are both saying – for now – that they plan to hold their conventions as scheduled. But with each passing week, the likelihood of live conventions decreases. If I had to bet today, I’d wager on the conventions being “virtual.”
Against this backdrop, both candidates face headwinds. Biden, all protestations to the contrary aside, is hobbled by the fact that his visibility from his basement is severely limited. It’s hard to make news if you can’t leave your house. As a consequence, Biden comes up short in much coveted “earned media.” Earned media is the five-dollar term that political professionals use when they’re talking about news coverage. A candidate who is challenging an incumbent president starts at an earned media disadvantage. That deficit is greatly multiplied for Joe Biden as a result of coronavirus lockdown.
This week, the only real news of which Biden is a part concerns a holdover item from the 2016 election. The Department of Justice moved last week to dismiss charges against former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The motion detailed wrongdoing by Obama-era FBI and DOJ officials and perhaps implicated the former president himself and, by extension, former Vice President Biden. Biden denies that he had any part in the Flynn case.
I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn, number one. Number two, this is all about diversion. This is a game this guy plays all the time.”
For his part, Donald Trump has lost the advantage that might have made his reelection inevitable – a roaring economy. Under normal circumstances, 17 percent unemployment would sink an incumbent president. It remains to be seen to what degree today’s economic distress will still prevail in November and to what degree voters will hold President Trump accountable for that distress.
As we say in this space it seems every week of late, it’s an election season like none in history.