COVID-19 has bottled-up the 2020 presidential campaign.
Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is largely confined to a makeshift studio in the basement of his Delaware home. He has ventured out on a couple of occasions to nearby locations for lightly attended campaign events.
President Trump’s June 20 rally in Tulsa was less than the standing room only, people-waiting in-vain-outside-to-get-in event that all prior Trump rallies have been. A scheduled outdoor rally in New Hampshire last weekend was cancelled due to weather.
His Fourth of July speech at Mt. Rushmore was attended by a tightly controlled crowd of about 7,500. The speech got good coverage on the Fox News Channel, talk radio and conservative websites. It was lightly covered by the rest of the media.
The relocated Republican National Convention is still on the calendar for August 24 in Jacksonville, Florida. But a spike in COVID-19 cases in Florida is putting the feasibility of that event in doubt.
Getting out, pressing the flesh, holding rallies, building toward a week-long nationally-televised convention has been squashed by a virus that can only be seen under a microscope.
For his part, the president is using the bulliest of bully pulpits – official events and the podium with the seal of the President of the United States fixed upon it – as the venue for his 2020 reelection campaign. The most recent example comes from yesterday.
The president held a presser in the Rose Garden to announce legislation and an executive order that he had just signed dealing with China and its abuses of freedom and democracy in Hong Kong. As is often the case at a Trump presser, the topics were wide ranging.
On the subject of China, Trump said this,
No country in the world has ever ripped off the United States like the incredible job that they did on this country and the people that ran it.”
He went on to take shots at Joe Biden’s record during the Obama administration.
Not long ago as vice president he said ‘One in five miles of our highways are still in poor condition.’ Well, we’re doing a good job on highways but why didn’t he fix ‘em?”
The president went on to say of Biden:
He didn’t do any of the things but now he says he’s gonna be president and as president he’s gonna do all the things he didn’t do. Never did. Never did anything except make very bad decisions, especially on foreign policy.”
The COVID campaign is not entirely without precedent. In 1980, a beleaguered Jimmy Carter tried to campaign from the Rose Garden. It didn’t go well.
It remains to be seen how in the face of a crippled economy, civil unrest in major cities, massive unemployment and widespread unhappiness the incumbent president makes his case for re-election.
It also remains to be seen how a challenger who is confined to a Zoom studio in the basement of his home makes the case that he is the best candidate to step in and fix those problems.