80 Days to Decide 2020
With 80 days left in the 2020 Presidential campaign, the nation remains gripped by Covid-19 with over 5.2 million cases of coronavirus and 167 thousand recorded deaths. When added to sustained social unrest, mass unemployment, botched school reopening, millions on the brink of eviction, struggling small businesses, and so much more, the need for national leadership cannot be understated with the bid for President looming large over all of it.
Congress’s failure to provide aid to the coronavirus-stricken nation — led by Senate Republican’s refusal to take up the House-passed HEROES Act or make meaningful strides toward a comprehensive plan — has stalled future relief and any progress workers may have been making since the virus first caused mass stay-at-home orders in mid-March, putting millions out of work. Because of this inaction, both Biden and Trump campaigns are feeling additional pressure to pitch their vision of the nation’s future.
The Trump campaign’s recent attempts at spinning their handling of the virus as a success, even after the President’s recent retweeting of Chuck Woolery’s message saying, “everyone is lying” about the virus, is falling flat with Americans around the country. FiveThirtyEight’s latest update to their collection of polls regarding coronavirus, the economy, and leadership shows citizens widely disapprove of Trump’s handling of the coronavirus — with only 39.2% of respondents approving of his administration’s response while 57.3% disapprove.
In addition to this, the newest batch of polls from PBS NewsHour/NPR/Marist show registered voters believe Joe Biden, as president, would handle the pandemic and race relations better than a Trump presidency. Notably, this same poll also shows the one area the president prefers to boast about — the economy — is no longer providing a safe haven for him politically, as the candidates remain in a statistical tie over who would handle the issue better. Overall, if the vote was held today, 53% of voters would choose Joe Biden as president, leading Trump by 11 points. These polls come in the wake of Joe Biden declaring Kamala Harris as his vice presidential running-mate and just before the kickoff of the Democratic National Convention, which is scheduled to begin on Monday, August 17th.
Senator Kamala Harris, in her first appearance with Joe Biden as the VP candidate, called the case against Donald Trump and Mike Pence “open and shut” — needling the administration’s handling of the economy, school reopening, and the coronavirus. Harris, in the same appearance, is quoted saying, “It didn’t have to be this way,” recalling the Obama/Biden administration’s handling of Ebola in 2014. The vice presidential candidate went on to praise the leadership displayed by the former Vice President, once again illustrating the current administration’s failures surrounding the pandemic issue.
As the Democratic party begins to coalesce around the Biden/Harris ticket, Trump and his reelection campaign are struggling to form a cohesive line of attack against the California senator. When Harris was announced earlier this week, Trump operatives began to test messages calling her part of the “radical left” while also claiming that she is a “phony” who is not really devoted to progressive causes. The latest claim from the President and campaign surrogates seems to be taken directly from the Obama years — birtherism, claiming that Harris is ineligible to be Vice President. It should be noted that this claim is flatly untrue as Harris was born to immigrants in Oakland, California thus making her a “natural born citizen”.
However, this latest claim from the Trump campaign is one that Democrats want to talk about: Harris is a black woman born to Jamaican and Indian immigrant parents; as Joe Biden put it, “Her story is America’s story.” Moreover, the Trump campaign’s highlighting of Harris’s background seemingly plays into Democratic messaging of racial diversity in a time of great social unrest around the country.
Regardless of Trump or his campaign’s attacks, voters seem enthusiastic for the Biden/Harris ticket. According to several sources, in the 24 hours following the VP announcement, the Biden campaign reportedly raised $26 million dollars — doubling his previous one-day record. This huge haul comes on the heels of Trump and Republicans reporting their massive $300 million July fundraising. However, the Biden campaign remains optimistic about future fundraising as it enters into the homestretch of the 2020 presidential season, pairing Harris’s California fundraising ties with overall Democratic enthusiasm to vote Trump out of office this fall.
The next 80 days are critical for both campaigns as the nation races toward increased economic issues, increased coronavirus cases, and election day. The next 80 days are a referendum on the past four years but in particular 2020. The next 80 days will decide how we as a nation move forward.