Donald Trump’s response to the looming coronavirus pandemic up to this point has been strikingly, visibly dismal. As local communities across the country begin to shut down with new reports of infections exploding in every state, Trump seems to be wedded to a strategy of denying and minimizing the scope of the threat. Even though we’re barely into the first gasps of what promises to be a long and potentially very disturbing ordeal for the country, Trump does not appear to be intellectually or emotionally equipped to fulfill the role expected of a president in a situation like this. Even worse, it increasingly appears that his government was manifestly negligent in preparing for such a catastrophe.
Jonathan Freedland, writing for the Guardian, rightly points out that Trump’s pathological ineptitude—and even worse, his reflexive, arrogant defensiveness when called on it—is a huge political vulnerability in this type of very fluid and potentially very dire situation where Americans are genuinely fearful. In Freedland’s view, the Democratic candidate who appears most likely to benefit from that vulnerability is Vice President Joe Biden—for several reasons, including some of the very weaknesses often attributed to him as a candidate.
Freedland sees some hints of this in the unusually dramatic nature of Biden’s near-overnight reversal of fortune which Freedland (probably correctly) characterizes as “the most remarkable turnaround in modern US political history.” The Biden campaign was essentially broke going in to Super Tuesday, having been outspent seven-to-one by the Sanders campaign and 100-1 by Bloomberg. Unlike Sanders, Biden had no ground operation to speak of. And yet, ultimately the key to his resurgence was provided not by the “establishment,” whether corporate or Party, but by an enormous bloc of African Americans and, significantly, college-educated white women--who voted in near-agreement for the former Vice-President.
As Freedland observes, Democrats’ perception of Biden (and the willingness of so many to rapidly provide and even switch their support to him) is mostly rooted in his role as President Obama’s “right hand man” and his personal history of withstanding family tragedy. In fact, as Freedland notes, Biden’s best moments on the campaign trail came when he was talking to voters who shared their experiences with personal pain and loss. But even his political rivals and their voters in the Democratic party tend to acknowledge his basic decency and capacity for personal empathy. That and his steady performance in the Obama administration are the primary drivers of his appeal. Most obviously—but perhaps most importantly-- the voters who suddenly appeared in droves to vote for him on Super Tuesday recognize those characteristics as favorable in comparison with Donald Trump.
And now this election season is beginning with--and may very well be dominated by—a viral pandemic on a scale well beyond any living Americans’ memory.
Which brings us to the coronavirus. For four decades, the US right has had great success in persuading voters that government is the problem, not the solution. That’s found its most extreme form in Trump, elected on an implicit pledge to shake the whole thing up, if not burn it all down. He’s gutted government departments and run down federal agencies, left posts vacant or filled them with pals, cheered on by a base that for years has heard the fire-breathers of Fox News and talk radio cast “government bureaucrats” as the enemy.
But how does such talk sound now, when people are trembling at the prospect of a pandemic? In a moment like this, people don’t turn against government, they turn to it. In good times, you might get applause railing against “federal officials” or “elite experts”. In a crisis, those are precisely the people with the authority to get a grip and offer reassurance.
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If there was something that the Obama administration was well-known for, it was, as Freedland characterizes it, “its unflappable efficiency.” Obama (and implicitly Joe Biden) provided the same kind of routine reliability and matter-of-fact professionalism and trustworthiness that prompted people to cluster around their radio sets in the Depression-era time of FDR. The Obama administration rescued the entire economy from the brink of catastrophe in 2009, and Biden was a part of that.
Suddenly, Biden’s 50 years as a Washington insider can be presented less as a liability than an asset, because that’s half a century of valuable experience. Better still, Biden is remembered as the number two in the most unflappably efficient administration most Americans have ever known, namely the one headed by Barack Obama. The fact that Obama chose Biden as his deputy has meant that, even without making an explicit endorsement, Obama has long served as Biden’s chief character witness. Now that line on the résumé counts for even more, with Biden’s presence in the team that presided over an economic recovery and governed with stability and calm – “No drama Obama” they called it – a prime credential.
As Freedland explains, Bernie Sanders simply doesn’t possess this element of reliability with the general electorate. It’s not his fault, it’s just the way it is. One man was Vice President in a time of crisis and one was not. And not only will that factor into the waning days of this Democratic primary, but it will also factor into the ways voters respond (presumably) to a Trump-Biden contest, particularly in the context of a looming pandemic that will impact all Americans, regardless of their political affiliation, wealth, or ideology.
We may be looking at a slow recovery and rebound from the COVID19 coronavirus by June or July. It may even be gone by then (although that seems unlikely). But there is only one candidate now with the historical record and personal capacity to reassure millions of very worried Americans that their government actually cares about helping them and that their fate is in reliable hands. Depending on how this pandemic unfolds, that may end up meaning a lot more than any of us could foresee.