Brutal campaign shaping up over pandemic, race and the economy

With just over 10 weeks until Election Day, the campaign for president turns from a pair of scripted conventions to the trench warfare of mobilizing voters and the unpredictability of September and October, with the campaign playing out against a backdrop unlike anything seen in modern times.

In a month, the first of three presidential debates will be held, scheduled for Sept. 29 in Cleveland. Some strategists see that evening as a pivotal and potentially decisive confrontation, particularly if President Donald Trump has a bad night and Joe Biden looks strong. Still, the 2016 campaign moved late and, ultimately, decisively in Trump’s direction. Democrats worry about a repeat of that playbook and warn now against complacency.

By the time of the first debate, early voting will have begun in a few states, and the pace will accelerate in October. Controversy over voting by mail is yet another backdrop of the argument between Trump, who claims without evidence that mail ballots are vulnerable to fraud, and Biden, who has charged that Republicans are trying to frustrate voters and suppress Democratic turnout.

A deadly pandemic, an economy struggling to rebound, with millions out of work, and continued racial unrest and calls for racial justice sparked by shootings of unarmed Black men continue to shape Campaign 2020. The trio of crises will be the overriding issues as voters decide whether to give Trump a second term or turn the country over to Biden.

For Trump, the challenge in the weeks ahead will be to undo impressions of nearly four years of chaotic leadership, to demonstrate the kind of discipline and focus that has too often been missing. For Biden, the challenge will be to hold steady while not appearing too passive, to persuade people he has the vision, the policies and the energy to move the country to a more positive place.

Coming into this week, Biden held a stronger hand, at least as the polls tell the story. He was ahead nationally and in the battleground states, with an image more favorable than that of the president and with the country and the economy turned upside down by a coronavirus pandemic that the public has judged the president badly mishandled. But that was before he was subjected to four nights of battering, with the most comprehensive attack leveled by Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday night.

Trump’s political future depends on whether his convention begins to move the electorate back in his direction. The well-packaged program aimed some of the speeches at the president’s most fervent supporters, those who voted for him in 2016 and like-minded Americans who did not but whose votes this year could be vital. But just as important for Trump’s reelection hopes are those Americans who do not already know how they will vote in the November election and might be looking for a reason to support Trump, even with misgivings.

Some of these voters backed Barack Obama for president in 2008 or 2012 and then took a chance by voting for Trump in 2016. Others might be traditional Republicans, many in suburban areas, who reluctantly backed Trump in 2016 but have soured on him since. Trump’s convention aimed at them night after night, particularly suburban women, but they have shown a resistance to him, and there is no guarantee that the impressions he has made over the past four years can be undone by four nights of programming.

The portrayal of the president was jarring for many voters, at odds with the image he has projected while in office. He was described not only as tough and outspoken but as caring and empathetic, qualities at odds with a president who lashes out and whose tweets are routinely disparaging.

A president who has stoked racial tensions and defended the Confederate flag was described as someone with a commitment to racial justice and who has enjoyed decades-long friendships with Black Americans.

His message of law and order and Republican warnings of a bleak future of chaos in the streets under a Biden presidency contrasts with the fact that the unrest this summer is happening on his watch and that while he has promised from Inauguration Day forward that he would stop it and “stop it right now,” he hasn’t done so.

In 1968, Richard M. Nixon used a law-and-order message during a year of violence and protests, but he was not the incumbent president. This time Trump is. His answer as to why he hasn’t fulfilled his promise to stop it is to blame cities or states run by Democrats for what is happening and thereby absolve himself of responsibility.

Speaking on “Fox and Friends” Thursday morning, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said of the protests in Kenosha, Wis. - where Jacob Blake was shot in the back by police, and where two protesters later were shot and killed, with a suspect now in custody - and elsewhere this summer: “The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety and law and order.”

Biden, speaking with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC later in the day, said Trump views what is happening as a political benefit. “He just keeps pouring fuel on the fire,” Biden said. “This happens to be Donald Trump’s America.” Biden charged that the unrest has become worse because Trump is not willing to deal constructively with the issues of racism and racial justice.

The shootings of Black men and the subsequent protests and rioting present a dilemma for Biden as well. He must navigate between Black voters outraged by these repeated episodes and by the larger issue of racism they involve, and White voters, suburbanites or working-class, who might be alarmed by the unrest and wonder how Biden might deal with it as president.

Just as important now for the president’s reelection hopes is whether people change their currently negative opinions about how he has managed a pandemic that has taken the lives of about 180,000 Americans.

Most notable about the GOP convention was the degree to which the pandemic was barely talked about, so much so that a few words of acknowledgment of the disruption it has caused and an expression of sympathy for those families who lost loved ones from first lady Melania Trump drew so much attention.

To the extent that covid-19 was discussed, such discussion often involved a rewriting of the history of Trump’s handling of the pandemic, a story carefully cherry-picked to ignore his many expressions of indifference and dismissal, and famously saying he took no responsibility for what was happening.

Conventions are one thing. Real life is another. Trump will be judged over the next two months by what people see and have seen in their own lives, in their communities and in the country at large. No sugarcoating will replace how people judge their leaders, with the president having more at stake than anyone else in political life.

An area where Trump has more than held his own against Biden is the economy, where he still enjoys a narrow advantage in people’s perceptions of who can best deal with the issue. Trump hit this hard in his speech on Thursday night, and Biden will be called on by his supporters to neutralize the issue to the extent possible.

Even the most successful of convention makeovers - and it is a few days premature to judge whether this one was successful - can be undone quickly by a reversion to form. Trump unbound is a danger to his chance of winning a second term. Four years ago, he became more disciplined late in the campaign. Can he do that again starting next week?

This week, Republicans set a frame around the fall campaign that was nearly identical to that of the Democrats a week ago. It goes as follows: America is at a defining moment. This election is the most important in a generation. If the other party wins, the consequences would be catastrophic.

Democrats argued that a Trump second term would put the foundations and institutions of democracy at risk and leave the country changed for decades to come. To the Republicans, a Biden presidency would bring a dystopian future of chaos and violence in the streets, a socialist government in Washington and the rollback or loss of fundamental freedoms.

These apocalyptic visions are fundamentally different, as are the two major party nominees. That is the choice, and the debate that will unfold between now and Nov. 3.