Four years ago, Trump also changed campaign managers at a crucial stage in the campaign. But the president himself does not seem to believe that it will end well this time, because the pandemic is overwhelming him. And he misses Hillary Clinton.
Just four months before the presidential election, Donald Trump has reacted to the recession, a pandemic that is worsening by the day, and terrible poll numbers – and changed campaign managers. That stirs memories of the summer of 2016. Then, too, candidate Trump seemed to have dug himself into a deep hole. He had, for example, gotten into a fight with the Muslim parents of an American soldier who had died in Iraq, villainized Barack Obama by claiming he was the founder of the Islamic State terrorist militia, and publicly speculated that “Second Amendment people” – supporters of the Second Amendment right to bear arms – could “stop” his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton. Her chances of a landslide victory suddenly brightened. But Trump refused to give in to the demands of many Republicans and change his approach. He preferred instead to change out his campaign manager. At the time, the rabble-rouser Steve Bannon replaced experienced Republican Party expert Paul Manafort.
Trump likes to make comparisons to 2016, because the story had a happy ending for him then. Democrats and observers would do well not to forget it if they are already writing off the current president. Above all, no one should forget that now, 16 weeks before the election, how much has often occurred in just a single week during the Trump era. Even in 2016, Trump managed to constantly dictate the subject of the day, and thus, to a certain extent, the rules of the campaign game. As president of the United States and commander in chief, he now has even more possible ways to intervene by creating all forms of distraction.
But Trump would be foolhardy to feel too secure in his memory of 2016, and he clearly does not. Because the differences between the first and presumably last campaigns of his life are massive. As much as Trump is trying to continue portraying himself as an outsider Rambo type working against the “deep state” in Washington, he is now the man in office who has been in charge in Washington for almost four years. As much as Trump continues fanning the flames of the culture war to induce fear of the Black Lives Matter movement or certain “left-wing radicals,” the voters cannot be so easily distracted from a virus that is raging almost unfettered and the pandemic’s disastrous economic consequences by Trump’s blustering about iconoclasts or opposition to police.
Biden as Corrupt and Senile? The Masses Are Not Following Along
As much as Trump is trying to stamp his current rival Joe Biden as either corrupt or senile, it is not really catching on. Because Biden’s behavior, which could in fact raise some doubt about whether the 77-year-old Democrat is fit for the country’s highest office, is at the same time a milder variation of Trump’s dominant traits. Biden, too, is a self-important wind bag who often gets bogged down in his thoughts and then unceremoniously puts his foot in his mouth. Biden just does not exude the same combative maliciousness that is particular to Trump.
Like Hillary Clinton, former Sen. and Vice President Biden may have been a member of the country’s political elite for decades, but he does not carry half as much baggage as the former first lady, senator and secretary of state. Biden, a white man, has just never been a target of attacks like Hillary Clinton or even Barack Obama, an African American, have been for many conservatives since the beginning of their political careers. That has little to do with their political positions; Biden’s balance sheet has a few black marks on it, from fighting crime to the Iraq war.
But unlike with Hillary Clinton, there is not much in Biden’s family life to fuss about. The blows of fate that he has suffered (and politically exploited) – the fatal car crash in 1972 that killed his first wife and daughter, his oldest son’s death from cancer in 2015 – render him human and accessible to many Americans. Clinton’s frigid loyalty to her unfaithful husband Bill made her, in contrast, just a power hungry politician in the eyes of many fellow Americans. Trump’s slogan “Lock Her Up” thus landed on fertile ground in 2016. However, the conservative masses will not be able to be mobilized against Biden whenever Trump is again able to fill up arenas.
Trump Has Long Feared Biden
Trump’s political instinct has not failed him yet. The president has always seen Biden as his most dangerous potential rival. But in the time of the pandemic, the sitting president’s political instinct is not helping him very much. Unlike the chaos that Trump has provoked since 2017 in trade, in Syria, or with immigration policies, the coronavirus pandemic is affecting almost all Americans. At least some of those people who eagerly sent a bulldozer to Washington four years ago now recognize the value of solid crisis management from a functioning administration. Trump has nothing left to offer them.
He does not even have a response to the question of what he would do in his second term as president. His favorite TV host, Sean Hannity of Fox News, posed this question to Trump in late June on his program, in his typical, kowtowing manner: If television news hosts were to declare him the winner of the election, what would his priorities be? The answer of a president caught flat-footed is so insightful that it is worth reproducing in full here:
“Well, one of the things that will be really great, you know, the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It’s an, a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, 17 times. All of a sudden, I’m president of the United States. You know the story. I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our first lady and I say, ‘This is great,’” Trump said. “But I didn’t know very many people in Washington, it wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now, I know everybody, and I have great people in the administration. You make some mistakes. Like, you know, an idiot like Bolton. The only thing he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.”
In 2016, Trump was elected because, in the end, more people in swing states wanted radical change rather than what would basically have been a continuation of Obama’s presidency. Many of these voters were sure that Trump would automatically become more presidential under the weight of the office. That has proved to be a huge miscalculation, and it does not occur to Trump to do anything but to promise the people more of his narcissism and erratic politics.
In the summer of 2016, Trump’s new campaign manager Bannon established the watchwords, “let Trump be Trump.” He had recognized that a Trump who would have been bent into shape by the party establishment would have absolutely no chance of winning. This “establishment” has long checked out. But even among Trumpers in Washington, there is palpable worry that Trump will remain far too much Trump in the current crisis. But the president is not capable of anything else.
Thanks Mallory, I really enjoyed reading this translation.