Why the pandemic is a bigger election threat to Donald Trump than Joe Biden

Editorial: The only incumbents to be turned down after seeking a second term were beaten by charismatic figures who offered a better tomorrow. It’s hard to put ‘sleepy Joe’ in that bracket

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Small wonder that one of Donald Trump’s most repeated claims at his frequent rallies is that, before what he calls the “China virus” arrived, America had “the greatest economy in history”. Leaving aside the almost comical meaninglessness of such a grandiose remark, he had a point. The US economy was indeed performing relatively well, if unevenly, and by February this year the president’s habitually lacklustre approval ratings had occasionally turned net positive. Had an election been held then, President Trump might conceivably have won his second term.

At that point, in other words, the voters knew very well what they would be getting with Mr Trump. He was a known quantity: obviously and painfully divisive. His flaws, though, were plain to see, and were played out endlessly, not just by the so-called mainstream media but, in blatant acts of self-incrimination, by the president himself. His excesses, failures and successes in foreign policy; his half-finished “wall”; his treatment of child refugees; his failings on healthcare; the Russian interference; the impeachable phone call to Ukraine; the erratic arguments with old friends and foes… all came and went, and the base was holding steady. He might not have deserved to win, and a victory might have meant, as it would now, that American democracy and civic society took another step towards closet fascism, but the vagaries of the electoral college might have delivered for him again. Many of his supporters still love him.  

As things stand, though, the 45th president seems set to lose. Covid and the explosion of anger over race, at least according to the polling evidence, shredded the president’s standing among key sectors of the electorate, many well represented in the battleground states he needs to retain. These were, in their different ways, unpredictable crises that would test the ability of any chief executive. Yet that is the point; leaders are elected to stand ready to face extraordinary  challenges. Whatever strengths Mr Trump has – a certain resilience and all-out aggression included – were not suited to suppressing a pandemic or calming burning cities. Like, say, 9/11, Pearl Harbour, the Great Depression or the war in Vietnam, past presidents have had to be judged on their performance in steering America safely past danger. Mr Trump, not to put too fine a point on it, bungled things when the going really got tough.