Miranda Devine: How COVID-19 will change Trump’s re-election tactics
Coronavirus has exposed America’s fault lines as protesters chafe against restrictions and Joe Biden pulls ahead of Donald Trump in the polls. But the President will use one target to unite the nation, writes Miranda Devine.
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One picture on the weekend encapsulates the polarised politics of the pandemic in America, with implications for November’s presidential election.
A man in green surgical garb and N95 mask stands in the middle of a road in Denver, Colorado, blocking the path of an SUV headed for a protest to demand the city reopen for business.
The obstructed driver, a middle-aged blonde wearing an American flag T-shirt, is leaning out her car window, brandishing a placard reading “LAND of the FREE”.
In an accompanying video posted on social media, she is heard yelling “’This is a free country,” at the man and a nearby counter-protester also dressed as a nurse, but not confirmed to be a health worker.
“Go to China if you want communism!”
The images went viral, so to speak, and appeared to depict an America that is losing its mind.
The insta-narrative was that COVID-19 “truthers” are attacking the very health workers who have put their lives on the line, while the Bad Orange Man in the White House eggs them on.
In reality, the protests in places like Colorado, California and Michigan are not as insane as they sound.
While news out of the US is focused on the epicentre in New York City, with more than 10,000 deaths, what has been lost in translation is that the virus has disproportionately hit Democratic states such as New York, California, Michigan and Washington.
Yet other less populated areas of the country remain largely untouched, while subjected to the same kind of economy-wrecking, life-depleting lockdown restrictions.
It’s a blue state-red state viral divide.
In Encinitas, California, on Sunday, for instance people with banners reading “surfing is not a crime” and “saltwater is safe,” protested the closure of beaches and hiking trails.
Similarly, in Michigan, protesters rallied against mercurial overreach by Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a putative running mate for Joe Biden who has been dubbed “Half Whitmer” by Trump.
Keep track of where Trump passes the blame for his coronavirus response with Blame Bingo! 🔴 #LSSC pic.twitter.com/8ZMRfoMss9
— A Late Show (@colbertlateshow) April 20, 2020
For instance, she has banned lawn mowing while marijuana dispensaries are free to operate as “essential services”.
“You can basically smoke your grass but not cut your grass,” said White House spokesman Kellyanne Conway.
Encouraging statistics show that social distancing and “shelter in place” efforts over the past five weeks have succeeded in “flattening the curve” of infections to avoid overwhelming hospitals and to allow testing of optimal therapies.
So Trump has laid out guidelines for states to lift restrictions, such as a declining number of cases for 14 days, but has left it up to individual governors to decide how quickly to open.
The President is champing at the bit to get the economy moving again, tweeting a call on the weekend to “liberate” the Democratic states of Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia which, not incidentally, will be crucial to his re-election.
On Monday he described the protesters as “great people. They’ve got cabin fever. They want their lives back”.
The protests offer an insight into the way the November presidential election will play out.
While his daily cage fights with reporters in the White House briefing room are unseemly, and the Democrats and Trump-hating media are working hard to blame him for the virus, his job approval figures have risen since the outbreak. The latest Harvard CAPS/Harris poll gives him an all-time high of 49 per cent.
But there also are ominous signs for the president.
An NBC News/Wall Street Journal on Sunday showed just 36 per cent of Americans trust what Trump says about the coronavirus.
And he trails Biden by eight points in the Harvard poll, which is remarkable, considering the Democrat’s candidate has been hiding in his basement in a brain fog behind a teleprompter.
But Trump is a political Houdini. His re-election will rest on keeping the virus at bay and the economy sputtering back to life.
His tactics will include uniting Americans around a common enemy, China’s communist regime, and portraying Biden as soft on China.
To that end, Trump proxies have been demanding reparations and suggesting class actions from businesses financially ruined by the pandemic unleashed by China on the world.
It’s not just allegations of sloppy security at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which led to the virus escaping, or the subsequent cover-up by the Chinese government.
There is also the charge of criminal intent, that the Chinese government, decided on January 23 to impose domestic travel bans in Hubei province but allow international flights to spread the virus to the rest of the world.
Thousands of Chinese garment workers flocked back to northern Italy from Wuhan after Lunar New Year on January 24.
The fashion world’s dirty little secret is that “Made In Italy” is more often than not made by exploited workers imported from China to man factories owned by Chinese state businesses.
Prato, an industrial suburb of Florence, boasts the largest population of Chinese in Europe, according to the New York Times.
Thus, northern Italy was decimated by the virus, and that is where many of the first American cases originated.
As Americans emerge into the sunlight to survey their ruined economy, you can bet Trump will be focusing their anger on China.
He will point to last year’s trade wars to demonstrate that he has been a China hawk from the start, in contrast to Biden, who has been an apologist for the Communist regime, with a history of questionable family investments.
Miranda Devine is in New York for 18 months to cover current affairs for The Daily Telegraph