Donald Trump’s coronavirus endgame is the presidential election in November
The President has his re-election in mind with every decision he makes during the battle against COVID-19.
The city of Buffalo, in far west New York state, this week became the latest site of a fast-growing protest movement, backed by President Donald Trump, calling for the reopening of the local economy.
Hundreds of cars with drivers tooting horns and waving placards stating “WE ARE NOT NEW YORK CITY’’ blocked the streets around the main square, bringing gridlock to the town.
“Our economy is important, our kids are important,” protester Charlene Pocobello said.
“I have my son in the back seat here. He needs to go back to school at some point. Education, mental health, you name it. Reopen it. This is ridiculous.”
The next day, Wednesday (AEST), New York Governor Andrew Cuomo chose to hold his daily press conference in Buffalo and conceded what the President has been saying for some time — that one lockdown rule for the country, and even one rule for one state, does not work.
In New York City, the epicentre of the nation’s pandemic, more than 10,000 people have died, but in Buffalo’s Erie County — 600km west of New York City — only 143 people have died and yet it is bound by the same statewide stay-at-home guidelines faced by the residents of Manhattan.
“Just like some states will reopen before other states because they have a different circumstance when it comes to COVID and their status with COVID, it’s also true across the state,” Cuomo said.
“(The) North Country has a totally different situation than New York City. Central New York has a different situation. We operate as one state but we also have to understand variations, and you do want to get this economy open as soon as possible.”
Across the US, Trump and conservative groups are encouraging this small but growing protest movement of Americans who have taken to the streets to call for the reopening of their local economies. In the past week alone, protesters have held rallies in Arizona, Kentucky, Idaho, Michigan, Colorado, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington.
Many of these protesters are “mum and dad” small-business owners who are now out of work because of the virus-induced economic shutdown and who have decided, for a variety of reasons, that the cure for coronavirus is worse than the disease.
Others say their regions have been barely impacted by the virus, unlike the big cities, and that they should not be subject to the same stay-at-home rules.
Others simply oppose the principle of big government telling them what to do and they bristle at someone taking away their freedom to choose between work and staying at home, even if it is for public health reasons.
Opinion polls show that these protesters and their arguments are still not backed by the majority of Americans, who want to give priority to fighting the virus over the economy.
A Yahoo News/YouGov poll published this week found that 60 per cent of Americans opposed the actions of the protesters, while 22 per cent supported them and 18 per cent were unsure.
But this protest movement has triggered debate around the nation, since Trump backed the participants last weekend by calling on them, via tweet, to “LIBERATE” the states of Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia.
Boiling point
The protesters symbolise a growing divide between those who want to clamp down on the virus, which has killed more than 45,000 Americans, and those who want to reverse an economic slump that has caused 22 million workers to lose their jobs in the past month.
“These protesters aren’t rich or privileged,” says Stephen Moore, a Trump economic adviser who has pushed to reopen the economy. “Most are folks living pay cheque to pay cheque, or small-business owners seeing their livelihoods destroyed, and they are the ones who are bearing the crushing burden of the lockdown in their states.
“I think there is a boiling point that has been reached and exceeded. I call these people the modern-day Rosa Parks — they are protesting against injustice and a loss of liberties.’’
Trump’s decision to openly back this protest movement is a calculated political gamble, given that most Americans don’t want to risk any actions that might inflame a second wave of the virus.
Yet the President is also having it both ways. He begins his daily coronavirus press conferences with the reminder to Americans to practice social distancing and to stay at home. He says this policy — backed by his health experts — is producing “great results” and means the US is “winning” against the virus.
The day before his “LIBERATE” tweets, Trump had outlined the White House’s new federal guidelines to reopen the economy, which ceded all responsibility for reopening to state governors.
Those guidelines called for a cautious, phased series of steps and milestones before states could begin to reopen their economy — hardly consistent with the “liberty or death” tone of Trump’s tweets 24 hours later.
In short, he advised protesters to ignore the guidelines he recommended the day before.
The liberal anti-Trump media has been outraged by this contradictory messaging, while the conservative pro-Trump media has backed the pro-economy message of the protesters.
The politics of the issue for Trump are obvious, if high-risk.
Throughout the coronavirus pandemic, the President’s political instincts have been to give greater priority to saving the economy than to fighting the virus.
His reluctance to damage the US economy — a once-robust economy that had been his most powerful argument for re-election in November — contributed to him playing down the seriousness of the virus in January and February.
Even when his health advisers persuaded Trump of the seriousness of the virus in the middle of last month, he still held out the hopeful prospect of reopening the country’s economy by Easter.
And even as the death toll from the pandemic began to soar in the US, with grim images of bodies being piled into trucks in New York, the tension between Trump and his key health adviser Anthony Fauci, who has opposed any relaxing of social distancing, was palpable.
Trump’s decision last week to cede responsibility for reopening the economy to state governors was criticised by some who made fun of the fact that Trump had, only days earlier, claimed he had “total authority” over restarting the economy.
But Trump’s decision makes sense, both practically and politically. The reality is that the virus is hitting the US unevenly.
In New York state, more than 14,000 people have died, yet in rural Wyoming just six have died.
The cycle of infections and deaths is also uneven. The biggest hotspots of New York, Detroit and New Orleans are now seeing a plateauing of deaths (albeit at very high levels), while daily death tolls in Massachusetts, Los Angeles and around Washington DC are only now peaking.
In Wyoming, despite having only six deaths, non-essential businesses are closed. Wyoming Republican Scott Clem says: “People aren’t trivialising the danger of COVID-19, but I think more and more people are putting it in perspective as compared to the damage that is being caused to the economy in regards to the government response.”
By handing responsibility to the states, Trump knows that those states with Republican governors will be more likely to back his call for an early reopening of their economy.
This is already happening on a small scale, with Florida reopening some public beaches, while Texas is reopening state parks and South Carolina will reopen furniture, jewellery and clothing stores.
Georgia has said that restaurants, gyms and hair salons could reopen this week.
Trump’s policy is also wedging Democrat governors whose states often contain large cities, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit.
The virus naturally spreads faster in these big cities than in the sparsely populated states that are more commonly dominated by Republicans.
It was no coincidence that the three states which Trump called to be “liberated” all have Democratic governors.
Political divide
Polls also show that Republicans are less concerned than Democrats about the health threat posed by the virus and are more concerned than Democrats about the economic impact of the shutdown.
Trump sees the protesters who are calling for the economy to be reopened as a core part of his voting base. Most of the protesters are white workers from regional areas, the same “forgotten people” who helped elect Trump in 2016 on a promise of a stronger economy and better job prospects.
In November, it is these types of voters who will be the key in deciding whether Trump gets a second term in the White House.
Virus hotspots such as New York, California and Illinois are already Democrat strongholds. If Trump loses votes in these states, it will make no difference to his prospects for re-election.
The exception to this is the swing state of Michigan, where Trump has been waging what some Republicans see as a risky battle over the coronavirus outbreak with the popular Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who he has labelled “that woman from Michigan”.
By egging on state governors to reopen their economies quickly, Trump also gets the political benefits of any economic recovery before the election.
Conversely, if states open up too quickly and ignite a second wave of infections, Trump can then argue that state governors bear responsibility for their own decisions.
Pandemic politics
The politics of the pandemic are still being played out, but Trump’s actions over the past week show that he is framing his response to the crisis with a keen eye to his re-election prospects.
Throughout all of this, his Democrat opponent, Joe Biden, has been all but invisible.
Biden has been highly critical of Trump’s management of the crisis, but despite numerous interviews conducted from the confines of his home in Wilmington, Delaware, the former vice-president’s message isn’t cutting through.
By contrast, Trump commands a high-rating primetime stage each day with his White House press conference, in which he dominates, even if his often erratic performances can backfire on him.
Even so, national polls show Biden retains an overall lead over Trump of 48.3 per cent to 42.5 per cent, although he has a more modest lead in the key battleground states.
Polls also show that while a majority of Americans are unimpressed with Trump’s handling of the pandemic crisis, the numbers are not irreversible
The RealClear Politics poll average shows 47 per cent of Americans approve of the President’s handling of the crisis, compared with 50.7 who disapprove. In a poll conducted on March 27, the numbers were 50.6 per cent approval and 47 per cent disapproval.
Trump’s overall approval ratings have also fallen in the past month, with just 43.1 per cent of respondents giving him a favourable rating compared with 51.6 per cent unfavourable.
But none of these polls are conclusive, because there are so many uncertainties ahead with the politics of this pandemic.
For example, how will Americans react to an eventual projected death toll of about 60,000 — easily the highest in the developed world — even if it is lower than initial projections?
Will they re-elect a president when the economy is in the worst downturn since the Great Depression, even though that downturn is not his fault?
And, after ceding responsibility to the states, to what extent will Trump receive the credit or the blame for whatever happens with the pandemic from now on?
For most Americans, the election seems like a long way off as they battle the immediate twin fears of the virus and the collapsed economy.
But Trump is already carefully preparing the ground for this election campaign in circumstances for which there is no precedent, in a country that has been shaken to its foundations.
Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.
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