South still stands with Donald Trump

Driving through the US south right now is a journey through a landscape scarred by the ravages of coronavirus.

People protest from vehicles against the US government’s closure of non-essential services. Picture: Getty Images

Driving through the US south right now is a journey through a landscape scarred by the ravages of the murderous coronavirus, a broken economy and social unrest. The silent remains of shuttered-up small businesses litter the backroads in the countryside. In towns, the remnants of race riots can be seen in the Black Lives Matter graffiti scrawled on the bases of statues where Confederate heroes once stood.

On the streets most people wear masks and veer warily away from others, but a large minority don’t use masks and all but ignore social distancing.

At each turn, there are reminders of how much the US has been changed by the pandemic. You can almost feel the simmering political tensions with less than three months until the presidential election.

Southern states such as South Carolina, North Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Florida are the epicentre of the coronavirus. These are places where the number of infections — at least by Australian standards — remain too high for the safe resumption of anything approaching normal life.

Yet many Americans in these states are trying to return to normal life regardless, because they have to keep working to pay the bills or because they are sick of being locked down and are willing to take their chances.

North Carolina IT worker Carl Spahn

Michael Priest with wife Dawn and their daughters Halli and Lydia.

The south is also the Republican heartland, Trump country, and the President needs to win almost this entire region — including the swing states of Florida and North Carolina — if he is to win a second term.

On a road trip through South Carolina and North Carolina this week, Inquirer spoke with dozens of voters about how they saw the coming election.

Although Donald Trump is faring badly in the polls right now against his Democrat opponent Joe Biden, many voters such as Carl Spahn tell me they still believe he will win in November.

“I think Trump will pull it off in the end,” Spahn, 65, an IT worker, says as he sits in his red pick-up truck wearing a Trump 2020 face mask in Waynesville, North Carolina. “I think Trump has done an amazing job. He has done a lot of the things he said he would without the help of congress or anyone and he’s been doing things with one arm tied behind his back because the media is so biased.

“I don’t always like him personally but that’s OK, I want him to do the job and that’s what counts,” Spahn says, citing immigration, low taxes and a strong military as issues important to him.

On the management of the pandemic, he says Trump “has probably done it as best as he can”.

“My problem with the pandemic is that you compare it to other pandemics we have had and they don’t even make the paper. I think this pandemic is being weaponised against Trump by his enemies. Don’t get me wrong, this pandemic is real, but you just have to be smart, we don’t need the government to tell us what to do. We are not idiots.”

Spahn says he thinks Trump will turn his fortunes around when he finally debates Biden.

“Biden is incompetent, you can tell he’s lost his mind, you can definitely tell he has Alzheimer’s or that there is something that is going on up there that is not right.

“When Biden debates Trump I think Biden will be destroyed because Biden doesn’t think that quickly on his feet. There is a reason why Biden is hiding in his basement at home, because every time he gets out he says something that doesn’t make any sense.”

Lawyer and Joe Biden supporter Dave Brown.

Former forklife salesman Greg Meyer supports Trump.

While polls show that more than one-third of voters believe the pandemic is the most important issue in the coming election, many Trump voters say they have other priorities.

Michael Priest, 49, a hog farmer from South Carolina, sits down with his wife and two daughters and tells me that the issue of religious freedom and faith will determine his vote.

“My family and my faith are the most important to me,” he says in a broad southern twang. “Trump is not perfect but I think his platform is more moral than his opponent. Also this country was going really well until the pandemic hit. My business was going well, things were going well all around. I think Trump has managed the virus as best as he can.”

Many Trump supporters such as Priest tell me they fear that a Biden victory will lead to liberals being appointed to the Supreme Court, ending the court’s 5-4 conservative majority. With 87-year-old liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ill with cancer, they say a Trump victory will allow a conservative to replace her at some stage in the years ahead.

Polls show Biden leading Trump by a little more than seven points nationally; in the key southern swing states of Florida and North Carolina, which Trump won in 2016, Biden leads by 5 points in Florida and is level with Trump in North Carolina. North Carolina has voted for a Democrat president only once in the past 40 years, with Barack Obama winning by a mere 0.3 points in 2008. Trump’s fortunes in that must-win state will depend heavily on undecided voters such as Ashley Greene, 35, a school nurse who lives in the Appalachian mountain town of Boone, North Carolina.

Greene, mother to four-year-old twins, tells me she voted for Trump in 2016 because she thought he was better than Hillary Clinton on the economy and on religion. But she says she has been concerned with Trump’s threats to cut school funding during the pandemic and about his divisive style during this uncertain time.

“He has an arrogance that takes a toll,” she says. “He talks to people on a level where they feel disrespected. As a nation there is so much going on right now that we have to come together and treat each other with more respect.” But Greene says she has voted Republican more than Democrat and says she does like some things about Trump.

“He was great for the economy (before the pandemic) and I have been glad with the President’s Christian views, he has been very strong on that,” she says. “Faith and finance are important to me.”

People wearing protective face masks walk along Charleston’s King Street in South Carolina. Picture: Getty Images

Dave Brown, 54, a lawyer who lives just south of the coronavirus-ravaged city of Charleston on the coast of South Carolina, says he believed Trump was going to win until the virus hit. But Brown says Trump’s management of the pandemic has been a disaster and that he will be voting for Biden.

“Trump has handled this pandemic astoundingly badly,” he tells me as he walks his dog, Chego. “I’m surprised because I thought he would use it as an opportunity to demonstrate leadership and put the election away. I think if the pandemic had been managed more effectively, with less economic impact, then the current positions in the presidential race would be reversed.

“But Trump has shown really poor leadership. He has been shortsighted and self-centred in a way that is disqualifying for me.”

Brown says Biden was not his first choice as a Democrat candidate and that he wanted a younger candidate such as former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, Pete Buttig­ieg, but now he thinks Biden’s time has arrived.

“Biden may end up being the right leader for this time because he can lead from the centre and appeal to a broad base and bring the country together more,” Brown says. “Sure, he is not inspirational, but maybe that is not what the country needs right now.”

Retired bookkeeper and great-grandmother Virginia Tewey, 88, says she is “a little leery” about Biden’s advanced age. But she will vote for Biden anyway because she thinks Trump cares more about himself than about his fellow Americans, especially older ones like herself who have been hardest hit by the virus.

“I think older people are very upset with Trump right now,” she says during her morning walk on Seabrook Island, south of Charleston. “The way he has managed this pandemic — he doesn’t listen to the doctors who are in the know. He has his own suggestions and he just sticks to it.”

But South Carolina is loyal Trump country, with the state not voting for a Democrat president since Jimmy Carter in 1976. Even with his current poor polling, Trump leads Biden in the state by four points and he is not expected to lose it in November.

One of those who hopes to keep South Carolina red is Greg Meyer, a former forklift salesman who moved to the state six years ago and is dismayed by what he sees as a sharp political lurch to the left across the country.

“What I like the most about Donald Trump is he is not a socialist,” says Meyer, who voted for Trump in 2016.

Trump has portrayed Biden as a captive of the far left who would weaken the economy, raise taxes and impose identity politics that would undermine traditional American freedoms. Meyer agrees.

“The country has moved so far left that if a Republican truly runs on Republican values they’ve got no chance,” says Meyer.

“I definitely trust Trump more than Biden to rebuild the economy because Trump will push the responsibility down to the business owners and try not to dictate to them.”

Meyer says he fears what will become of the country if Biden gets in and the Democrats win control of both houses of congress.

“The Democrats are now so far to the left I don’t think you can chart it any more,” he says. “Biden is not a moderate — I think they’ve all moved left because so many Americans want free stuff.

“In any case Biden is a knucklehead. He was a knucklehead in his eight years (as vice-president) with Obama and he’s been a bigger knucklehead since. I truly think Biden does have some health issues, he’s not with it.”

Meyer says he believes Trump faces an uphill battle to beat Biden in part because the media is “so far left” and so hostile to Trump over his handling of the pandemic.

But many Trump supporters tell me they don’t believe the polls. They point out that the polls wrongly predicted a Clinton victory in 2016 and say there are a lot of voters — whom Trump dubs “the silent majority” — who will eventually back him on election day.

Yet Trump’s path to victory is narrow and his standing in must-win southern states such as Florida and North Carolina has been hurt by the coronavirus outbreaks that have all but killed hopes of an economic recovery before the election.

But polls also say that between 10 per cent and 13 per cent of Americans are still undecided about their vote, meaning that Trump has time to turn things around before November.

“There is so much going on right now that it is hard to concentrate on who to vote for,” says Greene, who is one of these undecided voters.

“I don’t know a bunch about Mr Biden but I do know he has some good takes on things. But I am also a conservative. I am going to do some research with my husband and decide closer to the election,” she says. “I know how important it is to make the right decision.”

Cameron Stewart is also US contributor for Sky News Australia.