US election debate 2020: Supreme test is yet to come
Trump has made his Supreme Court pick. Now the most important moment so far in this US presidential election campaign is almost upon us.
The most important moment so far in this US presidential election campaign is almost upon us, with Donald Trump and Joe Biden set to face off in their first debate at one of the most tumultuous times in modern US history.
Their clash in Cleveland on Wednesday (AEST) comes amid the shock timing of the death of liberal Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just weeks before the poll, triggering an epic fight over the court in the middle of a campaign.
Trump has nominated conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett to replace Ginsburg ont he bench.
It also comes as US coronavirus deaths pass the grim 200,000 milestone, with cases on the rise again and casting a shadow over hopes of an economic recovery before the November 3 poll.
And it comes at time when both Trump and his Democrat opponent Biden are taking wildly different approaches to campaigning as both men try to capture the attention of a deeply divided nation in the midst of a pandemic.
This presidential debate, the first of three, gives Trump his best chance yet of resetting his campaign and developing the momentum he needs to catch Biden in the opinion polls.
Because Biden enjoys a 7 point lead over Trump nationally, and smaller leads in the key battleground states, the pressure is on Trump rather than on Biden to produce a breakthrough moment on stage.
But even Republican strategists worry that Trump has set himself up for a fall in the debates by repeatedly portraying his 77-year-old opponent as someone who is borderline senile and can barely string a sentence together.
Veteran GOP strategist Ed Rollins, who runs a pro-Trump super PAC, believes the President has “so diminished” expectations about Biden’s mental agility that even an average debate performance by the Democrat will be viewed as a win.
“Biden has clearly shown he can function, the bar is low and the expectations are so low — all he has to do is exceed those expectations,” says Rollins.
The Trump campaign, fearing such an outcome, has this week pivoted sharply on Biden in order to lift those low expectations. It now describes the former vice-president as a “good” debater who can “turn it on” when he needs to.
“Eight years as vice-president, three decades in the Senate … and he just came through about a dozen debates in the Democratic primaries where he vanquished two dozen opponents — that’s the Joe Biden we’re expecting,” Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh said.
Even Mr Trump now says he believes Biden is “going to do great” during the first debate.
“I think he’s a professional. I don’t know if he’s all there, but I think he’s a professional,” he said. “I have to assume that he’s a professional and that he can debate.”
The first debate will focus on six key topics: the Trump and Biden records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in US cities, and the integrity of the election.
It comes at a time when the Supreme Court has suddenly been thrust into the campaign spotlight by the death last week of liberal icon Ginsburg at the age of 87.
The Democrats appear to have already lost the battle to prevent Mr Trump and the Senate from replacing Ginsburg with a conservative nominee before the election. The Democrats do not have the numbers in the Senate to block a determined Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has united his party behind the idea of an early confirmation, losing only two Republican Senators in the process.
Democrats have cried foul about replacing Ginsburg so close to an election, pointing out that Republicans blocked consideration of Barack Obama’s nominee nine months before the 2016 election on the grounds that it was too close to the election. McConnell argued at that time that “the American people should have a voice” in the decision. He has since modified his argument, saying Republicans blocked Obama’s pick in 2016 because Obama was a Democrat.
Democrats are hoping that the Republican double-standard will enrage liberal voters and persuade them to storm voting booths on November 3.
The burning question for both Trump and Biden is who will benefit the most from Ginsburg’s death and the likely confirmation of a new conservative judge before polling day.
The appointee, who Trump will name on Sunday (AEST), will give the court a solid 6-3 conservative majority. This will have a profound impact for a generation (Supreme Court justices are appointed for life) on how the court treats issues across the spectrum of US society, such as abortion and gun rights, religious and speech freedoms, anti-discrimination laws and immigration.
Many of these are hot-button issues for conservatives and Republicans hope Trump’s record of installing three conservative Supreme Court judges in his first term will energise his voting base like never before.
“The Supreme Court fight is hugely helpful to Trump because it reframes the election,” Republican strategist Alex Conant says.
“A couple of days ago, the biggest issue in this election was Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic. Now it’s a battle over the Supreme Court.”
But Democrats also believe Ginsburg’s death will energise their base to vote because they say American liberals are deeply worried about how the court, with an increased conservative majority, would rule on key issues such as abortion rights and Obama’s Affordable Care Act.
Trump’s nomination of the staunchly anti-abortion candidate Barrett, Democrats believe, will thrust the issue of abortion into the spotlight to their advantage.
Democrats would seek to exploit Barrett’s appointment by arguing that she may pose a threat to the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade ruling granting abortion rights — a ruling that still enjoys popular public support.
“The Democrats are galvanised on this court like we have not seen in decades,” Brian Fallon, who heads the progressive judicial group Demand Justice, told The New York Times.
“Any change in topic may feel like a relief for the White House compared to COVID, but this issue is far from a winner for him (Trump),” he said.
Although Democrat leaders are energised by the Supreme Court issue, Biden has pointedly chosen not to make it a central focus of his campaign. He has also avoided endorsing calls from the Democrat left for radical retaliation measures such as potentially enlarging or “stacking” the court with liberals if they win the Senate under a Biden presidency.
After concentrating on Ginsburg’s death for a day, Biden has quickly refocused his campaign on the virus and on Trump himself.
Trump has given the Supreme Court issue far more oxygen, making it a key part of his campaign rallies where crowds this week chanted “Fill That Seat”.
With just over five weeks to go before the election, the Supreme Court issue and the looming presidential debates are Trump’s best hope for a game-changer to the current status quo. But of increasing concern to his campaign is that nothing the President is doing is moving the polls in any major way — either up or down.
During the final months of the 2016 presidential campaign, Trump was closer to his opponent Hillary Clinton in the polls and even took the lead on occasions. That race was far more volatile, with both Trump and Clinton experiencing steep jumps and falls.
By contrast, Biden has a remarkably consistent lead over Trump, with little of the volatility we saw in 2016. During the past eight weeks, his lead has hovered in a narrow band between 5.9 points and 8 points, according to the RealClear Politics average. And since the pandemic hit hard in mid-March, Trump has not come closer to Biden than 4.4 points.
That is not to say that Trump cannot catch Biden. Clinton had a seven-point lead over Trump just under three weeks before the 2016 poll and she still lost, so there is still time. But the catalyst for Trump’s 2016 comeback was a gift from the FBI when it chose to reopen its investigation into Clinton’s private email server less than two weeks from election day.
Trump needs to find something soon to spur his campaign if he is to get the momentum he needs to overtake Biden.
The President’s push to make law and order a central campaign issue after riots in several US cities, has so far not gained the traction in polling that the White House had hoped for.
Trump is also on the defensive once again on the coronavirus, after briefly touting that the pandemic had “turned the corner” after daily COVID-19 infections fell from their high of almost 70,000 in mid-July to almost 35,000 in mid-September.
But in the past two weeks, new infections have spiked back up to around 40,000 a day and rising, after many US colleges opened prematurely, leading to sharp rises on student campuses.
This week, as the US death toll passed 200,000, 27 of the 50 states recorded an increase in the seven-day average of infections, leading to new rolling restrictions which threaten to further slow the economic recovery.
Amid grim projections of an autumn increase in cases as the weather cools, there is little Trump can seemingly do to challenge the popular perception that he has mishandled the pandemic.
The President’s tactic on the pandemic has been to blame China rather than his own leadership, but polls show that only one in three Americans believe he has handled the crisis well.
Yet there is some hope for the President on the economy, despite it remaining in a deep recession and with at least 13 million Americans unemployed.
A new AP-NORC poll shows Americans are less negative about the economy than they were, with 40 per cent saying the economy is good compared with 60 per cent who say it is poor.
This is still low but it is an improvement from April, when just 29 per cent called the economy good and 79 per cent called it poor.
Importantly, Trump also continues to outshine Biden on the question of who would be better to revive the economy.
Both Trump and Biden have adopted dramatically different campaign styles, but they are targeting the same battleground states. Both men have focused their campaigns almost exclusively on Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, North Carolina and Florida.
Trump has reprised his 2016 playbook of frequent campaign rallies which are growing in size each week as the President thumbs his nose at the risks to crowds posed by the pandemic.
Trump uses these raucous rallies to give a similar stump speech, sometimes for up to two hours, talking up his achievements, the economic recovery, the Supreme Court, law and order, the dangers of the socialist left and Biden’s incapacity for the job.
By contrast, Biden is running a low-energy campaign in which he physically travels to the battleground states but then gives a lonely speech in an often solitary setting with no supporters to cheer him on.
Biden’s campaign defends this approach, saying it is the responsible way to conduct a campaign in a pandemic. Yet some Democrats worry that Biden is being too pure for his own good and that Trump is sucking up all the political oxygen with his high-profile rallies.
But Biden is yet to falter in the polls, despite his low-key campaign. That is why next week’s “Clash in Cleveland” — which pits both men directly against each other for the first time — will speak volumes about where this presidential race is headed.
Cameron Stewart is also US Contributor for Sky News Australia.
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