Biden woos sickening states
US President Donald Trump is promising to get a weary, fearful nation ‘‘back to normal’’ as he looks to campaign past the political damage of the devastating coronavirus pandemic.
His pitch to voters yesterday was a sharp contrast to that of Democratic rival Joe Biden, who pledged to level with America about tough days still ahead after next week’s election.
Trump and Biden spent the day crisscrossing the Midwest, the hardest-hit part of the nation in the latest surge of virus cases.
Trump was in Michigan and Biden in Iowa before they both held events in Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Biden is leading most national polls, and has a narrow advantage in many of the critical battleground states that could decide the race.
Trump says the nation has ‘‘turned the corner’’ from an outbreak that is still killing about 1000 Americans each day. He speaks hopefully of coming treatments and potential vaccines that have yet to receive approval.
Biden dismisses Trump’s talk as a siren song that can only prolong the virus, and is promising a nationwide focus on reinstituting measures meant to slow the spread of the disease He has seized on comments by Trump’s chief of staff that the virus can’t be controlled and that the administration is focused instead on vaccines and therapeutics.
Yesterday marked the beginning of the critical final stretch before the election. Trump’s closing sprint includes four stops in Pennsylvania and nearly a dozen events in the final 48 hours across states he won in 2016.
Biden, after visiting Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota, was due to hit Michigan to hold a joint rally with former president Barack Obama.
Iowa has long had one of the US’s highest rates of coronavirus infections, and yesterday it reported a record number of cases and hospitalisations, part of a spike being seen in dozens of states.
The public health and economic crises resulting from the pandemic are part of why Democrats see an opening in a state that Trump won by nearly 10 points in 2016 and which was once seen as a long shot for the party.
During his visit yesterday, Biden mentioned those record cases and the economic toll of the pandemic. He said Trump was ‘‘waving the white flag’’ and had ‘‘surrendered to the virus’’.
‘‘ But the American people don’t give up,’’ he told the crowd at a drive- in rally in the state capital, Des Moines.
Iowa is not a must-win for Biden, but a loss for Trump would significantly narrow his path to re-election.
The state holds significance for the battle for control of the US Senate. Democrats need to net four seats to take back control of the upper chamber, and Iowa’s Republican Senator Joni Ernst is locked in a tight race with Democratic challenger Theresa Greenfield.