As virus spreads, Trump charges into battleground states
LITITZ, Pa. – President Donald Trump embarked Monday on a finalweek charge through nearly a dozen states before the election, overlooking a surge of coronavirus cases in the U.S. and a fresh outbreak in his own White House.
His Democratic rival, Joe Biden, is holding far fewer events in an effort to demonstrate that he’s taking the worsening pandemic seriously.
The final days of the campaign are crystalizing the starkly different approaches Trump and Biden have taken to address the worst public health crisis in a century – with risks for each candidate.
“It’s a choice between a Trump boom or a Biden lockdown,” Trump claimed Monday in Pennsylvania.
For Trump, the full-speed-ahead strategy could spread the virus in places that are already setting new records and leave him appearing aloof to the consequences. And if Biden comes up short in the election, his lower-key travel schedule will surely come under scrutiny as a bad choice.
Both are making points with their travel plans. Trump was holding three events in Pennsylvania on Monday, suggesting he’s on defense in a state that he won in 2016 and that will be critical to his reelection. Biden, meanwhile, is demonstrating more confidence with signals that he’s hoping to expand his campaign map.
Though the Democrat was remaining close on Monday to his Wilmington, Delaware, home, on Tuesday he will visit Georgia, a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1992. He’s dispatching his running mate, Kamala Harris, this week to Texas, which hasn’t backed a Democrat for the White House since Jimmy Carter in 1976.
With more than a third of the expected ballots in the election already cast, it could become increasingly challenging for Trump and Biden to reshape the contours of the race. But both are fighting for any endgame advantage. Biden is leading Trump in most national polls and has an advantage, though narrower, in many key battlegrounds.
While the final week of the campaign is colliding with deepening concerns about the COVID crisis in far-flung parts of the U.S., Trump is anxious for voters to focus on almost anything else. He’s worried that he will lose if the election becomes a referendum on his handling of the pandemic. Biden, meanwhile, is working to ensure the race is just that, hitting Trump on the virus and presenting himself as a safer, more stable alternative.
With Election Day a week away, average coronavirus deaths per day across the country are up10% over the past two weeks, from 721 to nearly 794 as of Sunday, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Confirmed infections per day are rising in 47 states, and deaths are up in 34.
The latest national outbreak has provided a potent sign of the divergent approaches the Trump and Biden campaigns have taken to the virus. On Sunday, White House chief of staff Mark Meadows said that “we’re not going to control the pandemic” and the focus should be on containment and treatment. Trump aims to pack thousands of people, most without face coverings, into rallies across some of the upper Midwestern states bearing the brunt of the surge.
Biden, in a statement, said Meadows’ comments continued with the Trump administration waving “the white flag of defeat” in the face of the virus.
Trump fired back Monday as he arrived in Pennsylvania, saying Biden, with his concerns about the virus spread, has “waved a white flag on life.”
He rejected Biden’s comments that the nation is facing a “dark winter,” saying, “No it’s not going to be a dark winter. It’s going to be a great winter. It’s going to be a great spring.”
Biden’s team argues the coronavirus is likely to blot out any other issues that might come up in the final days of the campaign. The outbreak in Pence’s staff refocused the national conversation once again on the pandemic.