Campaign steams into homestretch

Trump, Biden set to ramp up travel and focus on debates

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden have emerged from their nominating conventions with each believing he has a head of steam. Trump’s job approval ratings and standing in polls are perilously low for an incumbent, but Biden and other Democrats vividly remember 2016, when Trump made an against-the-odds October comeback and defeated Hillary Clinton.

Five key questions as the 2020 campaign moves toward the fall homestretch:

A COVID-19 campaign

Expect a flurry of travel and speeches as the candidates spend the next nine weeks trying to move the needle and win new votes against the backdrop of a global pandemic.

Trump is set to launch an aggressive travel

schedule with multiple events a week, according to advisers. His campaign has settled on a new format in the age of COVID-19: packing smaller crowds into openair airport hangars. The campaign has also been handing out masks at its events and, on Friday, told attendees they would be mandatory, per local regulations. He’s also planning a series of policy speeches and is expected to continue to use the powers of his office — including signing executive orders and issuing pardons — to help his prospects.

Biden is planning to ramp up travel to battleground states after Labor Day after spending most of the spring and summer at his home in Wilmington, Del., holding mostly virtual events, with only occasional travel to tightly controlled gatherings. Campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond said the former vice president will be active but emphasized that Biden’s events still will follow public health guidelines. That means no indoor, crowded rallies and lots of mask-wearing. Expect plenty of roundtables, meetand-greets and questionand-answer sessions. If there are larger gatherings, the drive-in watch party outside Biden’s nomination acceptance address could be the blueprint.

Making their case

Trump will continue trying to win back suburban, female and older voters, and win over independents and people who didn’t vote four years ago by painting the election as a stark choice between law and order and anarchy and between a radical, socialist takeover and economic prosperity. This will have to battle Biden’s decades in the political establishment and Biden running mate California Sen. Kamala Harris’ experience as a former prosecutor.

If his 2016 race is any indication, expect Trump to launch a personal-over-policy attack if he feels he’s losing come October.

Biden will continue to portray Trump as a fundamental threat to democracy and try to make the case that the president is a corrupt figure incapable of empathy. Biden will sell himself as a steady, experienced hand with a progressive policy agenda on issues including climate action and criminal justice.

October surprise

Biden has defined his White House bid from the start as a moral and competency case against Trump. The COVID-19 pandemic has only intensified the approach. Biden’s campaign believes there’s no cover for Trump with the coronavirus death toll surpassing 180,000 and climbing, unemployment hovering in double digits and Congress at an impasse on further economic aid.

Trump is hoping for a late development that could be a campaign game-changer: The release of a vaccine that would mark the beginning of the end of the pandemic on his watch, before Americans vote. His administration has been doing everything it can to accelerate the process, along with supporting new therapeutics. “We’ll produce a vaccine before the end of the year, or maybe even sooner,” he said in his convention keynote. It’s unclear, however, whether science can deliver on his timetable.

The debates

They’re crucial.

The conventions largely succeeded in fulfilling both campaigns’ objectives, so the debates — scheduled for Sept. 29, Oct. 15 and Oct. 22 — will be the most high-profile opportunities for the candidates to highlight contrasts, animate core supporters and cajole the small but critical slice of persuadable voters.

Biden and his team say they relish the idea of confronting Trump face to face.

It also will be another chance for the 77-year-old Democrat to work to dismantle Trump’s framing that Biden is too old for the job.

Naming the winner

It might not be on election night.

The campaigns and national parties are engaged in lawsuits across many states, arguing over rules for absentee voting amid the pandemic, and that litigation could continue if results are close on Nov. 3.

Republicans and Democrats alike are pushing their supporters to ask for absentee mail ballots.

Don’t expect that landscape to change between now and Election Day — or even for several weeks afterward. Trump has refused to say whether he’ll accept the results if he loses, and Clinton has warned Biden not to concede if the election is remotely close.

One thing is clear, though: The Constitution sets Inauguration Day as Jan. 20, and barring catastrophic developments, either Trump or Biden will take the oath of office that day.