Rep. Moore: Biden not coming is reality from pandemic.

U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore doesn’t think President Donald Trump’s presence in Wisconsin during the 2020 Democratic National Convention — or the absence of presumptive Democratic Party presidential nominee Joe Biden — will send the message to voters that Democrats are taking the state for granted in the presidential election.

“This is not four years ago,” Moore said in reference to the 2016 presidential election when candidate Hillary Clinton did not visit Wisconsin during the general election. “This is now.”

Trump won the state by a slim margin.

And, Moore argued, people understand that Trump has denied the seriousness of the coronavirus pandemic, putting the U.S. in a dangerous situation by failing to get the pandemic under control. That includes more than 170,000 deaths in the U.S.

The trajectory of the virus is not good, she said, predicting that people are not going to “fall for the trick of his public appearance” Monday in Oshkosh.

Trump’s visit to Wisconsin during the DNC, and the visits of his son, Eric, on Tuesday and Vice President Mike Pence on Wednesday, were meant to contrast with Biden’s decision to not attend the DNC in Milwaukee because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump sought to highlight his connection to the state on Monday, telling those gathered that “this has been an incredible experience getting to know you. I’ve been here a lot ... we’ve been good for each other.”

Moore said the decrease of about 40,000 presidential votes cast in Milwaukee between the 2012 and 2016 elections was a wake-up call for many people.

“For years and years there were certain segments of the Democratic base that were saying, you’re taking us for granted, you’re not reaching out to us,” Moore said. “And I think that people thought that that was just some rhetoric.”

Asked if Biden and vice-presidential hopeful Kamala Harris should come to Wisconsin before the election, Moore said the state Democratic Party has been forced by the pandemic to build an infrastructure around technology.

With the pandemic limiting in-person campaigning, Biden’s campaign has been turning to virtual events in an effort to reach Wisconsin voters.

Instead of having vans giving older people rides to the polls, she said, there will instead be people, in masks, helping those older people apply for absentee ballots. Technology will be used to track those ballots.

The 2020 DNC, with its virtual format, will be noted as ushering in a new kind of convention that is substantive and that reaches many more people because it doesn’t require in-person attendance to participate, she said.

She thinks even after the pandemic, elements of the 2020 DNC will continue to show up at future conventions. The broader participation from members of the public, not solely delegates, is one thing she thinks is here to stay.

Part of being able to pull off the largely virtual convention, anchored in Milwaukee, was the recognition back in April that a partially or totally virtual convention was likely, she said.

“We had a chance to sort of pull together the elements of this because we weren’t in denial,” she said. “It’ll be real interesting to see how well the Republicans do because they have been in denial for so long, and I know that it really, really took a lot of work for us to do this.”