South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Stakes especially high in year of lows
Election results will test democracy’s solidity, leadership
WASHINGTON — After a year of deep disruption, America is poised for a presidential election that renders a verdict on the nation’s role in the world and the direction of its economy, on its willingness to contain an escalating pandemic and its ability to confront systemic racial inequity.
But the two men on the ballot, President Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden, offer more than just differing solutions for the country’s most pressing problems. The choice before voters is a referendum on the role of the presidency itself and a test of the sturdiness of democracy, with the president challenging the legitimacy of the outcome even before Election Day and law enforcement agencies braced for the possibility of civil unrest.
“There’s more than just your standard ideological difference between the two candidates. There’s a fundamentally different view of what the presidency is and what leadership means for the nation,” said Jeffrey Engel, director of the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University.
Voters appear to recognize the moment: More than 86 million people have already cast ballots, shattering records for early voting.
The election is being held at a moment of bitter partisanship in America, and whichever candidate wins the White House will confront the challenge of governing through deep divi-sions. If anything, the campaign has clarified how stratified the U.S. has become, with Trump’s base of support coming from overwhelmingly white voters at lower income and education levels. More highly educated Americans, particularly women, and voters of color, most notably African Americans, have all but abandoned the Republican Party during Trump’s four years in office.
Dan Giesen, 56, of Minneapolis, said he was a conservative voter before Trump became the Republican nominee four years ago, leading him to vote for third-party candidate Evan McMullin. Recently, Giesen was waiting in line to cast his vote early for Biden.
“I think we can deal with partisan differences when our institutions and our norms are in place, but I think that those are being seriously eroded under Donald Trump,” he said.
Biden heads into Tuesday’s election with an edge in public polling, including a comfortable national lead and a narrower advantage in some of the battleground states that will decide the contest. He has multiple paths to victory and has devoted significant resources to the Upper Midwest states where Trump surprised Democrats four years ago, but also to states such as Arizona and Georgia that for years have been reliable Republican territory.
Though Democrats are wary of overconfidence, given Trump’s upset in
2016, party leaders see significant differences in this year’s election. Biden is viewed more favorably by voters than Hillary Clinton was four years ago.
“In the last 10 days of
2016, the story was, ‘What’s the FBI going to do about the newly reopened Hillary Clinton email investigation?’ ” said Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, who was Clinton’s running mate in 2016. Now, Kaine said, “they’re
talking about COVID and how it’s affecting communities.”
The pandemic indeed turned Trump’s plans for this election year inside out.
The president opened
2020 in strong position, with a robust economic record and the GOP unified behind him after he survived an impeachment trial centered on his request for Ukraine’s help digging up dirt on Biden.
Since then, the coronavirus has gripped the nation, causing more than
230,000 deaths and infecting almost 9.1 million Americans; both are the highest confirmed counts in the world, according to Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. economy cratered, and though it has recovered somewhat, the unemployment rate rests at 7.9% and businesses across the country are worried about surviving the winter, given that infection rates are on the rise
Trump himself contracted the virus in October and was briefly hospitalized. Since then, he’s been barnstorming the country, holding large rallies with crowds that are not socially distanced and only sporadically wearing masks. His message to Americans has been that the U.S. is “rounding the corner” on the virus, despite the fact that cases are on the rise inmost states and the U.S. is setting daily records for confirmed cases.
Sixty-five percent of Americans said the president has not taking the pandemic seriously enough, according to amid-October poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Despite the pandemic’s toll on his political fortunes, Trump’s campaign is banking on strategy similar to 2016. Advisers contend that Trump will draw out new voters who haven’t participated in politics previously or in some time. His campaign is also banking on some voters ultimately looking beyond their personal qualms with the president to back his policies.
That was the case for Tom Redford, 79, who cast his ballot for Trump on Thursday outside Richmond, Virginia. Redford said he’s the only Trump supporter in his family and doesn’t much like the president personally.
“But everything he’s done is great — everything, including what he’s done on the coronavirus,” Redford said.