Trump’s debate conduct and virus fiasco inflict more
damage
Opinion by
Columnist
Oct. 5, 2020 at 6:45 a.m. CDT
With
Election Day four weeks from Tuesday and millions already voting, former vice
president Joe Biden is establishing a huge lead in national polling and
solidifying his lead in must-win battleground states. By nearly every measure,
President Trump’s campaign is collapsing.
The
national polls are stunning: Biden has a 14-point lead in the NBC News-Wall Street Journal
poll (53 percent to 39 percent) taken before Trump announced
that he had tested positive for the coronavirus. Biden has a 10-point led in
the Reuters-Ipsos poll (51
percent to 41 percent). Biden led by at least eight points in all the polls
released on Sunday. In the two most recent Pennsylvania polls,
Biden leads by seven points. The
FiveThirtyEight poll average shows Biden’s lead hovering around seven points
in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump’s
obnoxious and bullying routine in last week’s debate did not sit well with
viewers. NBC-WSJ polling found that 49 percent said Biden won, 24 percent said
Trump won and 17 percent said neither did (the “balance” punditry that both
were bad gets the least support among actual voters).
Trump’s
virus diagnosis, according to an ABC News-Ipsos poll, has
confirmed voters’ negative view of his handling of the pandemic: “nearly 3 out
of every 4 Americans doubt that he took seriously the threat posed to his
well-being nor the steps necessary to avoid contracting the virus.” Even more ominous
for Trump, only 50 percent think he can “effectively handle his duties as
president if there is a military or national security crisis.”
CNN’s Jake Tapper spoke for many when he
recounted Trump’s disdain for the guidelines the rest of us follow:
“You
are all now literally risking spreading the virus yourselves,” Tapper pointed out Sunday
as he displayed images of Republicans yukking it up without masks or social
distancing at the White House event for
Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Judge Amy Coney Barrett.
It is
not clear whether, or when, Trump will return to the campaign trail. For now he
is limited to creating phony displays of his vigor (e.g., signing a blank piece of paper at
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in an effort to seem busy) and
making rambling videos. The White House makes all of this worse by giving
false, conflicting and incomplete information about his health.
Trump’s
campaign is sinking, but rather than swim to shore, Trump and his enablers seem
intent on grabbing the nearest anvil. Campaign adviser Jason Miller went on the
Sunday shows and continued to mock Biden for wearing a mask too frequently (“a prop,” he called it), showing how little
Trump has learned from his own illness. Trump is in the hospital; Biden is
traveling to battleground states.
Even
worse, when confronted with the White House’s failure to follow guidelines for
mask-wearing, Miller insisted that all is well since they test for the virus.
This mentality led to a Rose Garden event where attendees were tested, yet no
fewer than eight people, that we
know of, have tested positive for the virus. Is it possible these
people still do not understand that you can test negative in the early stages
of infection and still spread the contagion to others? No wonder their
policies are so horribly misguided; they still do not grasp the most basic
facts about the pandemic.
Inarguably,
Trump’s worst problem is Trump. He reinforces the image of a reckless,
incompetent, rude know-nothing. Voters have been telling him for months that
they do not like his antics. Now, they are telling him he is worse than ever.
In four weeks, they will deliver their official verdict.
