Before the coronavirus outbreak in the United States, President Trump was well on his way to winning reelection. In fact, oddsmakers pegged Trump at just over a -200 favorite (67% implied probability) to win in late February.
COVID-19 has since dramatically scrambled that calculation. Although Trump remains a slight favorite to win, he now has significantly reduced odds.
Despite the destruction the coronavirus pandemic has waged, the power brokers within the Democratic Party and leftists in the media have determined that former Vice President Joe Biden is incapable of beating Trump head-to-head without some serious help on their part. So what are Democrats and their allies in the media doing to thwart Trump and boost Biden’s chances for victory?
First, they are working overtime to remove China from the coronavirus narrative by refusing to acknowledge broadly the communist regime’s hand in the spread of the virus. We first saw this when Trump imposed travel restrictions on China in late January. Democrats and their media allies deemed such actions “racist” and “xenophobic.” A New York Times piece went so far as to argue that such travel restrictions on China were “unjust.” And heaven forbid someone in the Trump administration or in conservative media referred to the virus as the “Wuhan coronavirus” or the “Chinese virus” due to its city and country of origin. The perpetually offended Left and the media screamed a similar refrain.
There is a lot to still be uncovered about the exact circumstances that led to the virus’s outbreak inside of China. But here is what we do know with an extremely high degree of certainty: “China’s Communist authorities have lied, concealed and misled about the origins of the epidemic and the toll of the virus in China.” Equally as abhorrent, the World Health Organization aided Beijing in its cover-up. Further, studies indicate that had China acted in late December 2019 or in early January, the number of global coronavirus cases could have been reduced by anywhere from 66% to 95%.
But don’t tell one scintilla of this to Democrats or to anti-Trump reporters, they will hear none of it. They are so eager to pin the blame on Trump that they have resorted to parroting Chinese talking points regularly.
Sadly, this tactic is paying dividends. According to a recent Rasmussen poll, only 47% “of voters believe that China is primarily to blame for the coronavirus epidemic.”
Despite all of the evidence completely to the contrary, the anti-Trump forces have, at this point, convinced almost half of the country that China is not the actor most to blame for the death and economic destruction now at the door of Americans. This is astounding, but it is not their only ploy to confuse a scared electorate.
They have also begun to Monday-morning-quarterback the early days of the Trump administration response. After all, why scrutinize in real-time when it is astronomically easier to pass judgment after the fact, especially considering the high-marks Trump is receiving for his handling of the pandemic?
The headline from a recent Washington Post report says it all: “Denial, dysfunction, delays: Tracing Trump administration’s failures over first 70 days of the virus fight.” Not to be outdone, the Associated Press says the “US ‘wasted’ months before preparing for virus pandemic.”
Now House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has decided to convene a new select committee to investigate “any aspect of the virus emergency, and the Trump administration’s handling of it.” Guess who Pelosi has tapped to run this? Not someone who cares about actual fact-finding, just someone interested in leading the next political con job: House Whip James Clyburn of South Carolina, who rescued Biden’s campaign from primary defeat.
Internal Democratic polling suggests this could be a strike against Trump. According to Navigator survey data, “40 percent of 2016 Trump voters say the president did not take coronavirus seriously enough early in the crisis.” Furthermore, 66% of independents say the same.
With America at war with an invisible virus, Democrats and the media have joined forces “to create a narrative that people died because Trump failed to act fast enough,” while simultaneously muting China’s outsized role in the global crisis. Once again, the anti-Trump forces are going all-in to take out Trump. Their prey is a scared electorate who is just clinging to hope in uncertain times.
Ford O’Connell (@FordOConnell) is a communications consultant, lawyer, and conservative media advocate. He is a former Florida GOP congressional candidate, an adjunct professor at The George Washington University Graduate School of Political Management, and a regular commentator on FOX News.
