With a rousing rally in the battleground state of Florida, President Trump Monday made a triumphant return to the campaign trail this week, raising new questions about how much this kind of traditional politicking matters during a pandemic.
“I feel so powerful,” Trump said. “I’ll kiss everyone in that audience. I’ll kiss the guys and the beautiful women. Just give you a big, fat kiss.”
“These rallies give POTUS the juice he needs in the final weeks,” said a veteran Republican strategist, noting videos circulating of Trump dancing to the Village People’s “YMCA” as he took the stage.
For months, Republicans have predicted that at some point, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s approach of campaigning largely from his basement was a mistake and that eventually, Trump’s embrace of barnstorming and the bully pulpit would pay off. Instead, Biden has built a formidable lead in the polls, 10 points in the RealClearPolitics national average and almost 5 in the top battlegrounds, with only a limited resumption of normal public campaign activities.
Yet the discrepancy in public events feeds one doubt that gnaws at Democrats and encourages Republicans after Trump’s poll-defying upset victory in 2016. The Biden campaign has downplayed door-knocking and other get-out-the-vote efforts. And with a few exceptions, such as the former vice president’s appearance in Pennsylvania the day after the first presidential debate, when Biden does hold public events, the crowds are sparse.
“Conventional political wisdom says the candidates should be out there meeting people in person, and going door to door and talking to people,” said Democratic strategist Spencer Critchley, author of the new book Patriots of Two Nations: Why Trump Was Inevitable and What Happens Next. “Just having a candidate meet people and ask for their vote is incredibly effective.”
“While you might hear our opponent spend a lot of time talking about the millions of door knocks or attempts that they’re making week to week, those metrics actually don’t have any impact on reaching voters,” Biden campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon told reporters in a conference call. “Our metric of success, the numbers we look at and use, are conversations.”
Critchley thinks Dillon could be right. “There are enough voters who will appreciate that he’s taking the pandemic seriously,” he said, noting the possibilities offered by platforms like Zoom. “I think they’ve compensated really well.”
But combined with an enthusiasm gap in some polls, it gives Republicans hope that the big picture showing a likely Trump defeat and setbacks in the Senate could be wrong. “As Joe Biden visited Broward County, a place Hillary Clinton won with 66 percent of the vote, he was clearly struggling to excite core Democrat voters who remain hugely unenthusiastic about his campaign,” said Trump campaign communications director Tim Murtaugh in a statement following the Democratic nominee’s visit to Florida. Trump on Monday called campaign event turnout numbers “the real polls.”
Meanwhile, political prognosticators with little exposure to the campaign trail themselves due to the coronavirus and no experience polling in a pandemic are fearful of seeing their Trump election predictions proven wrong again. “Everybody is afraid it is going to be a repeat of 2016,” Critchley said, adding that Democrats have “PTSD” about Clinton’s improbable defeat.
“It’s like thinking last time I walked down that block, a bird pooped on me, therefore, I must not walk down that block,” he added.
But just as people have had to adjust to the virus in so many other ways, what has worked in the past for political campaigns, including Trump’s, may have to change this year.
“This is the first virtual presidential campaign and probably not the last,” said Democratic strategist Brad Bannon. “Even before the pandemic, the U.S. was becoming an electronic society. The COVID outbreak hastened the trend.”
Some Republicans speculate that Trump voters will be more willing than Biden supporters to turn out on Election Day, in part because they are more willing to go out in public during the pandemic. Still, the Democratic primaries largely played out according to the polls, and Trump’s public displays have yet to move the national numbers, with the election less than a month away.
“People are still scared to death of COVID-19, and few voters want to go out to a rally with a bunch of other people or see a stranger show up at their doorstep,” said Bannon.
