How will the plague affect this season’s campaigns? Let’s count the ways.
Governing itself is an indoor affair and a behind-the-scenes matter, but running for office is a true contact sport, involving flesh pressed and hands shaken, babies adored at close range, people massing in rallies (the bigger, the better), running mates embracing each other in moments of triumph, and young people taking time off from their classes to knock upon strange people’s doors.
These things fade away in the face of the crisis. People stand if they can at a safe 6-foot distance, keep their faces covered, and wipe off the knobs of their doors. Gone are the days when huge crowds all liked Ike, grew giddy when close to magnetic John Kennedy, filled huge stadiums to swoon over Barack Obama, and became so overwrought in 1968 over Robert F. Kennedy that they tried to pull the very shoes off his feet.
Today, President Trump and presumed nominee former Vice President Joe Biden might not get the chance to rally large audiences at all if conditions don’t change by this fall. And suppose things are not back to normal in August? What will the parties do then? Suppose things are back nearly to normal, but not quite enough to justify going ahead with conventions? Will they stage them remotely? Will it all end with both Trump and Biden speaking on screens while delegates watch from their homes?
Even in down-ballot races, the system is reeling. “[T]he Rotary Club lunches, community gatherings, door-knocking and fund-raising receptions that are ordinarily the lifeblood of congressional races are gone,” the New York Times’s Carl Hulse noted on Sunday, “replaced with tele-townhalls focused on how to contend with the pandemic, virtual fundraising get-togethers and appeals to contribute not to campaigns but to non-profit community groups as incumbents and challengers try to stay relevant.”
“We have a media cycle … dominated by this huge pandemic, we have candidates who just can’t travel to where donors tend to be concentrated,’ a Democratic fundraiser told the Washington Post recently. “So, they’re relying on virtual means of engagement, but it’s just tougher to break through.”
How will they deal with the issue agenda, which has for the moment been swept off the boards? The partisan divides and the partisan issues have been pushed to the side; the race and gender themes have all been pushed off the table — save for Biden’s dim-witted promise to run with a woman, as Walter Mondale did in 1984.
The election this time is about our survival. As every election should be.
