Joe Biden Page 14
Epidemiologists—public health professionals who study outbreaks of infectious diseases—warned that the government needed to act immediately, or COVID-19 could kill millions of Americans. Back in 2014, when the dangerous Ebola virus had arrived in the US, the Obama administration had successfully controlled the outbreak. But by 2020, the US was not prepared to fight an invading virus.
At first President Trump was distracted from this danger by his impeachment and by the following trial in the Senate, which ended only at the beginning of February. On February 29, the state of Washington reported the first US death from COVID-19. Trump dismissed the danger of the pandemic. He did bar travelers from China, but by that time, the virus was already established in the US and spreading by leaps and bounds.
By the end of March, the US had 160,000 reported cases of COVID-19, more than any other country in the world. The US death toll from the virus passed 3,000. Since the virus was usually spread by droplets in the air, experts said the best way to keep the pandemic from getting worse was to stop people from breathing, coughing, or sneezing in one another’s faces.
Health officials recommended that people stay home and away from others as much as possible, and to wear face masks when they had to go out. In some states and cities, governors and mayors ordered social distancing and even lockdown measures. Businesses, except for necessary ones like hospitals or trash pickup, were ordered to close.
* * *
These actions saved lives, but as a result of the lockdown, the national economy slumped. Many businesses failed. Week after week, millions of unemployed workers applied for state aid. By April the unemployment rate rose to almost 15 percent, the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
People who couldn’t pay their rent were being evicted from their homes, and millions more lived on the edge of becoming homeless. And many, including children, were going hungry. Lines at food banks stretched for miles. In Congress, Democrats and Republicans worked together to respond to the emergency, passing the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act, and it was signed into law by President Trump on March 27. The $2.2 trillion was the largest economic stimulus bill ever passed by Congress. The CARES Act provided direct payments by check and unemployment insurance supplements to individual Americans, aid to local and state governments, and loans to businesses.
In spite of efforts to enforce social distancing and lockdowns, the number of deaths in the US from COVID-19 continued to soar, from around one hundred in mid-March to over 103,000 at the end of May. But President Trump still refused to admit how serious the pandemic was.
For some weeks the president held daily press conferences on the coronavirus, but he often contradicted his own medical experts or turned from discussing the pandemic to criticizing his opponents. He resisted mobilizing the nation in order to supply hospitals with masks and other protective equipment, or to make testing for the virus widely available. He insisted that individual states and cities were responsible for combatting the virus. He would not even set an example for the nation by wearing a mask himself.
From March to May, many Democrats complained about “Biden in the Basement,” Joe Biden’s low-key presidential campaign. Because of the lockdown, he didn’t travel. He set up a studio in his basement and gave interviews and “town meetings” from there, but it wasn’t satisfactory campaigning. Biden was at his best with a live audience, mixing with the crowd, looking into people’s eyes, shaking hands, hugging.
Then still another national crisis pushed even the pandemic from the headlines. On May 25, four police officers in Minneapolis, Minnesota, arrested George Floyd, a Black man, on suspicion of a nonviolent crime. The officers handcuffed Floyd and, as Floyd lay facedown, one white officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes, causing his death. This incident, captured on video, went viral on the Internet. Several similar incidents had been shown on video in recent years, but this was the most shocking, and perhaps the last straw.
A movement with the slogan “Black Lives Matter” had already been active for several years, but now a wave of protest demonstrations swept over the country. The marchers, many white people as well as people of color, chanted George Floyd’s last words, “I can’t breathe.” Joe and Jill Biden visited Floyd’s family in Houston to offer their sympathy.
President Trump’s reaction was to urge governors to “dominate” the protesters. On the night of June 1, Trump had troops forcefully clear demonstrators out of the park across from the White House. He then walked through the park to a church and posed for a photograph, holding a Bible. Seemingly this act was meant as a signal to conservative Christians that he was on the side of God.
Many political commentators continued to wonder why Joe Biden wasn’t campaigning more aggressively. Even with the pandemic’s restrictions on travel and political rallies, they thought he could do more to capture the public’s attention. But others pointed out that President Trump, with all his tweeting and press conferences and Rose Garden announcements, was steadily turning voters against himself. There was a saying in politics: “When your opponent is busy digging his own grave, don’t take the shovel away from him.”
On June 2, Joe Biden traveled to Philadelphia to give a speech to the nation. Standing against a background of American flags, he spoke to the protesters about the kind of president he would be. “I’ll seek to heal the racial wounds that have long plagued our country, not use them for political gain.” And he asked the nation, “Look at where we are now and think anew: Is this who we are? Is this who we want to be?”
By mid-June, 115,000 Americans had died from the coronavirus. The president’s approval rating sank to 38 percent. Six weeks later, over 150,000 Americans had died, and the virus was spreading uncontrolled. The Black Lives Matter demonstrations continued in cities around the country, including Seattle, Chicago, and New York.
President Trump seemed desperate to reopen and revive the national economy, which had been his biggest political advantage. Also, he was distressed at not being able to speak in front of applauding crowds. In June, against public health advice, he held his first rally in months at an indoor arena in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Not as many people as expected showed up, perhaps put off by the health risk.
In the history of the United States, there had never been a presidential election year like this, without numerous rallies and noisy, crowded conventions. The Democratic National Party announced in July that their convention would take place online. The Republican National Party moved its convention plans from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Jacksonville, Florida, trying to avoid coronavirus restrictions. But by late July they had shrunk their convention plans to a one-day business meeting only, back in Charlotte. However, in a few weeks these plans would change again, dramatically.
President Trump could no longer claim a healthy economy; few Americans even believed the economy could recover before the next year. National polls showed Joe Biden with a significant lead over Donald Trump. The Trump campaign searched for the best way to turn voters against Biden.
One tack was to portray the former vice president as too old for the job of president. But Donald Trump was only four years younger than Joe Biden, and clearly overweight in contrast to trim, fit Biden. Another approach was to accuse Biden of going senile, based on his public slips of the tongue. But Trump himself made rambling, sometimes incoherent speeches, and he was mocked for boasting of a high score on his ten-minute test for dementia.
Trump repeatedly warned against mail-in voting. He claimed—against the evidence—that mail-in ballots could easily be faked. He suggested that the general election in November might have to be delayed because of the pandemic. However, even Republicans in Congress quickly pointed out that only Congress had the power to change an election date.
As the Black Lives Matter protests continued, Trump portrayed himself as the “law and order” president. He sent federal troops to Portland, Oregon, and other cities to quash the demonstrations. His campaign made
a special appeal to women in the suburbs, where he had done well in 2016. But polls showed that suburban voters actually supported the protests, and they disapproved of Trump’s handling of the crisis.
Still, Biden’s campaign knew better than to count on the polls. After all, in the fall of 2016, Hillary Clinton had led Donald Trump in the polls, right up until the November election.
Biden still had to pick a vice presidential running mate. He promised to choose a woman, and he promised to announce his choice before the Democratic National Convention in late August.
President Joe Biden
On Tuesday, August 17, Joe Biden made a videoconference call. He asked the woman on the screen, “You ready to go to work?”
“Oh my God, I am so ready,” answered Kamala Harris. The senator from California, daughter of immigrants from India and Jamaica, was Biden’s choice for his vice presidential running mate.
Joe Biden sent out an email to his supporters, explaining why he’d chosen Senator Harris. “Smart, tough, and ready to lead,” he said of her. As he’d promised several months before, he’d picked a woman. Many of his advisors had thought he should pick a woman of color, and Kamala Harris was mixed-race Black and Indian.
Also important, Joe Biden wanted a running mate whom he felt comfortable with. Kamala Harris’s political positions, like Biden’s, were liberal, but not far left. And Biden already knew Harris through his son Beau. When Beau Biden had been attorney general of Delaware, she’d been attorney general of California. The two AGs had been friends, and Beau had respected her work highly.
Some commentators were surprised that Biden would pick someone who’d attacked him so forcefully on the debate stage just a year before. But Joe Biden didn’t hold grudges. And he wasn’t afraid of strong women.
* * *
“Uniting America” was the theme of the Democratic National Convention in 2020. Because of the COVID-19 virus, it was unlike any other convention in the history of the United States. Back in March 2019, the Democratic Convention had been planned to take place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July 2020. But by the summer of 2020 the coronavirus pandemic was raging. It wouldn’t have been safe for fifty thousand speakers, delegates, reporters, and volunteers to crowd together.
The dates of the convention were changed to August 17–20. Most of the events of the convention had to be recorded beforehand, or take place elsewhere and be broadcast live. Even Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did not travel to Milwaukee to accept their nominations. And no one spoke to a large live audience, to receive roars of applause.
However, the online format was a chance to include many ordinary people. One of the most touching appearances was by Brayden Harrington, a thirteen-year-old boy who stuttered. He’d met Joe Biden in New Hampshire early in the year, and Biden had taken time to talk with him one-on-one about how to overcome his stutter. “Joe Biden made me more confident about something that’s bothered me my whole life,” said Harrington. “Joe Biden cared. Imagine what he could do for all of us.”
Naturally, many well-known Democrats, including both Michelle and Barack Obama, praised Biden during the convention. But there were also a surprising number of high-profile Republicans speaking up for Joe. One of these was Cindy McCain, wife of the late senator John McCain of Arizona. She described Biden as a politician who fought hard for what he believed—but got things done in the government by reaching out to those who disagreed with him, like McCain.
The following Monday, August 24, the Republican National Convention opened in Charlotte, North Carolina. Because of the pandemic, many of these speakers were also recorded without an audience. But on August 27, President Trump gave his acceptance speech on the South Lawn of the White House, in front of a close-packed audience of over a thousand, most without face masks. Aside from the danger of spreading the virus, many were shocked that a president running for reelection would use the White House as a backdrop for a campaign speech. Federal law forbids the use of federal property for political campaigns, although technically the president is exempt from this law.
A major theme of the Republican Convention was that Joe Biden as president would be the front for the “radical left.” A TV ad for Trump had warned, “You won’t be safe in Joe Biden’s America.” Speakers accused Biden of being a socialist and of wanting to protect criminals from law-abiding citizens, instead of the other way around. President Trump predicted that if Biden won, the country would be taken over by “violent anarchists” who would destroy America.
In response, Joe Biden pointed out that the riots and shootings were taking place during Donald Trump’s presidency. And Trump himself was inciting violence, “pouring gasoline on the fire.” As for Biden, he said, “I condemn violence of every kind by anyone, whether on the left or the right.”
Political commentators noted that in 1968, Richard Nixon had won the presidency by promising, as Trump was doing now, to restore “law and order.” But one important difference was that Nixon had not yet been president, so he could logically blame the turmoil of 1968 on eight years of Democratic rule. Not so for Donald Trump, Joe Biden reminded voters in a speech in Pittsburgh on August 31. “He keeps telling us if he was president you’d feel safe,” Biden remarked dryly. “Well, he is president, whether he knows it or not.”
During the conventions and for weeks afterward, Black Lives Matter protest marches continued. The vast majority of these protests were peaceful, but the media emphasized any incidents of vandalism, looting, or violent clashes with counter-protesters or the police. Americans’ support for the demonstrators dropped off. Two protesters were killed in Kenosha, Wisconsin, allegedly by an illegally armed militia member, and a far-right demonstrator was shot and killed in Portland, Oregon. The alleged shooter in Portland was hunted down and killed by federal marshals.
* * *
Although the presidential election always gets the most national attention, both the Republican and the Democratic Parties were especially concerned about the Senate races this year. What if Joe Biden won the presidency, but the Republicans kept their majority in the Senate? They could make it very difficult for the Biden administration to achieve its goals, just as they had during President Obama’s second term.
On the other hand, what if President Trump was reelected but the Democrats won the majority in the Senate and kept their majority in the House of Representatives? If their majorities were large enough, they would have the chance to enact the laws they favored. Although the president has the power to veto a bill passed by Congress, a two-thirds majority in Congress can override a veto. And a majority-Democratic Congress might even decide to impeach and try President Trump again.
* * *
In the last weeks of the presidential race of 2020, Americans grew more and more anxious. They were worried about the nation’s racial problems. They were worried about the ongoing pandemic, which had claimed two hundred thousand American lives as of September 22.
Large numbers of Americans were worried about losing their jobs, or even about getting enough help to pay their rent and feed their families. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, thirty-five million Americans, including ten million children, had not had enough to eat. Now millions more joined the long lines at overwhelmed food banks.
On top of these anxieties, many Americans also worried that the election would not be decided fairly. US intelligence officials announced that Russia was trying to influence American voters, as they had in 2016, this time by spreading misinformation about Biden. Also, more voters than ever planned to mail in their ballots, rather than vote at a polling place, because they were afraid of catching the deadly COVID-19 virus. But Trump’s postmaster general was cutting back on mail services and removing mail drop boxes from neighborhoods. And President Trump warned over and over, against all the evidence, that voting by mail was open to fraud.
Joe Biden was prepared to fight back for a fair election. He had assembled a team of hundreds of lawyers to see to it that the election was conducted and decid
ed according to law. They would monitor each state, especially the battleground states, to watch how votes were cast and counted. They would make sure that people knew how to vote, and that all citizens entitled to vote had the chance to do so. They would also be on the watch for foreign interference in the election.
Meanwhile, Democrats were also concerned about a longer-term threat: an inaccurate count of the national census. Every ten years, the US Census Bureau is required by the Constitution to count the total number of people residing in each state. In 2020, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Census Bureau had begun door-to-door collection of information later than usual. And now the Trump administration announced it was ending the census a month early.
Each once-in-a-decade census count is important, because the population of each state determines the number of congressmen or congresswomen that state sends to the House of Representatives. The count also determines the number of electors who vote in the Electoral College to choose the president. And the federal government uses the census information to decide how much money to send each state for needs such as health clinics, schools, and highways.
But in 2020, because so many Americans had fallen into poverty and even homelessness during the pandemic, it was more difficult for the census to reach them. And for fear of deportation, many families with undocumented immigrants avoided giving the government any information. Democrats accused the Trump administration of deliberately undercounting these people, who tended to vote Democratic.
* * *
As the campaign neared its end, Donald Trump threw out one unsupported claim after another. He implied several times that Biden was taking performance-enhancing drugs for his public appearances. On September 16 he announced that his “Operation Warp Speed” project to develop a vaccine for COVID-19 would produce a vaccine and distribute it to all Americans “in a matter of weeks.” Medical experts, however, agreed that this schedule was not possible. Even if a safe and effective vaccine were available by the end of 2020, it would take several months to distribute it to the whole population.